Acer Swift Edge review: A 16

Jun 26, 2023

It's 2.58 pounds with a big old OLED display.

When it comes to 16-inch laptops, you really have to think about your use case. Some are larger and heavier, packing 45W processors and discrete graphics that wouldn't fit in a 13-inch laptop; that's what you buy if you need more power. Some, like the Acer Swift Edge, serve the same purpose as a smaller laptop, just with a larger screen.

It's actually one of the lightest 16-inch laptops on the market, weighing in at just over two and a half pounds. But that's not all that makes this laptop great. They're rare, but two and a haf pound 16-inch laptops do exist. What makes this one even more special is the 4K OLED display. That means that not only is it easy to carry, but it's also a pleasure to use.

It's not perfect. It has the usual drawbacks of an AMD-powered laptop, meaning that it does well when plugged in but performance suffers dramatically when it's not. Also, the fan can get really loud, and when you hear that fan kick on, it's an indicator that the performance is about to throttle even more.

But it comes with a 15W Ryzen 7, along with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, so it definitely has the overhead that you need. All in all, this is an excellent laptop that offers distinct value propositions that simply aren't being offered by the rest of the market.

Pros

Cons

The 4K OLED screen is beautiful

AMD performance struggles when not connected to power

It's one of the lightest 16-inch laptops out there, and it doesn't compromise to get there

The fan can get loud

Value for money

There's no USB4

It's just delightful

Considering the rising prices across the industry, it's pretty impressive that the Acer Swift Edge comes in at $1,499.99. This price comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U, 16GB LPDDR5 memory, and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. In other words, it's pretty specced out, and there's no option for you to make bad decisions, such as cheaping out on a unit with 8GB RAM.

It's been available since October 2022, and it comes in one color, called Olivine Black. It weighs in at 2.58 pounds, and of course, this laptop comes with a 16-inch 4K OLED display.

At 2.58 pounds, the Acer Swift Edge is as light as 16-inch laptops get. Naturally, that means it doesn't have dedicated graphics like, say, a Dell XPS 15, but it does have a proper 15W AMD Ryzen 6000 CPU. Indeed, it's aimed at productivity on the go. There aren't many 16-inch laptops you can throw in a bag and forget that it's there, but this is one of them.

It's rare to find a 16-inch laptop that's so light that you can forget it's in your bag.

It comes in a color called Olivine Black, which is also known by its street name: green. Made out of magnesium alloy like all of Acer's ultra-light laptops, I like the deep green color and the chrome accent in the Acer logo on the lid. In fact, I always like Acer's use of colors in its magnesium laptops, which make it stand out from the pack.

Magnesium laptops do tend to feel cheap, which is why I appreciate that it's made up for in looking premium. Still, you can easily bend the display with your hands if you want to test its durability. The material tends to be able to withstand things like drops, but it is more flexible than something heavier and denser like aluminum.

It's got four USB ports, which is plenty. Two of them are USB Type-A and two of them are USB Type-C. Both USB Type-C ports are on the left side, as is one USB Type-A port and an HDMI 2.1 port. The USB Type-A ports are unsurprisingly USB 3.2 Gen 1, meaning that they're good for 5Gbps data transfer, but the USB Type-C ports are actually USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, which is 20Gbps. USB 3.2 2x2 is kind of rare in laptops, partly because most new devices just go for USB4, which is equivalent to Thunderbolt 3. In fact, we've seen this year on many Ryzen 6000 laptops that USB4 has been AMD's answer to not being able to use Thunderbolt. While USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is great, I'd have liked to have seen the full USB4.

The Olivine Black color makes the Swift Edge stand out from the pack.

On the right side, there's another USB Type-A port and a headphone jack. Again, you'll really never find yourself needing a dongle with this laptop.

Like I said, I do always admire Acer's design chops. The deep green colorway keeps it subtle while still feeling unique, and of course, that's combined with the fact that it's incredibly light for a 16-inch laptop.

As I've said, this isn't the only ultra-light 16-inch laptop. If you want to check out alternatives, take a look at LG's gram PCs. The thing that makes the Acer Swift Edge unique, however, is that it has a 3,840x2,400 OLED display. That means that it's absolutely gorgeous.

With an OLED display, you get true black and more vibrant colors. That means that it's an overall more pleasant experience no matter what you're using it for. It could be something simple like watching movies or browsing through an album of photos that a friend shared with you. On the other hand, you could make full use of the wide color gamut for photo editing.

There are other ultra-light 16-inch laptops, but the beautiful OLED display makes this one unique.

