Acer Swift 7 (2018): World's Thinnest Laptop

Acer’s Swift 7 ultra portable is back, and at just over a third of an inch thick, it’s holding on to its bragging rights as the world’s thinnest laptop.

- Matthew Buzzi

This is no humble-brag, either: It’s going to be tough for any laptop maker to top this machine on thinness, seeing as the profile is barely thick enough to host any ports. With a spiffy, all-metal design, the Swift 7 is a real stunner, but it’s pricey at $1,699.99. And all that glamour demands concessions, including a low wattage CPU, a 14-inch 1080p screen, and tight storage capacity. The Huawei MateBook X Pro remains our Editors’ Choice ultra portable for its excellent feature set and price. But Acer’s ultra-slim machine is a success story if you need to go thin—at all costs.

THE MOST PORTABLE ULTRA PORTABLE

Putting aside the technicality of the “world’s thinnest” tag for a moment, the Swift 7 is a head-turner, drawing the praise of everyone I showed it off to. Made entirely of sleek black metal, the Swift 7 has that rare “it factor” that inspires product envy. It looks and feels high quality, from the solid metal to the diamond-cut corners and silver trim.

Much of the appeal, though, comes back to its thinness. The Swift 7 measures just 0.35 inch thick, an almost absurdly slim measurement evident at just a glance. (The footprint is more pedestrian, at 12.91 inches wide by 9.33 inches deep.) The Swift 7 doesn’t just barely scrape into its “I’m thinnest” distinction, either, with several hundredths of an inch shaved off the thinnest competition we’ve tested. The HP Spectre 13, for example, measures 0.41 inch thick, while the Dell XPS 13 comes in at 0.46 inch and the Razer Blade Stealth at 0.54 inch. Sure, you’ll still need calipers to measure that, but the comparisons are not mere squeakers.