Am I the only one flummoxed by innovation as it relates to smartphones, tablets, and laptops?
Too often, I come across phones that add sliders and swivels to go with some ultra-ginormous zoom features that have no real-world function (I know this will come to bite me back some day).
Doing all the hard gimmicks but not delivering function and value. How about a 5-inch phone with all the features of giant flagships that ensure I never fall victim to chronic wrist pain?
Its been pretty much the same with laptops with all manners of touchscreens and swivels etc. that no one asked for, but hardware makers pushed ahead, partly to make their laptops more smartphone-like to appeal to that millennial + Gen Z block.
That is why when someone came to me with the world’s lightest 15-inch laptop in the world, I HAD TO take notice. Someone was talking to my appeal for lighter, smaller, tinier.
The 15-inch laptop space has always been dogged by a size and carry issue. No one can disagree that working on a screen with that surface area is way better than those 13-inch and 11-inch notebooks flying around. But you just can’t consistently lug around a 15-inch laptop like its lighter counterparts no matter how much you work out.
It is the single reason why I have never bought the 15-inch MacBook Pro. And stick with my 13-inch device, which too I am hesitant to take out of the house with me for the same weighty reasons.
The ultra-lite
The Acer Swift 5 smacks that thinking aside. At 0.998 kg, the Swift 5 is the lightest 15-inch laptop in the world. There is nothing quite like holding it in your hands.
You get this feeling of picking up a unit that is packing equal amounts of air and circuitry. You could be mistaken to think that this is a design mock-up without any of the innards required to make it work as a laptop.
Acer tells us that the magic to make the Swift 5 as light as it is, comes down to some precision engineering and the use of magnesium alloys that make the device ultra-light but still sturdy enough to last all the hazards of a daily commute or the overnight trip to that big tech event.
Don’t let that hollow feeling lull you into thinking that this is an easily breakable device.
Looks wise, though, the Swift 5 is nothing to write home about, and I am perfectly okay about that. The one evident visual characteristic of the Swift 5 is that it does not LOOK light. Nothing visually tells you that this is a feather-light device, like say the MacBook Air does on the first impression.
It comes, as far I understand, in this dark grey hue only, and it’s not really the most appealing color scheme for sure. The top lid comes with your standard Acer logo, and you have a pretty linear bottom with the speakers and cooling vents. Nothing too radical. But all of it expected I assume in pursuit of that sub-1 kg weight.
Everything else
On the device, you get two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 3.1 Type-C port, a headphone jack, and the standard power and HDMI ports. There is no SD card reader, and there is no Thunderbolt port either, i.e. you can forget using the Swift 5 as any type of a gaming machine with an external GPU.
What you can do, however, is charge your devices with the USB-C port. Acer tells us that the Swift 5 comes with power-off USB charging, which will let you charge devices even when the laptop is turned off. That is cool, I guess.
The display on the Swift 5 is impressive. This is one area Acer has not scrimped on. The 15.6-inch display, top be exact, comes with slim bezels, and is a Full HD (1920p x 1080p) IPS panel with a16:9 aspect ratio. This is a touch display that can lie flat, but please end these touch screen gimmicks, everyone.
However, this is a dazzling, detailed and colorful display that you would not expect on a device whose primary USP is its weight. I watched a couple of Premier League games on it, and that was a breeze. Sure, it cannot match up with displays on high-end machines, but that is a fair trade-off.
The keyboard is what you would expect with Acer. A n efficient keyboard with spread out keys, which offer consistent travel. The touchpad is more than satisfactory and worked perfectly with my tapping technique (if that is even a thing and its probably not).
There is a camera currently does not work with face recognition technology but works for your regular video chat needs. You also get a fingerprint reader, instead of the face recognition feature, but really its nothing like scanners found on smartphones. I was unlocking the screen the old fashioned way and rarely used the scanner.
Performance on Point
The innards on the Swift 5 are impressive. The Swift 5 is powered by 1.6 Ghz quad-core processor and comes with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD storage. So yes, it is a pretty standard kit if not a slightly underpowered one.
But in operation, I was more than content with the performance it offered. The Swift 5 went through a moderate to heavy workload of web surfing, live streaming, and a whole lot of journalist work, and it handled all that snappily.
For example, Chrome was working fantastically about to the 22-23 tabs mark before any sign of sluggishness showed up. The regular mobile working professional should have no complaints with this sort of output.
Speaking of being mobile with work, the Swift 5 has what I would call carry-able battery life. I was getting about 9 hours of battery life with regular use, and about 7 hours with a lot of video playback thrown in.
Okay, so it is not as punchy as some of its peers, but it is way more than enough for those who value battery life. I would think only the MacBook Air would clearly surpass it on the battery life stakes by a wide margin.
But in any scenario, I am okay with any trade-off Acer had to do to get the Swift 5 as light as it is. Why would I have any complaints with an ultra-light device that lets me work, surf, and watch on an ample display?
Let me reiterate that there is no comparison. Its peer in the Apple stable, the 15-inch MacBook Pro weighs in at 1.8 kg. The lightweight benchmark on the Windows stable, the Dell XPS 13, comes in ‘heavier’ at 1.2 kgs.
At that lack of heft, I can make more compromises than usual, the lack of ports and slightly annoying design and built being some of them.
One major downer is the price, though. At Dhs 5,899, it veers to the expensive side of things, and I do wish Acer will draw it back a bit. For those mobile professionals who do have the dough, the Swift 5 is a steal.