Coming in at 100% sRGB, 96% NTSC, 98% Adobe RGB, and 100% P3, the colors on this display are excellent. You really can't beat it.

Interestingly, the black level went from 0.01 to 0.03 when brightness hit 500%, not that that matters in the slightest. With an OLED display, that number typically doesn't move since pixels are turned off; blacks are true blacks. That's why you get these massive contrast ratios like 13,400:1. Brightness comes in at 400.6 nits, which is right on point for what it should be. In fact, that might be the closest to an OEM claim that I've seen in my own testing.

Indeed, this display is excellent, and it's probably the biggest selling point of this laptop. It's what takes it from just being an ultra-light laptop to being an all-around delightful laptop.

The webcam is 1080p, and frankly, there isn't much more to say about it. Still, in a world where other ultra-light laptops are still using 720p webcams, this is worth noting.

The keyboard is another area where there's really nothing to write home about. It's backlit, as it should be, but there's nothing about the accuracy or comfort that's anything beyond satisfactory. It's just an average keyboard. Naturally, it comes with a Precision touchpad below it.

It's December, meaning that I've spent a better part of a year reviewing laptop after laptop that has the latest generation of Intel and AMD processors. As we stand on the eve of whatever the next refresh might be, I'm already pretty confident in what to expect when a laptop crosses my desk, at least in terms of performance. AMD's Ryzen 6000 mobile processors are great, as long as they're plugged into power. In fact, they beat Intel in many benchmarks. They just dramatically throttle when you disconnect them from power.

My experience with the Acer Swift Edge is no different. When connected to power, you can easily use the Swift Edge for some beefy photo editing in Lightroom Classic. On the other hand, when you're running on battery, anything beyond light productivity is going to be a bit of a struggle.

You should think of the Swift Edge as a productivity laptop, and coming standard with a Ryzen 7 6800U and 16GB RAM, it's pretty good at that. You can easily run a dozen tabs in Chrome, Slack, OneNote, and whatever other productivity apps you need. I used it for photo editing too, and the OLED display makes that a great use case. But like I said, I'd make sure it's connected to power if you're going with a creative workflow.

For benchmarks, I used PCMark 10, 3DMark, Geekbench 5, and Cinebench R23.

Acer Swift Edge Ryzen 7 6800U

ThinkPad Z13 Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U

HP Spectre x360 13.5 Core i7-1255U

PCMark 10 (power / battery)

5,762 / 5,205

6,281 / 5,340

5,533 / 5,368

3DMark: Time Spy

2,316

2,357

1,553

Geekbench 5 (single / multi)

1,469 / 7,592

1,507 / 8,697

1,682 / 7,534

Cinebench R23 (single / multi)

1,382 / 9,654

1,504 / 10,092

1,684 / 6,287

I don't always include both numbers in reviews, since it's not always necessary, but you can see PCMark 10 scores when the laptop is connected to power, as well as when it's not. In this case, you can see a significant dip in performance, and frankly, I don't think that this covers the reality. If you want great performance while running on battery life, you have to go Intel.

Unfortunately, the laptop really doesn't make up for this in battery life. In my testing, which consists of using the product normally and using battery reports to see how long the battery lasted, I only got between three hours five minutes and just under three and a half hours. It didn't even vary that much. The power slider was set to best performance, something that's necessary in an AMD laptop, so you can probably do better if you lower that. Of course, then it gets harder to use.

The fan also got really loud, and I could never quite put my finger on what was going on there. When the fan gets loud, it means there's enough power running through the chip that it's getting too hot, so typically, you can assume that it's going to burn through battery life. But still, the performance was pretty throttled, and there didn't seem to be a workaround. I wonder what battery life and performance would look like with better thermals, or even better power management.

You should buy the Acer Swift Edge if:

You should NOT buy the Acer Swift Edge if:

While the Acer Swift Edge feels like it's nearly a perfect laptop, it's still tough to recommend a laptop with an AMD processor in it, at least without qualifying that you really shouldn't plan on too much heavy usage without being connected to power. The change is enough to actually feel the difference, so if that sounds like you, you'll need to go Intel. Also, as noted in the beginning of this review, if you're looking for graphics power, you'll need to go look for something heavier that comes with dedicated graphics.

Hello! I'm the Editor-in-Chief of XDA, and I've been reporting on all things consumer tech since 2013. More recently, I've had more of a focus on Windows, and I've reviewed pretty much every mainstream laptop under the sun. If you see me somewhere, come say hello and let me ask you awkward questions about why you use the tech that you use.