Customer Ratings & Reviews

_____ *Pros: -Powerful all-around performance from Intel’s latest mobile SOC (Panther Lake). -Bright, gorgeous 3K OLED touchscreen. -120Hz refresh rate smoothness. -The Intel Arc B390 can run AAA games with good frame rates at 1080p. -Nice selection of ports. -Huge quality touchpad with great haptics. -Has a number pad. -Excellent battery life. -Only 3.4 lbs and 0.39” thin. -Very quiet, practically silent. _____ *Neutral: -The speakers are not very loud and sound thin. -There should be another USB-C port on the right side. -Too much bloatware out of the box. -The memory is soldered and can’t be upgraded. -Only one M.2 slot. -The lid is a fingerprint magnet. _____ *Cons: -The pen only works on the touchpad, not the screen. *** Design and Build Quality *** The moment I lifted the Acer Swift 16 out of the box, I knew I was looking at a premium laptop. The Basalt Gray color scheme, which is like charcoal color, accented with shiny gold lines, gave the machine some personality and made it look refined with some elegance. The magnesium-aluminum chassis is smooth to the touch, and despite knowing it was made of metal, it sort of felt like high-quality plastic. Perhaps due to its lightness, and the way the lid flexes inward a bit, the Swift 16 didn't feel very tanky or durable. The bottom panel, the keyboard, and the area surrounding the touchpad fared better and felt solid. Acer states it meets MIL STD 810H durability standards but doesn't provide a list of which tests (out of 28) the Swift 16 passed. I'm hoping the Swift 16 passed the most common ones such as shock, vibration, humidity and rain, and protection against sand and dust. Upon booting the Swift 16 to the desktop, the gorgeous 2880 x 1800 (16:10) 16" OLED display commands your attention and awe. It's bright, very crisp, and the colors are accurate and vibrant, offering 100% DCI-P3 color coverage, which is great for watching movies and TV shows in the way the director intended. The color accuracy will also be beneficial for those like me who do video editing and create digital art. The display also supports 120Hz refresh rate, which enables smoother scrolling, snappier system animations, reduced eye strain, and a big improvement when watching videos or playing games. Moving down to the keyboard area, I found the typing experience to be somewhere between okay and good but not very good. Probably due to the thinness of the laptop, the keys have a short travel distance, and they feel a bit too firm for my liking. I'm probably spoiled, though, by the better keyboards on my gaming laptops with a longer travel but quick response rates. With that said, the keys still feel premium and they operate quietly. A number pad is on offer, and I LOVE having it. I work on my finances and crunch numbers in Excel often, so having a numpad is pretty much a necessity for me. I wish the keys were a bit wider but it's nothing that muscle memory can't solve. Traveling further down, there is that HUGE haptic feedback touchpad, and it's awesome. It feels very smooth to the touch, and my taps, drags, pinches, and multi-finger gestures all registered very quickly and accurately. Despite its large size, I experienced no issues with my hands unintentionally setting off random taps and scrolls while typing on the keyboard. I chalk that up to the way I hold up my hands while typing but I can understand why some people might experience unintentional taps and movements if they're the type that likes to rest their palms on the touchpad while typing. When it comes to ports, the Swift 16 does a pretty job by offering two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (both on the left side), two USB-A ports (one on each side), one 2.1 HDMI (on the left), and one microSD slot (on the right). There’s also a headphone jack on the right. This means I don't have to carry around any dongle adapters so that's fantastic. I do wish, however, that Acer had added at least one more USB-C port on the right side since there certainly is enough space on the chassis for it. I also wish Acer made it so that the stylus could be used on the screen rather than on the touchpad. I like to do digital art, and it would’ve been nice to draw directly on the screen rather than on the touchpad which feels awkward and not as accurate. I guess I’ll be sticking to my tablet for my drawing. So far, everything's been mostly good about the Swift 16 but when we reach the bottom panel where the speakers are, things start to go a bit off course. To put it simply, the speakers are just so-so. For a premium Ultrabook that is priced accordingly, Acer definitely could’ve done better in the audio department. The soundstage isn’t very wide, the bass is anemic even by laptop standards, and the sounds reaching my ears sound like they’re being stifled or muffled behind some spongy layer. Songs that are heavily vocal-oriented actually sound okay and good, but instrumentals, heavy metal, and rock sound distorted and not true to their source. It’s not horrible but the weak audio especially stands out because Acer did so well in the other departments like the screen, the touchpad, and the highly performant components inside the sleek and premium chassis. To sum it up, Acer scored a win almost everywhere except for the audio which is a shame. *** Performance *** True to its moniker, the 2026 Acer Swift 16 is...very swift. Powered by the latest and greatest mobile SOC from Intel (Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake), 1TB Kingston NVME drive, 16GB LPDDR5X memory, and the surprisingly very performant Intel Arc B390 integrated graphics with 12 Xe3 cores that support ray tracing and multi-frame generation (MFG), the Swift 16 is a powerhouse for productivity, entertainment, and gaming (as long as you stick to 1080P and don’t max out all the eye candy settings). In Geekbench 6, the Swift 16 did pretty well for itself, scoring 2829 single-core and 15,775 multi-core (performance mode, plugged in). On battery, it scored 2512 single-core and 13,923 multi-core, a reduction of 12.6% and 13.3% respectively, which is actually quite impressive. Despite having less power to draw upon, the Ultra X7 358H scored almost identically to the Core i9 14900HX (24 cores) and Core Ultra 9 275HX (24 cores) inside my gaming laptops (see table). When it comes to graphics, however, the Ultra X7 358H blew the other CPUs completely out of the water, foreshadowing its strong performance in games. I put the Swift 16 to the test by playing some popular AAA games on it, such as the new Resident Evil Requiem as well as Cyberpunk 2077. To my great pleasant surprise, both games ran very, very well. RE Requiem was played at 1080P with ray tracing off, hair strands on, graphic quality set to Normal, frame generation enabled, and the frames consistently hovered between 55 to 60fps. In Cyberpunk 2077, it was also played in 1080P with ray tracing off, and the frames were also around 60fps. In anticipation of the new Tomb Raider game coming out later this year, I began replaying the “Survivor” trilogy, and because those games are older, I was able to set most graphic settings to High and still get good frame rates. I’m truly amazed that a thin and light Ultrabook from Intel with “just” integrated graphics can play games so well and smoothly. The Swift 16 certainly isn’t a gaming laptop, and it doesn’t pretend or claim to be one, but the power is there when gaming beckons you. The Swift 16 is great and fast at everything else as well, such as video and photo editing and multitasking multiple apps (e.g., running Chrome with 30 tabs, music playing in the background, and converting and compressing video files). The NVME SSD drive and 16GB of LPDDR5X memory keep everything running smooth and snappy. *** Rest of the laptop *** As expected, the Swift 16 arrived with Windows 11 Home installed, and the first thing I did was perform all the driver, firmware, and Windows updates followed by removing all the third-party apps I consider bloatware (there was quite a bit). Then, I installed ExplorerPatcher (by valinet on GitHub) to make Windows 11 look and act like Windows 10, bringing back the familiar Start Menu and Taskbar. Everything else was also good and I experienced no issues with Wi-Fi speeds, Bluetooth connectivity, the stylus, and the touchpad. Except for the lackluster speakers, Acer did a pretty good job crafting the Swift 16 – thin and light, crisp and bright OLED screen with excellent color accuracy, a huge and responsive touchpad, quality keyboard with a numpad, and highly performant Core Ultra X7 358H with the Arc B390 integrated graphics that shatters and upends the idea that integrated graphics suck and you can’t play AAA games on such a thin and light Ultrabook. All in all, I give the 2026 Swift 16 a 4.4 out of 5 Stars, which is a B+ in my scale. Unless you’re extra picky about audio quality, I think the Swift 16 will please most people out there and they’ll be very happy with the swift performance, beautiful display, and its thin and light form-factor.

