The Acer Swift Edge is a sleek laptop with a large and vibrant 16-inch OLED display. It features a Ryzen 6000 CPU, and only weighs 1.17kg, making it a great option for anyone who needs to work on the go.
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4K OLED screen:Packs a 16-inch 4K OLED display -
Ryzen 6000 CPUPowered by a Ryzen 6000 processor -
Lightweight designThe Acer Swift Edge weighs in at just 1.1kg
Introduction
The Acer Swift Edge (2022) is a large laptop, packing a 16-inch 4K OLED display.
But despite the large screen, the Acer Swift Edge is one of the sleekest and most attractive laptops from the company in years, keeping a low weight of just 1.17kg. It has been designed for productivity workloads, and should work well for those who work both from home and the office.
This is not a full review of the laptop, but instead a hands on, as I haven’t spent enough time with the Edge to get a full view of its performance or battery life. Instead, here are my first impressions.
Price and availability
The Acer Swift Edge has a starting price of £1499.99. It’s not available to buy just yet, but we’re expecting it to arrive in stores in the coming weeks.
Design and screen
- 4K OLED panel
- Weighs only 1.17kg
- Comes in White and Black
The Acer Swift Edge is available in two colours: White and Black. I was able to go hands on with the white model, and I have to say it’s incredibly sleek and attractive. It had an almost iridescent sheen to it, with the colour shifting depending on the light; going from a white colour to a blueish green that I really liked, providing the device with more personality than the standard grey on the Acer Swift X (2022).
Other than the colour, I also really liked the keyboard. It was roomy and responsive, although there was a pretty noticeable flex in the chassis if you pressed down hard enough. Since it’s made from magnesium-aluminum alloy (the same material used with the excellent LG Gram series) it’s not too surprising that it has some flexibility to it.
But that does mean that it can achieve a weight of just 1.17kg, which is remarkably lighter than even the 1.24kg MacBook Air M2.
The weight was surprising and I could easily lift it with just one hand, making it a great laptop to take on the go. Moreover, the trackpad was large and felt smooth to use, and it responded well during my browsing session.
In terms of ports, it packs a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB-C ports, two USB-A 3.2 ports and an HDMI port. I was happy to see such a vast selection considering the laptop is so thin, and I think it would work well in a lot of office and educational environments.
I really liked the display of the Acer Swift Edge; the 16-inch panel meant there was a lot of screen space, and I could open up multiple tabs without it feeling clustered. It did not have touchscreen capabilities, which I personally look for in a work laptop, but I think the large screen makes up for it.
It also boasts a 4K OLED display, and while I wasn’t able to test the specs, it looked very bright with vibrant colours. Acer claims that it is DCI-P3 approved, has a peak brightness of 500 nits and has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, as well as a 16:10 ratio.
While I would need to spend more time with this laptop to get a full view of how it handles movies and creative tasks, it looked to have a vibrant and bright screen during my browsing. But to have an OLED screen on a £1499.99 laptop is certainly remarkable.
Performance and battery
- Ryzen 7 6800U CPU
- Comes with Windows 11 Pro
- 7.5 hours of battery
The Acer Swift Edge comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor and up to a 1TB SSD, alongside 16GB RAM.
From my brief use time with the laptop, it responded well and could load up browser pages quickly. The Ryzen 7 6800U processor comes with 8 cores and 16 threads. This is a productivity laptop that should be able to speed through day-to-day workloads, and even tackle some entry-level photo editing on the side.
The Swift Edge won’t have a discrete GPU, as such an inclusion would have made it impossible to retain the lightweight build. Instead, it will use an integrated GPU from AMD’s CPU, limiting the performance for intensive graphical tasks.
It comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, with Acer claiming that the device can last 7.5 hours during daily use, and 10.5 hours for video playback. This score isn’t too impressive, not offering the 13-hour battery life that the Huawei MateBook 16 does, but that’s likely due to the 4K OLED screen.
We will be sure to test the battery when we get the laptop in for testing to see if these claims are accurate.
First Impressions
The Acer Swift Edge has a lot more personality than most of the other laptops I’ve tested, featuring striking colour options and boasting a jaw-dropping 1.17kg weight despite its 16-inch screen size.
That large 4K OLED screen is also a great addition, especially with such a reasonable starting price. The LG Gram 16 has long been our favourite on-the-go 16-inch laptop, but the Acer has all the specs required to usurp it.
From my brief time using the Acer Swift Edge, it was fast and offered a good performance, and I think that it will be best suited for those who need to take their laptop to and from work or school. I don’t believe it will be fit for gamers or creatives due to the lack of a discrete GPU.
Be sure to check back with Trusted Reviews soon, as we will be reviewing this laptop in full over the next few weeks so you can see if it manages to break into our best laptop ranking.
