Acer Swift Edge 16 review: An incredibly portable but flawed 16-inch notebook

Note: This review was first published on 22 May 2023.

16 is the new 15

If there’s an immutable rule in tech it is that display sizes will get larger. This is true for phones, TVs, and notebooks. 14-inch notebooks are fast replacing 13.3-inch ones and it appears now that 15-inch notebooks will soon be replaced by 16-inch ones. The benefits of a larger display are obvious but notebooks with large displays often come with weight penalties. Acer’s Swift Edge 16 notebook, however, bucks that trend because it’s even lighter than some 13 and 14-inch notebooks. How have they done it and can you really have your cake and eat it? Answers below.

The TL;DR verdict:



It’s not without its flaws but if you’ve always wanted a notebook with a big display and without the associated weight penalty, this is one notebook you should definitely check out. 

Good old magnesium alloy

Let’s cut to the chase. You want to know how much the Swift Edge 16 weighs. It’s a mere 1.17kg. That makes it easily lighter than most 13.3 and 14-inch notebooks. To give this number some context, consider that a MacBook Air is 1.24kg and an XPS 13 Plus is 1.26kg. It’s thin too – just 12.75mm thick. In the hands, it feels incredibly light, your brain almost can’t comprehend how a notebook of this size can weigh so little.

Unless, of course, you are familiar with LG’s gram lineup of notebooks. Acer isn’t the first to make a notebook of this size so light, LG has been doing for a couple of years now. The 16-inch gram 16 is also a mere 1.19kg heavy. 

The two brands achieve these remarkable feats with engineering by using chassis made out of magnesium alloy. According to Acer, the Swift Edge 16’s magnesium alloy chassis is 20% lighter and twice as strong as aluminium. The one downside to it is that it feels somewhat plasticky and doesn’t feel quite as solid and as tip-top as aluminium.

The 16-inch display is OLED and has a high resolution of 3840 x 2400 pixels. It’s mighty sharp. Though the refresh rate is just 60Hz, it supports 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space and meets VESA’s standard for DisplayHDR True Black 500. Like most OLED displays, visually, it looks great and I think most users will have no complaints. However, having experienced many other notebook displays, I’d say the Swift Edge 16’s display appears very slightly less vivid and contrasty. Curiously, it's not a touch display. It doesn't bother me since I'm predominantly a keyboard-and-mouse type of guy, but I can see how it can be a dealbreaker for some people. 

What powers the Swift Edge 16 is interesting because instead of a 13th Gen Intel Core chip, it uses a Ryzen 7000 series processor. This is AMD’s newest mobile chip and our test unit came with a Ryzen 7 7735U with 16GB of memory and a 1TB SSD. This is an eight-core chip with 16 threads and it also features a Radeon 680M integrated GPU. I can’t wait to see how it performs against notebooks with Intel’s new 13th Gen Core processors.

Though the Swift Edge 16 is thin, it has just about all the ports users would need. There are two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, a full-size HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. My only complaints would be that there’s no memory card reader of any sort and that the USB-C ports only support USB 3.2 Gen 2 and not Thunderbolt 4 or the newer USB4 standard. 

Unlike most notebooks of this size, the Swift Edge 16’s keyboard doesn’t have a number pad. I think this arrangement is preferable for most people since it means the keyboard is centred. Of course, you might disagree if you have to work with spreadsheets daily and need to key in lots of numbers. The keyboard itself is decent, the keycaps are of a decent size and the key feel and travel is acceptable. The trackpad is quite large but doesn’t use Microsoft’s Precision drivers (ELAN, since you asked) so it feels imprecise and a tad laggy.

Performance analysis

To recap the version of the Swift Edge 16 is the version with a Ryzen 7 7735U processor, 16GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, and AMD Radeon 680M graphics. It’s one of the best spec units you can get and it’s S$2,598. This is the first time we are testing a notebook with AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 mobile processor so it’ll be interesting to see how it compares against its Intel rivals.

CPU performance

The Swift Edge 16’s CPU performance was decent. AMD’s processor used to have the advantage in multi-core applications but that no longer seems to be the case. Looking at results in Cinebench and Geekbench, the Swift Edge 16’s Ryzen 7 7735U processor was no quicker than even notebooks with Intel’s older 12th Gen Alder Lake processors. Even so, overall performance was certainly quite competitive, but it could be outclassed by notebooks with Intel’s newer 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors. We’ll have to wait and see to find out.

Graphics performance

The Swift Edge 16 had a slight lead in graphics performance when compared with other notebooks powered by Intel’s 12th Gen Core processors with Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. On 3DMark, its numbers on Night Raid were about 15% better than the Intel-powered notebooks. It also had a 16% advantage in games too on the less demanding “low” settings. However, some Intel notebooks, such as Acer’s own Swift 5 and the Lenovo Yoga 9i, did run it very close. And it goes without saying that the ASUS ZenBook 14X UX3404 with its discrete GeForce RTX 3050 was the runaway leader here. 

Battery life

Note: Battery tests were conducted using PCMark 10's battery benchmark with display set to 100% brightness.

I was worried to find out that the Swift Edge 16 only has a 54Wh capacity battery. Clearly, Acer wanted to keep the notebook’s weight down. However, it lasted reasonably long in our battery life test. In the Modern Office workload, it comfortably lasted over 7 hours, which is quite remarkable considering it has a 16-inch large display. Looking at the power consumption figures, we can see that it’s only bested by Acer’s own Swift 5 and the Microsoft Surface Pro 9. And when you look at its Portability Index score, you can see that it really holds up well against other 13 and 14-inch ultraportable notebooks. This is a truly portable 16-inch notebook.

A mixed bag of lightness

All things considered, the Acer Swift Edge 16 is a conflicting notebook that outstanding in some ways but also flawed in others.

The display, though OLED and mighty sharp, isn’t perhaps quite as vivid and doesn’t support touch inputs. And while it is incredibly light, it doesn’t feel quite as solid as other notebooks in its price range. Other complaints worth mentioning are the imprecise trackpad, lack of support for Thunderbolt 4 and USB4, and weak-sounding speakers. But then it counters these with decent performance and battery life. And really, these shortcomings aren’t dealbreakers – at least not for most people.

The Swift Edge 16’s only real rival is LG’s gram 16. Of the two, I think the Swift Edge 16 edges it slightly (see what I did there). Though the gram 16 is almost as thin and light, its display is its biggest downfall because it isn’t OLED, and it isn't as sharp, and doesn’t support touch too. Spec for spec, both notebooks cost roughly the same (the Swift Edge 16 as tested is S$2,598), so there’s no advantage there for LG either.

Speaking of costs, here are the prices of  the various configurations of the Swift Edge 16.

Ultimately, it boils down to how much you value the Swift Edge 16’s large display and portability. Users who appreciate these qualities will likely gloss over its shortcomings, because, as I said, they are mostly minor and not outright dealbreakers. Furthermore, cramming a 16-inch display into a body that weighs the same as most 13 and 14-inch notebooks is quite a remarkable trick, and there are few notebooks that are like the Swift Edge 16.

Note: You can find the Acer Swift Edge 16 on the Acer Flagship Store on Lazada, the Acer Official Store on Shopee, and the Acer Online Store.

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