My review focuses on the laptop’s 16 inch vivid OLED touch screen and new touchpad & pen combo, that may make it a good choice for creatives and content creators. I used various apps from Adobe CC suite, Affinity, as well as other apps to gauge performance. I also compared it to similar laptops that I’ve already reviewed that are close to specs and price. FLIR Thermal camera photos for idle and under load heat maps, audio quality, build quality, keyboard, cooling fans and more. Specs are only quoted when needed. The product’s overview covers all of that. Windows Setup was easy and simple. A very basic quick guide tells you where to plug it in and where to turn it on, and Windows takes over from there. Typical PC setup after that. Especially if you already have a Microsoft account / other Windows PCs. Mine did some updates, and Windows asks the typical questions it does during setup. The OLED touch screen is beautiful! The colors are vivid and the blacks are true black. The OLED panel is made by Samsung and is “VESA certified Display HDR, True Black 500”. That means it meets specific color and contrast standards for OLED panels. LCD panels have a different VESA HDR rating system. Google VESA for more. While researching this, I discovered that all my laptops with OLED panels, that the panels are made by Samsung and meet the same VESA True Black 500 certification. I think the 3K resolution is a better fit for the16 inch screen than 4K. I have a Dell with a 4K OLED screen, and the text is pretty small, even scaled up. It also requires more CPU and GPU power to push those pixels on a 4K screen. As for glare complaints, this laptop is no worse than the others I have with OLED screens. I agree that a slight matte texture would have made it perfect. The Screen refresh can be set as high at 120hz or 60hz and can go as low as 40hz via dynamic refresh. It drops to 40 Hz for static web pages and ramps up to 120 Hz for fast‑moving games or other content. Specs state a P-3 color gamut and max brightness of 350 NITS. I verified that with my Datacolor Spyder X Pro and the latest 6.4.4 software. It stated 100% P3 and sRGB, and 97% Adobe RGB. Also, 6500K color temp, 2.2 gamma and 400 NITS peak brightness. See photos. Right click and open in new tab to make them bigger. I like that the Webcam has a physical shutter. It’s FHD and gets the job done. Windows Hello works very well. No fingerprint scanner. The 16 core Intel Core Ultra X7 358H is a powerhouse that gives outstanding performance. Then add the onboard Arc B390 GPU that is almost on par with a discrete GPU+ RAM setup and NPU and you get good basic gaming performance and an excellent laptop for edit photos and videos. Especially if you get the 32GB version. The CPU, GPU and NPU all share the system RAM and 16GB is barely enough for that kind of work. Also, it’s soldered on the board and not upgradeable. The Kingston SSD performed well. I ran several benchmarks on it and captured idle and full‑load heat maps (top & bottom) for thermal analysis with my FLIR One Pro thermal camera so you can see where the heat is and isn’t, and how warm it got under load. It handles heat dissipation very well, and the fans were much quieter than all my other laptops at full speed, or any speed. Passmark overall score: 9145 GeekBench: Single Core: 2787 Multi: 15,353 Open GL:52,935 Cinebench R23: 15,704 multi core. Didn’t run single. Puget Benchmark for Adobe: Photoshop 27.6: 7588 LRC15.3: 7337 Didn’t run Premiere Pro due to 16GB of RAM & large video files. The closest thing I have to compare it to CPU wise, is my Acer Predator Helios (core i9-14900HX, 32GB, RTX 4060) that I reviewed in 2024 and Gigabyte A16 (core i7-13620H, 32GB, RTX 5060) last July. They are gaming laptops, but the CPU speed and specs are the closest to this laptop, and it sits middle ways but closer to the Predator Helios for general use and content editing. As for games, the Gigabyte with the newer RTX 5060 took the crown. Using the pen on the “world’s Largest” touch pad / graphics tablet is a mixed bag. For note‑taking and sketching, it’s competent but not pro‑grade. The pen has potential if the software or firmware can be tweaked to make it better. It works like using a pencil on an iPad or Samsung phone or Tablet but isn’t as precise. Very small movements hardly register, if at all and there’s some lag to it once you move it enough to start leaving a mark. Pressure sensitivity must be fixed. In Photoshop using a brush tool and starting with light pressure you get a thin line, as expected, pushing harder makes it thick and it stays thick even when you lighten up. It only resets pressure when you pick it up from the pad. My Wacom tablet, iPad Air M3 and Pencil Pro don’t behave that way. Lighten up and the line thins back up. You must hover the tip close to the pad to see its position, and accidental touches are too easy to make. If you have other touch screen laptops, try using the pen on their screens, as the pen worked on my two Asus touch screen laptops. The pen runs on an included replaceable AAAA battery that can last from 1 year with heavy use to several years with occasional use. All Alkaline batteries will eventually leak, so take the battery out of the pen if you rarely use it. Using the touch pad for intended use does a good job but has a couple of quirks. The haptic feel is pretty cool. It can be set to 4 different levels or turned off. Palm rejection is good, but not perfect. Sometimes it can relocate the cursor when you’re typing. When typing this review in MS Word basic online, I had to adjust the touch so the pad would acknowledge finger touches to relocate the cursor no matter where on the pad you touched it instead of the center only. I concluded that it is a browser text editing quirk in Word in Edge and Google Docs in Chrome only. Audio quality is disappointing for a laptop of this caliber. It sounds boxy, with mids that sound harsh and highs that feel muffled. Using DTS didn’t help and no EQ options. The best audio I ever heard from a laptop is the Asus ZenBook S14 I reviewed last year with 4 H/K tuned speakers. Clean highs and even some bass response, from a smaller unit. Has a headphone out jack. I like the feel of keyboard, that it has a small numpad and the per key lighting that doesn’t bleed as much as the usual back lit keyboard. Letters and numbers are very easy to read with or without back light. The keyboard backlight offers three levels—off, low, and high. There’s a 30 second time-out setting for the back light, but it’s only accessible in the BIOS. You get a choice of a 30 second time-out or always on. It has a handy micro-SD slot, however, it’s USB-2 speed and I only got 29 MBs out of it compared to a couple of USB-3 card readers that were pushing around 100MBs with the same 128 GB SanDisk Extreme Plus card. You can charge it with smaller USB C chargers but will take longer, use the100 watt power supply that’s included for best performance. Battery life can vary a lot depending on settings and use, and I got about 13 hours of light mixed use in light mode with brightness at 25% before it hit 10%. Dark mode would probably get you a little more. I think 24 hours is a stretch. Build quality looks and feels very solid considering how thin it is. Conclusion: I think the OLED screen and its resolution are perfect for the screen size. The Core Ultra X7 is a powerhouse. However, 16GB RAM can hold it back in some situations. Thin, light, and quietly capable. However, the new pen‑pad combo still feels experimental but shows promise. Right click on photos, open in new tab will make them larger.

