Now that Apple’s M1 chip (go. pcworld.com/apm1) has raised the bar for lightweight laptop performance, there’s a question every ultraportable PC maker must address: Why would someone buy this instead of a MacBook Air?
Well, here’s an answer for the new Acer Swift 5: It’s fast enough to play Fortnite and a bunch of other games that are absent from Apple’s platform, but it still weighs only 2.3 pounds and gets stellar battery life for work or web browsing. It also has a touchscreen and a bunch of useful ports, including HDMI out and USB-A, none of which you’ll find on Apple’s thin-and-light Air (go.pcworld.com/7ftr).
That’s not to say it’s any cheaper. With a starting price of $1,000 (and $1,300 on Amazon for our review unit), the Acer Swift 5 is very much a premium ultraportable PC. But with no huge flaws and lots of upsides, it’s well worth putting on your short list.
SPECS AND FEATURES
The $1,300 Acer Swift 5 model (go.pcworld. com/55ta) we tested (SF514-55TA-74EC) has the following specifications:
CPU: 11th-gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU
RAM: 16 GB of LPDDR4X RAM
Storage: 1 TB NVMe SSD storage
Display: 14-inch 1080p IPS touchscreen
Graphics: Iris Xe
Networking: Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1
Webcam resolution: 720p
Left side ports: DC-in power, HDMI 2.0, USB-A 3.2, USB-C Gen 2 with Thunderbolt 4
Right side ports: USB-A 3.2, headphone jack, Kensington lock
Dimensions: 12.56 x 8.15 x 0.59 inches
Weight: 2.31 pounds
Acer also offers a $1,000 configuration (go.pcworld.com/56ch) with an Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.
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