A beautiful screen connected to a bad chassis

THE Acer Swift 16 AI it looks like a piece of slate. If it weren't for the Acer logo on the cover, I'd swear the laptop looks like something you'd pick up from a construction site. The Swift 16 AI with the last lunar lake chips is an efficient machine, but it's let down by construction issues that don't match its performance ambitions.

The main reason you'd want the Swift 16 over the Swift 14 is the nice 16-inch AMOLED. At least it's a nice, pretty screen. Regardless, Acer promises nearly 20 hours of battery life in real-world use and all the benefits of the Copilot+ PC in a slim package. This slim case also has issues when I press its keyboard. It's floppy and surprisingly uncomfortable.

I also have issues with the sound quality of its dual speakers and its battery life, which doesn't quite live up to what this machine promises. I would have loved to see if it could pack an Intel Core Ultra 9 chip like all its promotional material says, but that might not be available until late 2024. If screen is all you want, the Acer Swift 16 AI has it. , but for a price. Still, at $1,200 MSRP, you may find much better build quality elsewhere.

Acer Swift 16 AI review: build quality

I want to like the Swift 16 AI for its understated color, slim body, and lightweight 3.37-pound frame, but Acer's design has serious structural flaws. There are plenty of I/O ports for this shape and size, with one HDMI port, two USB-A ports, and two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports. I also like the WiFi 7 connectivity, numeric keypad, and 1TB SSD, which suggests this could be a great performance laptop.

Setting up this workhorse is another matter. The chassis has a noticeable sag when you press the keys too hard, and this is also visible around the area where you rest your palms. It's a shame because the rest of the device, including the shell, feels solid. Essentially, most of the structure is held together by the sides of the device, but the middle is particularly flexible. Pressing the area closest to the screen with minimal force can leak almost half an inch.

The keyboard also has some peculiarities. The keys don't click but emit a mechanical, rubbery noise that isn't unpleasant, just different. At a desk, it's easy to type using my usually energetic style, but typing on my lap seems like too much effort. The mouse pad also feels good to the touch, but is sometimes disappointing due to palm rejection issues. No one likes to type a paragraph only to find that your cursor has moved and clicked on another part of your document.

At least it's thin, which can also be said about the Acer Swift 16GB from earlier this year. At least the screen can stay flat and you have touchscreen capabilities. Otherwise, it all seems too mediocre.

Acer Swift 16 AI review: performance

My configuration came with the Intel Core Ultra 256V Lunar Lake processor launched in September, integrating a 140V ARC onboard graphics card. Acer's press materials and product page explain how this PC can accommodate an Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, currently the most powerful of Intel's new Lunar Lake chips. I would have loved to see it in action with Acer's slim laptop, but my device uses mid-to-low-end 256V. At the time of writing, the Acer store page for the 16-inch does not offer any other options for the high-end chip.

At the very least, the 16-inch chassis offers slightly improved performance over other OEMs' 14-inch models with the same chip. Intel's 256V is still a good chip for its core count compared to chips with more cores and threads, but for a few hundred dollars more you can find similar laptops with the 258V even if it may not work as well in some multis. -Basic testing against the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. As for how it compares to the M4 MacBook Pro, there's really nothing better than Apple's strength when it comes to pure benchmarking.

In Cinebench scores, the Acer Swift 16 AI was significantly better than a 14-inch laptop with the same chip as the Asus Zenbook S14 and the Dell XPS 13.

Still, it lagged behind the Snapdragon X Elite and the M3 chip in a MacBook Air in pure rendering performance. This difference becomes more striking in 3DMark graphics tests. The Arc 140V's graphics are good enough for some uses, but not for really heavy tasks. In our Blender benchmarks, where we ask the PC to render a scene of a BMW stressing the CPU and GPU individually, the Intel chip takes around 4 minutes and 40 seconds, which isn't bad. However, this PC will certainly not be the best solution for a designer, despite its beautiful screen.

The 256V is still far behind in our transcoding test. We used the open source program Handbrake to transcode a 4K movie to 1080p, which still took more than three minutes longer than an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, the top of the line Strix Point. This PC is excellent for productivity tasks but not for more intensive activities.

Acer Swift 16 AI review: screen, sound and webcam

The main reason to go for the 16-inch Swift model over the 14-inch Swift model is the 3K OLED display. It's a luxurious touchscreen that you can blur with your greasy fingerprints. It can achieve a maximum resolution of 2880 x 1800 and a maximum full-screen brightness of 340 nits. It's not the brightest screen and you may lose some fidelity in direct light, but it's a satisfying viewing experience for regular use.

If you want this to be your go-to mobile device for watching movies, I recommend investing in a good pair of headphones. The Acer Swift 16 AI's audio sounded thin and too tinny. The device is supposed to pack two stereo speakers, but even with that at maximum volume, it didn't have much bass.

I don't find webcams to be a very interesting part of the laptop puzzle. I don't think anyone cares how good you look at the next 4th Zoom meeting of the week. However, the Swift 16 AI includes a QHD webcam that can display a resolution of 2560 by 1440.

I used the Swift 16 AI on a video call and found the image quality to be quite detailed, even in relatively low light. Acer's webcams also include a pop-up window for its PureView and PureVoice. This software is supposed to use AI to improve the clarity of your image and the sound of your voice. Whether this helped everyone else on the other end of the line, I couldn't say. I didn't see much difference on my side either. This is fine, and I don't mind it running in the background. However, the PureView pop-up screen reappeared several times during my call.

Acer Swift 16 AI review: battery life

After about three hours of working with Google Chrome for basic browsing tasks, I was sitting at about 50%. Even with Windows power settings in Balanced mode and average screen brightness, I was sitting at around 50%. Acer promises that you can get around 13 and a half hours of browsing time, although it may be less if you use performance-intensive browsers like Google Chrome. That's not 20 hours of battery life, but it's enough for most professional tasks. I can get almost a full day out of it with consistent use.

In our battery tests, where we ran the laptop on basic power settings at low brightness with a 24-hour YouTube video, the Acer Swift 16 AI went from 55% battery to 0 in almost 8 hours. That's close, but not quite, to the 19.5 hours of video playback Acer promises. The 70Wh battery and Lunar Lake give you decent mileage but won't last you several days of constant use.

Acer Swift 16 AI review: Verdict

If I had the choice of a thin Intel Lunar Lake laptop, the Swift 16 AI wouldn't be my first choice. It doesn't have the build quality I would expect when spending over $1,000. Its screen is very pleasant, although not very bright. Otherwise, it doesn't have the qualities you look for in a laptop at this price, except, to some extent, battery life. I can't find a reason to spend $1,000 on a device that bends that much when in use.