With computer components and RAM prices skyrocketing, it seems these days like most decently-specced laptops are priced at well over $2,000. Enter the Acer Swift 16 AI. I'll admit, Acer is not a brand that comes to mind when I think of high-end or premium laptops. But after using it for a couple of weeks, I'm extremely impressed. The design, build quality, display, and specifications are something I would have expected in a high-end gaming laptop -- not one from Acer. It's quickly moving towards the top of the list of the best Windows laptops I've used in the past 5 years. But there are a few minor quirks to consider. === PROS === - The design and build quality of the Swift 16 AI are excellent. The dark gray design with gold accents is very elegant. For a 16" laptop, it is incredibly thin and lightweight at under 3.5 pounds. The hinge feels strong and the display is easy to open with one hand. There is a little bit of flex to the keyboard when you push down hard enough, but it's nothing major. - The display is one of the major highlights of this laptop. It's an OLED with a 2880×1800 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate -- and it's beautiful. Colors are rich and vivid. It gets very bright, though not as bright as some of the most premium laptops on the market. The 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling through documents, webpages, and photographs feel seamless with no lag. I was not expecting such a great laptop display at this price point. - The trackpad is, hands down, the best I have ever used on a Windows laptop. It's a haptic trackpad, which are hard to find on Windows laptops in general (even my high-end gaming laptop doesn't have a haptic trackpad). The trackpad is massive, so you have a very large area to move your fingers and scroll through content. You can click anywhere on the trackpad -- even at the very top or bottom -- and you will get the same satisfying haptic feedback "click" no matter where you press. It's incredibly satisfying to use, and it might even rival the trackpad of a MacBook Pro. - The internal specs of this laptop are equally impressive. The Intel Core Ultra X7 358H is a very powerful 16-core CPU that allows for excellent efficiency and battery life. But where the chip really shines is with its integrated graphics. The integrated Intel Arc GPU is capable of running AAA games at low to medium settings and decent frame rates. Is it going to keep with with a high-end, dedicated gaming laptop? No, but it's pretty incredible that a chip like this is even capable of running such games. It's perfect for 3D modeling and video rendering tasks. - The large 70 watt-hour battery paired with the Ultra X7 chip means this machine has some serious battery life. I used the machine on battery power for a full 8-hour workday (emails, Word documents, video calls) and I still had almost 30% battery remaining at the of the day. I could have easily gotten at least 12 hours out of the battery. - The Acer Swift 16 AI has a decent selection of ports, with two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, and an HDMI 2.1 port. There's also a microSD card reader. The laptop also supports Wi-Fi 7, so the connectivity here is relatively future-proof. - The speakers are pretty good for such a thin laptop. They get very loud without any distortion, and the sound is mostly balanced without sounding tinny. - The laptop charges via USB-C and not some proprietary barrel charger. So if you lose the included charger or simply want to carry around a second one when you travel, any 100W USB-C charger will do. - This laptop comes with a very nice travel case/sleeve in the box, which is a nice premium touch. I don't recall any other laptop I've owned coming with a travel case in the box. === CONS === - My main gripe with this particular configuration is that it only has 16GB of RAM, which is basically the bare minimum for a decent Windows PC these days. If it weren't for the current RAM shortage, my guess is that Acer may have included 32GB of RAM in this base configuration. 16GB is fine for basic workloads, but if you do any kind of serious graphic design or video editing, you might need to look at a higher configuration. - The OLED display is stunning, but it is very glossy. If you frequently work outdoors or in a bright room, the reflections could get annoying. - I love that the laptop charges via USB-C, but only the left side of the laptop has USB-C ports. So depending on where your power outlet is located, you might have to reach the cord around to the opposite end of the laptop. - The Acer Swift 16 AI comes with a stylus that can be used on the trackpad to draw, write notes, sign your name, etc. Since the trackpad is so large, this could be a nice feature for artists. But the stylus does not work on the laptop's display, even though it's a touchscreen. So I don't really see myself using the stylus very often. - The keyboard is decent with a nice amount of travel to the keys. But I'm not a fan of number pads on keyboards. The number pad here just feels cramped and out of place, and it causes the space bar to not be centered over the trackpad. I guess it's a matter of personal preference, but I wish Acer would have just left off the number pad. - The webcam is 1080p, but it seems to produce washed-out and somewhat pixelated video. It will be fine in a pinch, but don't use this as your primary webcam if you make a living on video calls or YouTube. === OVERALL === Minor shortcomings aside, I'm seriously impressed by this laptop. It's simply a joy to use, and it feels more premium than some more expensive laptops I've used. It's thin and light. It has a gorgeous display. It has arguably the best trackpad ever on a Windows laptop. It has incredible battery life and even better performance. Honestly, what more do most people need in a laptop? At this price point, I think Acer has delivered the laptop of the year with the Swift 16 AI. Highly recommended!

Acer - Swift 16 AI - Copilot+ PC - 16" 3K OLED Touchscreen Laptop - Intel Core Ultra X7 358H 2026 - 16GB Memory - 1TB Storage - Basalt Gray The Acer Swift is based on the very new Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor and is at the upper end of the CPU Mark Laptop score chart as of April, 2026. This processor performs well in Gaming Score performance, but you will need to be reasonable about settings. I was impressed with this processor for both gaming and video editing. This Acer configuration uses Intel’s high performance chip architecture as well as the denser Xe3 graphics with its Arc Pro B390 GPU’s 12 X cores. This is true graphics competence despite not having a standalone “name” graphics card, and with significantly less of a weight and battery burden. The Acer Swift 16 is power efficient. I’ve come to expect all day power no matter what features or resources that I’m using. I’m typically using spreadsheets and AI graphics creation, but I can top off my day with streaming various sporting events (a dense schedule of playoffs this week), and on exploring YouTube music videos.That OLED high resolution screen! is lush, colorful, almost 3D because of the deep blacks. More than adequate brightness (340 nits), Crisp (3K). Colorful (100% DCI‑P3, VESA DisplayHDR™)., and fast (0.2ms response). All these elements should be tough on battery life, but I haven’t witnessed limitations. Exceptional Screen resolution eliminates any softness in text, while the 16” screen opens up more visual space for work and play. And I’ve got that HDMI port to add a screen. SETUP: I’m still digging out from under a variety of unhelpful helper programs from Acer and all their advertising partners. I volunteered to let Microsoft do all its updates upfront, while I watched playoff games …. on TV. I suppose you can let many of these updates take place in the background, but that has its own issues. I also checked out some customization features that allow the end user to extract more performance from the graphics processor, but I don’t know enough about what’s possible. PERFORMANCE: Acer includes a simple slip cover to protect the attractive, etched casing. I connected to my 1 Gig Internet easily and achieved close to that speed all day. I was pleased to see Thunderbolt 4 ports (2@ 40GBps), a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, an HDMI 2.1 port and a headphone/speaker/line-out jack. A quick check of the audio output with both desktop speakers and my favorite headphones was fun utilizing the several audio modes onboard. Using the built-in speakers was OK as far as clarity and volume, but not in any way musical or cinematic. That huge touchpad will take some getting used to, but its role as a screenless drawing tablet to be used with the included stylus makes it all good. That is a feature that I can grow into. I spend time editing graphics and creating 3D models while designing simple construction projects, so this feature will make my life easier. I loved the feel of the keyboard and this is a touchpad that didn’t have me immediately looking to connect a mouse to the computer. The number pad serves my limited financial management activity within Excel nicely. The key action was so very natural that I quickly forgot I was on a new laptop. The built-in 1TBSSD is a perfect size for most users, and the Thunderbolt USB-C ports make adding high performance external drives easy to do. That’s a good thing, ‘cause there is no other SSD slot, just like there is no other memory slot. The OLED screen is a beauty, with infinitely deep blacks and sparkling whites. Colors look so real and rich against those blacks. I did notice that reflections were sometimes bothersome. Taking pictures off of the screen was an exercise in futility, because it is a great mirror, too. 
 
SUMMARY: Acer’s Swift 16 AI is a series of choices. It will competently tear through business, data science, multi-tasking, video-editing, and are especially able to power AI applications and high end graphics. It is not a purpose-built for gaming, but it will manage many popular games. It’s also lighter, has a great screen, long battery life, and travels easily.

This laptop is a powerhouse. Equipped with an Intel Core Ultra X7 358 H chip, the laptop supports AI tasks, light gaming, and 8K video editing. Design The laptop features a slim profile and exhibits high-quality craftsmanship. Acer utilizes premium materials, contributing to the device's refined appearance. The generously sized touchpad enhances usability and offers a luxurious aesthetic. Despite its classification as a 16-inch laptop, the device maintains a lightweight feel. The laptop comes with a soft case to carry the laptop around and it is a very useful accessory as not all backpacks or bags have laptop compartments. There’s plenty of ports including USB 4, audio input and even a micro-SD slot. The laptop also supports WIFI 7. Performance This is where the laptop truly shines. The screen quality is just excellent. Texts are so crisp and images look vivid. It has great amount of brightness and the colors are superb. The blacks are just excellent on this screen. This is an OLED touchscreen display with 100% DCI-P3 color gamut. It is also an HDR screen with VESA certification bearing True Black 500. Watching videos on the laptop is a great experience, thanks not only to the beautiful screen quality. The laptop has above-average sound quality and DTS Ultra support, with a graphic equalizer for 10 frequency customizations. The screen is touch capable and the touchpad supports stylus input. The laptop actually includes a stylus for touchpad input. There are several Acer apps that users can choose to download and one of them is for drawing. The laptop is actually capable of some light AAA gaming. I play Crimson Desert at low setting and the game plays smoothly. I edited 8K videos with DJI Studio easily, outputting both 8K panoramic video and 8K linear video. Working with MS Office is a great experience as texts come out crisps and the keyboard gives great typing experience with full size keys. Typical use for MS Office can last for more than 8 hours while playing videos with full volume can last for about 6 hours at 50% display brightness. Even at 25% brightness, it’s plenty bright and can push the laptop to last for about 9 hours playing videos at maximum volume. As far as performance goes, this is a great laptop for work, light AAA gaming and entertainment. Conclusion This is a laptop that brings joy to use. This device offers powerful performance in a slim, lightweight design, complemented by outstanding screen quality. It delivers reliable performance across different activities, such as working, light gaming, or watching movies. I will say again that the screen is just beautiful and the processor performance is excellent. The laptop is well suited for work, play and entertainment. Pros: Intel X7 358 H is both powerful and power-efficient USB 4, Wifi 7 and Micro SD Slot Beautiful 16” screen Great thin and lightweight design Comes with a soft case Cons: There are no particularly distinctive ones; however, while the sound quality is satisfactory and exceeds typical laptop standards, there remains room for improvement.

I was looking to grab a laptop that focused more on productivity, creativity, and the ability to do standard gaming if needed, though gaming wasn't a priority. I will say this is one smooth piece of hardware. It’s efficient, quiet, and along with its integrated benefits under the hood to utilize CoPilot+, I feel it can handle everything you throw at it while also sitting back and enjoying a casual game when you want to take a break from work related items or productivity pertaining to personal hobbies. The overall appearance of the Acer Swift, in my opinion, is beautiful. It is extremely sleek, thin, and lightweight for a laptop with a 16-inch screen, full keyboard with a numpad and a touchpad large enough to utilize the stylus provided in box. Going back to the screen size, the 16-inch 3K OLED panel is stunning. The 120Hz refresh rate allows buttery smooth scrolling and moving around, allowing your multitasking to be that much faster. I have not noticed any drawbacks with this screen. It gets significantly bright and can make up for the glossy screen that might suffer from reflections. This is my first Acer laptop. I am not too familiar with some of their integrated software, but I will say I have become a quick fan of Acer Sense. I really love how it can recognize your attention, put the screen to sleep when you step away, dim the screen when you look away, lock. I feel like the screen dimming when you’re no longer paying attention or getting distracted helps with the battery life, which is phenomenal. I went for two days on a single charge, mixed usage, and that is in sleep mode, not a full shutdown. I am used to other laptops, even in sleep mode, losing battery life, but not here. I’ve been really impressed by how long it can last, especially with the OLED screen and backlit keyboard. I dove into the AI CoPilot+ during my early usage of the Acer Swift, using it to help me compare HVAC options since I am currently shopping around and pricing out different HVAC systems and what manufacturer, its features would best fit my home for the price. The fast responses, chart breakdowns, pros and cons being returned to me as fast as it has been, have been very helpful and useful during my process. I have had multiple tabs from chrome, edge open. Multiple AI’s running at the same time between both CoPilot+ and Gemini, and you couldn’t even tell. The Swift doesn’t feel like it’s being overworked at any point; the fan is not getting loud with all these items open at once, it’s handling everything with ease. The Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, known as the Panther Lake / Series 3, has shown to be a powerhouse. To recap. You get a lot here with this laptop. Stunning screen, great for photo/video editing, sitting back watching movies. A CPU/GPU combo with the ram and storage to support productivity, work, school, and personal use, while also that flexibility to enjoy casual gaming. A stylus and a trackpad that is the largest I’ve ever seen with great feedback to it and can be used as a drawing pad with the stylus if needed and a touchscreen that can also be used with the stylus. A nice simple laptop case to carry all your items. An awesome exterior design on the laptop. Fantastic battery life. An all-around great laptop in its class that you can’t go wrong with.

Acer is making a move with this laptop to compete with the top names in the business. There’s a lot here for the money, and for the most part, Acer has a hit. The build quality and appearance are very good. It’s all metal, very slim, and lightweight. The 16” OLED 3K touchscreen is a thing of beauty, and it has a great selection of ports. It’s powered by an I7 Ultra X7 processor with the latest Arc B390 on board graphics. This is paired with 16 GB of fast memory (non-expandable), a 1 TB SSD (expandable), and WIFI 7. Last but certainly not least is its massive haptic touchpad which can be used with the included stylus. All of this makes this a great all-around laptop for everyday tasks, business apps, creative use, and even reasonable gaming power. As with most medium to high end laptops, it’s a CoPilot+ machine with the power and processor for AI use. As a final extra, it comes bundled with a protective carrying sleeve. As mentioned, the display is bright and gorgeous. It’s a multi-touch screen, but the stylus only works with the large touchpad. Ports include 2 USB C (Thunderbolt), 2 USB A 3.4, HDMI 2.1, headphone, and a micro-SD card reader. Both USB C and one USB A are PD charging ports. Being Thunderbolt ports, the USB C ports are display connectors in addition to the HDMI port. The included charger is a 100 W max using a USB C connection. It’s a typical, bulky brick with a power cord, so you might want to consider a more compact charger for travel. For everyday use this shouldn’t be an issue considering the Swift’s very long battery life. Acer says it lasts up to 24 hours, but that’s ideal with minimal demand. It does appear to give as much as 12 hours or so in typical use. That’s well more than a day of use for nearly all users. There is no perfect computer, and the Swift has a few issues in my mind. It’s comes loaded with bloatware … more so than is now common with others it this category. They aren’t terribly memory demanding, so it’s up to you if you want to leave them or spend an hour or so deleting what is unnecessary in your mind. The huge haptic trackpad is a mixed blessing. The pen is a nice extra, but I found it marginally useful compared to a real graphics pad or a screen that’s pen enabled. The graphic sub-system shares RAM with the system, so 16 GB seems a minimum. However, heavy gaming or high-end graphics rendering are the only uses that might push this. The touch is nice, but I got some unintended clicks. It may just take some getting used to. I read that some users have problems with palm rejection while typing, but that wasn’t a problem in my case. Performance was excellent in my testing. My Novabench overall score pushed 3000. The on-board graphics outperforms many discrete graphics systems, and the PCIe 4 drive and RAM are both high speed and high quality. The minuses are minor compared to everything packed into this performance, AI enabled laptop. It all comes at a competitive price, making this a solid choice which I can easily recommend.

Out of the box this Acer Swift 16 is very sharp looking, thin, and comes with its own protector bag and a stylus pen which is great. Setup was a breeze and jumping right into windows wasnt much of a chore. pros The keyboard has very large buttons, yet they are all compressed, it's looks a little odd but works very well, it even has a slim numeric keypad. The keyboard being designed this way allows for a huge trackboard/pad that can be used with the included active stylus pen Wifi 7 3k OLED 16" Touchscreen (2880x1800) intel ultra x7 (358h 1.9ghz, 16cores) 16GB lp-ddr5x ram 1 Tb nvme ssd intel arc b390 (12 xe cores igpu) Type C Thunderbolt 4, usb 3.2 microsd slot webcam (1080p) cons includes the standard laptop bloatware, mcafee, o365 that requires purchase, things of this nature. personally i found it odd, that there was no included art program to go with the unit, it features this beautifully sized pad to draw on and nothing besides ms-paint to use, you would think they would of included adobe cloud trial or something to encourage the use of this. The other thing i found odd was the included sleeve or protective case, while it is effective in principal, the useability of the 'sleeve' is far from valuable, there is no handle, or strap, so you're forced to either put it in a backpack or an actual case which kind of takes away from the usefulness of it, i liked that it came with the laptop but in the end i found it kind of worthless (personally) Overall the unit performed beautifully, its fast, the pen works great and the size of the trackpad is perfect for a laptop of this size. After installing my own art software and getting to use the stylus and pad it felt pretty good, i really like how large the pad is, keeps me from having to break out my wacom pad... honestly I cant say I have ever seen a touchpad this large on a laptop before, definitely useful for anyone creating any sort of artwork, or doing photo touchups. I would recommend this laptop for anyone looking for a newer laptop with the need of art capabilities, the machine works well for this sort of setup and i can see myself using it for some time with my side projects that i find myself having to do.

The Acer Swift 16 AI - Copilot+ PC - 16” 3K OLED TouchScreen Laptop is my third experience with OLED Laptops. I had an Acer tablet in the early Android days, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 and an Acer Monitor a few years ago and both were good products. However, this Acer Laptop has really impressed me. From the design of the shell the awesome feeling keyboard and the very good looking OLED screen I love everything about this Acer Laptop. The last two OLED laptops I experienced were not nearly as impressive as this Acer. They were good-looking, yes, but not so much that it made me want to use them over my IPS Laptop. This Acer, on the other hand, has that vibrant, deep color that I grew used to with my OLED phones and my OLED TV and i really appreciate that. I also like that for a 16” laptop, this Acer is very compact and light and with this model, you get one of the new Intel chips, the Core Ultra X7 358H, which has a big improvement to the graphics department compared to older Intel chips with onboard graphics. It also comes with a very respectable 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and 16 gigabytes of the latest ram LPDDR5X, which is clocked at 7467 MT/s. I also appreciate the inclusion of the pen, even though it only works with the large trackpad. Just being able to sign documents is a big deal to me, but it is much more useful than that. It is just not the same as a pen that works on the screen like I am used to with my phone. The Acer 16 AI also comes with all of the ports that I like to see, with a good variety and the latest technology accompanying them. This laptop even has MIL-STD 810H durability, which gives me peace of mind that it is relatively tough for what it is. I feel like Acer has really outdone itself with this one. Not only did they exceed my expectations I am very excited to own one because it is so nice. It really seems like a great deal at the price point it’s at if you look around to compare it with the competition.

The Acer Swift 16 AI is a nice laptop that looks great and is nicely made, but it makes a terrible first impression with just a breathtaking amount of bloat and advertising junk loaded on top of Windows. After all of that is cleared off it’s good, but it’s not something that you should have to deal with in a premium laptop. In the box you’ll find the laptop, a 100W USB-C charger, a pen, and a carrying sleeve that holds the laptop and the charger. I always appreciate when laptop manufacturers include a sleeve, even just a basic one, so this was a nice touch for me. The 100W USB Power Delivery charger is pretty generic with a built-in USB-C cable and a separate AC line cord, but fortunately you can swap that for any other PD charger. The Swift 16 is very thin and light and the back has a nice design etched into it. The keyboard deck and display both have a small amount of flex, but it’s not something I noticed unless I was deliberately pressing down on them. It weighs about as much as an equivalent MacBook Air at just under 3.5 lbs. The build quality overall is very good, though not the very best I’ve seen. This model has the new Intel Panther Lake Core Ultra X7 358H with 16GB of RAM. The Panther Lake processors are supposed to have better performance and efficiency compared to the previous generation, but the headlining feature is the Arc B390 integrated GPU with 12 Xe cores. The 16GB of RAM is soldered on and cannot be upgraded, which is becoming the norm for laptops these days, though it’s understandable given the 7467 MT/s speed. The 1TB SSD is a PCI 4.0 NVMe drive rated for 6000 MB/s read speeds. The built-in Intel Killer BE1775 supports the latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 specifications. For USB ports, there are 2 Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports on the left-hand side and USB-A 3.2 ports on either side.There’s an HDMI 2.1 output on the left side and the right side has a microSD reader and headphone jack. I do think it was a mistake to not have a USB-C port on each side since they are used for charging and having them only on the one side can make things inconvenient. I also think the utility for a microSD reader is more limited compared to a full size one, but it’s still nice to have for action cameras and drones. Overall it’s a good range of ports for a thin and light laptop. The laptop can be opened with a Torx T6 bit and a plastic pry tool to reveal the RAM is soldered on, but the SSD can be upgraded Booting up and using the Swift 16 for the first time, it follows the standard Windows 11 setup process of signing into your Microsoft account and downloading and installing updates. This process took me about 30-40 minutes and most of that was just waiting for updates to install. Once I was passed this and booted into the desktop this was where I had my first really negative experience. The Swift 16 has what I can only describe as a breathtaking amount of bloatware. Windows PCs in general have gotten a lot better about this over the years and this felt like returning to the bad old days. The start menu is packed with apps that I would refer to as junk, as well as things that aren’t even apps but just internet shortcuts for even more junk. McAfee Antivirus jumped out immediately, but also ads for Booking.com, Forge of Empires, Elvenar, IrisGo, and more. Removing these took me the better part of an hour. Most of them can be uninstalled, but some items like the Booking.com ad are just shortcuts that are placed in the start menu folder structure that you have to navigate to and remove manually. There are also a ton of Acer applications that serve either duplicate or unnecessary functions like an AI image generator and an app store. Of what looked like 10+ Acer applications that were preinstalled, I whittled that down to just 2 or 3. Even after uninstalling things like the AI image generator though I still see it running in the background and appearing in the context menus. These things mostly don’t drag the actual performance down and I know that all laptop manufacturers load up their own ads and utilities on top of Windows, but the breadth of what’s here, the effort required to remove it, and the amount of stuff that still can’t easily be removed outside of just doing a fresh non-Acer Windows install left a bad taste in my mouth. In terms of performance, the Swift 16 tore through everyday tasks with no problems and for me generally stayed silent or barely audible on the Normal performance preset. Apps load quickly and it’s also quick to sleep/wake, so it’s ready at a moment’s notice. This is by no means a laptop for gaming, but the B390 GPU offers a compelling experience as long as you’re okay turning down settings and utilizing upscaling. I was able to get Forza Horizon 5 running on the high preset at a mostly consistent 60FPS with XeSS set to quality. The 16GB of RAM will be a limiting factor for higher-end games since the system RAM and VRAM are both shared by this pool of memory. When the fans did kick into high gear they were still pretty quiet. The keyboard on white Swift 16 includes a small numpad, which some may not like but I appreciate its inclusion for productivity tasks. It’s backlit and while you do have to adjust your hands a little off-center to type on it, it’s nice to use once you’re used to it. I did have occasional problems with the palm rejection, but for the most part it didn’t significantly interrupt me. The trackpad is large and also functions as a surface for the included pen to work on, similar to a Wacom tablet. I didn’t find much utility for the pen, but it seems fine and I can see the use case for artistic purposes. The trackpad also uses haptic feedback instead of a mechanical click, which I didn’t realize until I turned the laptop off, so that is implemented well and the simulated click is convincing. The OLED touchscreen on the Swift 16 looks nice and the 3K resolution fits the 16” size well. It also supports a 120 Hz refresh rate. It doesn’t get particularly bright, but it should be okay in indoor settings. The speakers are not great. They are loud and clear enough for calls, but music sounds terrible on them, even with the included DTS:X license enabled. The webcam is also not great. The image is washed out and grainy. It will work fine for video calls in good lighting, but it won’t impress anyone. You do at least get Windows Hello functionality built-in and there is a physical privacy shutter. The Swift 16 has a 70 Whr battery. I haven’t yet had a chance to run it all the way down. Acer rates the battery life at up to 24 hours, though this is based on a video rundown test and not really representative of real world use. My experience so far has indicated this should get through a full work day with some battery to spare. And the battery does not drain significantly when sleeping. Overall, I think the Swift 16 is a good laptop once all the junk is gone - it’s just unfortunate that it’s there in the first place and many people who purchase this will likely not go through the trouble of removing it and just deal with that subpar experience. It makes this one hard to recommend for that reason, but if you’re willing to put in the effort to debloat this it could be a good option.

Superb. Actually purchased this for full initial price. Sturdy lightweight metal chassis which feels "premium." Has all the bells and whistles you'd expect n this price range. Great backlit keyboard and keys, am not getting errors. Sharp display. Runs relatively cool (a bit warm, nothing problematic), great battery life. Love the pen support in the huge haptic trackpad - now I can sign documents straight from a desktop -like surface. Note that I initially purchased the very similar and lower level "Go" model by mistake as it had the exact same price (but more installed memory) - not sure why anyone would prefer the Go model.

This laptop is the best I’ve ever seen from Acer when it comes to build quality. It features a premium aluminum-alloy chassis that looks nicer than Acer models I’ve used in the past. I like the gold accent lines on the lid. It’s incredibly lightweight and thin, yet still manages to give you 2 USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, 2 USB-A, HDMI, a microSD card reader, and a headphone jack. There’s a little bit of flex on the keyboard deck, but otherwise this is a very solid machine. The 16” display is amazing. It’s a 3K OLED at 2880x1800 with support for HDR and a 120Hz refresh rate. Colors in videos pop, games are fluid, and blacks are truly black. This is one of the best screens you can get on this type of device. The speakers are not as bad as what I had feared. Acer could have done more to improve them, such as making the speaker slits not only much larger but also placing them more on the side of the laptop, Acer claims up to 24-hours of battery life, but my own tests showed I got around a 12-hour runtime while playing a 4k YouTube video at 50% screen brightness and 50% volume. The haptic touchpad is really good and feels like it actually clicks but it does not move. The trackpad is about a half-inch less in width and an inch less in height than the screen of an iPad Mini. The trackpad does go all the way to the bottom of the device. Palm rejection is good, it doesn’t register an input if it’s bigger than a typical finger. However, because the trackpad is so large I do sometimes hit it accidentally while typing which sends my cursor flying into a new location within my text. I saw earlier reviews say this is a problem, but I don’t think it’s that bad. It can probably be mitigated with more practice or software updates. The keys are chiclet style, with good spacing between them. The backlit key-labels are large and easy to see. It also includes a number-pad, which I personally appreciate after spending years using a ten-key eight hours a day in a bank. The number pad does throw the keyboard off center but again just takes some getting used to. An active pen is included in the box, but the pen does not work on the screen, only on the trackpad, which feels like a missed opportunity. I’m not sure why it couldn’t work on both, since every other touchscreen with stylus support lets you use it on the screen. I did test the pen with some drawing applications and found it to be very capable. It supports the Windows Ink API with pressure and tilt sensitivity. While it’s not quite as accurate as a Wacom pen tablet, it comes remarkably close for a solution built into the touchpad of a laptop. I think sketch artists, note takers, or anyone who needs to capture signatures will love this feature. Performance is good overall. My Geekbench single core score were 2818 and 15395 multi-core. It felt snappy when getting it setup and installing software. The fans will kick on but are quiet, suitable for an office or school environment. AI performance I would give it an average rating. It did not score that high in my tests against older laptops with discrete graphics. Like many 2026 laptops, AI support is heavily marketed, but those capabilities are lost on most people as they don’t know what that means and I don’t think even the manufacturers know what it’ll be used for. It does have an NPU which is where some low-power AI processing like Recall, live translation and webcam features happen. However, most people who are doing real work with AI locally are going to want a system with not only a dedicated graphics card but one with a lot of fast memory. This one has 16gb of shared video memory which will be a limiting factor in both games and AI applications. Speaking of games, in the past, an Intel integrated graphics chip usually meant the machine was not ideal for gaming. However, the Panther Lake platform changes this entirely. The 358H comes with an integrated Arc B390 GPU which is a major revolutionary step for gaming on thin and light non-gaming laptops. It plays older or less demanding games like Minecraft, Ball x Pit, or Hades II very well, even on battery power. More demanding games such as Halo Infinite and Hogwarts Legacy were still playable with the graphics settings and resolution lowered. However, there were several games including Halo that would display a warning saying I didn’t have enough video memory to run the game, but the game would start anyway. This is my first laptop with a presence sensor, and it seems to work well. The laptop will turn back on from sleep when I sit down in front of the computer without me pressing the trackpad or a key. It also supports some basic eye tracking such as a feature called multi-screen assistance, which will let you move your cursor or entire windows to external monitors just by looking at them. So for the bad, let’s start with the webcam: it’s horrendous. Even in good lighting, the video looks grainy and low resolution. I would not want to use this laptop's web camera iif I needed to be on video in Zoom calls all day. Secondly, there is too much bloatware. I do not like antivirus software and you are forced to uninstall it twice on this laptop, and even then, it’s begging you to keep it because you have an “active subscription”, one that I never signed up for. There’s also adware for things like travel sites, games, cloud storage, and VPN services installed. There’s even a second Solitaire installed that is full of ads and a completely unnecessary third-party app store. All of these can be removed but it takes time to do so and really, they have no business on a laptop with a price tag of this one. Pros: - Thin, lightweight, premium build - 120Hz 2880x1800 OLED Screen w/ HDR True Black 500 - Intel Core Ultra 7 358H 16-core CPU - Intel Arc B390 is revolutionary for gaming on non-gaming laptops - Keyboard with number pad - Full-size HDMI 2.1 and USB-A 3.2 ports (Gen 1 & Gen 2) - 2 USB 4 Ports - Killer WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 - Webcam with Windows Hello and built-in sliding cover - All day battery life - Includes the active stylus for touchpad - Includes soft carrying case - 1TB SSD - Large multi-touch haptic trackpad Cons: - Pen only works with the touchpad - Preinstalled Antivirus and Adware - Webcam quality is poor Overall – this laptop prioritizes a premium build and a thin and light design. Aside from the disappointing webcam, it’s excellent for productivity, schoolwork, light gaming, and development. Artists and creatives who already use pen tablets will appreciate the digitizer that’s built-in to the trackpad.

The allure of the top specs in CPU, Screen, and build quality are enough to make you want to take a serious look at the Acer Swift 16 AI. But the large touchpad... that one is enough to make me want to say only get it if you are NOT going to use it on your lap. The touchpad has a really good palm rejection, like it never picked up my palm while typing...as long as you don’t hit the bottom edge of the touchpad. That is where the left/right buttons are and your forearm will hit that spot as most people are used to having a palm rest there. So, I had to retrain myself on trying to keep my arm off the edge. I work from the couch a lot with my feet elevated; this angle is where I ran into my issue. If you use it on a desk/table and have proper typing technique, then this should not be an issue for you. Not to be misleading the entire touchpad is haptic, however, only the bottom right portion from center to right acts as the right-click section, up to around an inch from the edge. Beyond that, the rest of the touchpad is left-click. This edge where it does still act as a mechanical button, so palm rejection is not really achievable since the touchpad moves. I understand Acer trying something unique here with the large touchpad and Pen integration. However, the Pen is not useful. It only works with the touchpad and not the touch screen, and its accuracy is extremely off. Testing the feature with Acer’s own Apps, I thought would yield the best experience, but it did not. For each app you open, depending on the location of the tiles/tools and then upper row taskbar, those areas then correspond to the touchpad, so that when you hover the Pen over that area a tracker dot appears on screen and when you touch the touchpad, then it touches that portion of the screen to activate the tile/button/menu etc. However, it does not always accurately select what you are trying to select. It also means that the “drawing” portion of the touchpad is reduced. And this changes per App. So each App has its own learning curve. If the Pen was accurate for drawing/taking notes, then I could see it as a useful feature and to be a replacement for a drawing tablet, however, it definitely does not fulfill that. Or if it also worked with the touchscreen, then it would at least have another use. The Pen does feel high quality and it feels good in hand at least. I did also find one feature that BestBuy lists on their webpage, but Acer does not, which is the Per-Key LED Backlighting system. The keyboard is LED backlit, but its the standard OFF/LOW/HIGH setting of most laptops. From what I could find the Per-Key LED system is reserved for the Gaming Laptops in Acer’s lineup and that software cannot be downloaded from the Acer website without the proper device serial number to bring up the list of available software for my system. This is typically called RGB lighting. Speaking of Acer Apps...there are a lot! They don’t take up a bunch of space and most are trying to push a creative angle...and not very well. I would keep the AcerSense which lets you change some Battery settings for Charging and Fan Speed. Also has quick access to Serial Number and such. But going through and trying them all out, I personally didn’t find much value. My only recommendation would be, if you have it in your budget, go for the 32GB RAM option, as that is not upgradeable. The 1TB SSD offers loads of space for most people, but thankfully those are still upgradable...if you can afford to with these current prices. The GPU can use up to 9GB VRAM, leaving just 7GB for system use. Depending on what you are doing and needing the GPU to do some lifting, then you are severely limited. Even a 24GB configuration would have been great giving the GPU 8GB dedicated and leaving the rest for system use. Acer also includes a sleeve, while I appreciate the gesture, I don’t get any use out of sleeves. It going in a backpack or in use. Acer states the battery charging input is between 65 watt and 100 watt, meaning not to try charging below the 65watt threshold. The included charger is a 100 watt brick. I wish they would have just gave us a 10ft USB-C to USB-C cable and a slim charger to go with the protability of this device. I think the best use case because of the large touchpad is a desktop replacement (if that is even a term anymore). Had Acer not included the very small 10-Key pad, then the keyboard could be centered on the chassis (my OCD prefers this) as the touchpad is centered on the chassis, and then the edge touch would not be an issue. Again with proper typing technique this is not an issue, but how many of us actually use that!? And if you type with index fingers only, then you won’t have any issues. Other areas of appreciation Screen, I love the size 16” size and the 16:10 aspect ratio. The OLED crispness and the 3K (2880x1800) pixel size is great. Out of the box the scale is set at 200%, wasting so much screen real estate. I set it at 125% and can run multiple windows easily or just do side-by-side windown when focusing on a single research task. I also love that it has squared corners and not rounded. That trend has never made any sense to me. Sound Is really good on this. Full and rich and loud. Defitnitely will have to turn it down when working next to others. Build Lightweight for the size, slim, and sturdy. No creaking of the keyboard or chassis. And enough ports to tackle the modern day needs. The graphite and gold color scheme is also pretty nice to look at. CPU/GPU Running Geekbench6 I got single core results of 2786 and Multi-Core of 14891. That put it just behind a desktop with an Intel Ultra 7 265 w/ 20 Cores and above a i7 Ultra 256v with 16 cores and an older i9 Ultra 185H with 16 cores. The GPU though beat out every other device with an iGPU/ARC GPU (54047) besides the older gaming laptops with an i5 paired with a GeForce RTX 3050 Ti (65599) and i9 Ultra 189H paried with a GeForce RTX3050 (63170). The older laptops still in my stables with Intel Arc scored 40840 and 31984 on two different machines one with 32GB RAM and the other 16GB. I can definitely recommend this laptop for anyone needing/wanting a dedicated GPU that couples portability and battery life.

It seems that Intel has itself a winner in the new "Panther Lake" CPU series (also known as the Core Ultra X7 Series 3 - here, the 358H). These new CPUs bring mobile performance, battery life and integrated graphics to a place where they haven't been before. Sure, you could buy a top notch performing CPU in a laptop and/or a top notch discrete GPU. But the battery life would suffer terribly and you'd have a heavy laptop and power cable to lug around. Not so with these new chips, and this Acer Swift 16 AI is a great example of what they can do. While it's not the smallest laptop out there given that it has a 16" screen (which is a gorgeous OLED with HDR+), this Acer is still plenty portable with a slim profile and fairly light weight. It also can be powered by any 100W USB-C PD charger, allowing you options in smaller chargers to take with you. But you won't ALWAYS need it, as the new CPUs do allow you to spend longer times away from the charger - even when doing light gaming or other CPU intensive tasks. And when you ARE doing those tasks, you'll have plenty of power for them. The 358H is a 16 core part that has the power to really bring it when you need - on battery or when plugged in. And the integrated ARC B380 GPU is a powerhouse for integrated graphics - the example here scored over 6,400 points in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark (compare that to 3,000-3,500 for most recent handheld "gaming" PCs) so you can definitely play some games on the go. The 16GB of memory is a bit disappointing - I'd like to see 32GB but RAM prices are a bit high these days and 16GB will certainly do. And the 1TB SSD is a standard 2280 size that is easily replacable, though they've put it under a ribbon cable so it takes a bit more effort than some other laptops. The laptop opens with a number of Torx T6 screws on the bottom and a few clips to pop out - but the only things you can change are the (1) SSD, (2) WiFi card and (3) battery (so not the memory or such). The laptop is mostly plastic but has a decent build quality and should prove to be reasonably durable in normal use. The selection of ports is good, though I do wish they'd split the USB-C ports up instead of putting both on one side. The HDMI port and 2x USB-A ports are a welcome departure from other laptops with fewer "legacy" ports. The keyboard is backlit and feels good to type on, with a condensed number pad available as well. Perhaps the only things I don't like about the laptop are the (1) huge trackpad and (2) Acer software that has issues. While I get the trackpad doubles as a drawing slate with the included stylus (which DOES work surprisingly well), for me it also gets in the way of typing and I definitely got some accidental presses while typing though I can see that fading with time as a I get into different typing positions. Frankly I'd prefer a smaller one (still centered though!) that didn't have the writing support. The software is similarly well intentioned - particularly Acer Sense that centralizes many key settings - but in practice has lots of bugs / has to be reset and reinstalled frequently and just overall is frustrating to use. So, there you have it. This Acer is a showplace for the new Panther Lake CPUs at the mid/high mobile end. And (if you can ignore a couple small issues), it's a great one that can be good at just about anything. If that sounds good to you, give it a try today!

While phones, tablets and other portable devices may get most of the attention, the humble laptop PC continues to be a crucial investment for so many people. Thankfully, PC makers continue to invest in both new and updated laptops, with big names like Acer giving us a variety of machines at different price points. So how does their latest big-screen productivity machine stack up? Laptops with 15 or 16-inch screens used to be both bulky and heavy, with significant compromises in performance and/or battery life needed to slim them down. Thankfully that's no longer the case, and Acer makes sure you know it with their latest premium portable. The 2026 Swift 16 AI is thin and light while remaining wicked fast and sporting all-day battery life. Add to that a gorgeous display, solid construction and beautiful design and you've got a very compelling machine. Unboxing the Acer Swift 16 AI reminds me just how good companies have gotten at more sustainable packaging. The Swift 16 AI came tightly wrapped in sturdy, simple cardboard, intricately folded to tightly protect the machine in shipping while also being easy to unwrap and recycle. Props to Acer for this, and for including only the necessities in the box without a ton of plastic wrap on everything. Well done! Taking the Swift 16 AI out of its cardboard bed immediately reveals the thinness and lightness of this 16-inch machine. It's noticeably lighter than my MacBook Pro and about as thin, but it still imparts a sense of quality with the feel of the case and the inherent heft. It's hard to describe, but you'll know it's a premium machine when you pick it up. Open the smooth clamshell and you'll see the selling point foe me: that big, beautiful OLED screen and ginormous trackpad, along with a standard chiclet keyboard with a small, but useful, number pad on the right. There aren't a lot of adornments inside or out, but everything is smooth, solid and of a quality befitting the price. There's a little flex in the keyboard when typing but overall this is one well-built machine. If you're interested in this machine for the screen, you're in good company, and this display is a killer. It's big, bright and beautiful, with the 3K resolution putting every inch of that OLED display to good use. While most screens are fairly high-resolution these days, this one is exceptionally crisp and clear, and let me tell you, once you go OLED, it's hard to go back. The inky blacks, punchy colors and high refresh rate are just stellar. Acer has absolutely nailed the display. The keyboard is good, if not outstanding, but it's the trackpad that you're probably wondering about. It's absolutely the largest trackpad I've ever used, and the haptics are as good as Apple's, which is high praise for a PC maker. Responsiveness is top notch and the big, smooth surface is generally pleasant to use. Frankly, in everyday use, I didn't really notice the size, for better or worse. After a week or so I can say Acer's trackpad tuning is pretty solid. I noticed perhaps a few more errant touches or failed palm registrations than I'm used to, but nothing terrible. I think this will heavily depend on the size of your hands and your typing posture, though, and Acer really could downsize the trackpad just a hair to give you some more breathing room around the edges without losing any functionality (or bragging rights). I was looking forward to using the included stylus, but it's been less useful than I'd hoped. If you've ever used an external pad/stylus device before, you'll be familiar with the need to reconcile your hand/stylus position with the cursor position on screen. Each system is different and you'll need to adapt, and frankly, I'm not very good at this. You have to hover the stylus just above the trackpad for the small dot to appear on-screen, and you'll have to account for the delay between your hand motion and the system registering your input. Honestly, it's easier to just use the touchscreen or your finger on the touchpad -- unfortunately, the stylus does not work on that big, beautiful screen, rendering it a bit useless for those who aren't stylus/pad devotees. There's also nowhere to store the stylus on the machine, so be prepared to keep track of it while traveling. Beyond these marquee features Acer's built an otherwise very good machine. The latest Intel processors have caught up to the competition, with excellent performance and very good battery life. Nothing I did in the course of a week stressed the Swift 16 AI one bit, and the battery just kept on chugging, which is impressive considering the power draw of a 16" OLED screen. The internal fans are quiet enough when they spin up, which isn't often, and I never noticed the chassis getting overly warm or uncomfortable. The port selection is fine, nothing to write home about, although like many manufacturers Acer has planted both USB-C/Thunderbolt ports on one side, limiting you to plugging in the charger only on the left. The charger is a clunky black brick; I would have liked to see something sleeker included, but with USB-C charging now standard it's easy enough to use a different charger for all my devices. The speakers, unfortunately, are not great, sounding pretty thin, but at least they're clear. The webcam, too, is pretty average, but thankfully it works with Windows Hello, and is very quick and responsive at this. The included cover is a fine tough but keep in mind you'll have to open the cover to use Windows Hello. I'm also a little frustrated that Acer went through the trouble of individually lighting each keyboard key with its own LED, but doesn't let you do any fun effects with this setup. Alas. While the hardware here is mostly solid, the software is less so. I have to say, Windows has taken a noticeable step back in quality. It's full of bloatware and less-than-useful AI fluff. It took me about twice as long to set this machine up as I anticipated, between uninstalling Windows (and some Acer) bloatware and confirming for the thousandth time I really don't want to use Microsoft Edge. I have yet to be wow-ed by any AI or Copilot features in this or other Windows machines, but I continued to be annoyed by the barrage of trials, popups, sliders and settings I have to change or disable. Taken on the whole, the Acer Swift 16 AI is a very good machine. It's thin, light and powerful, with a gorgeous screen and plenty of firepower under the hood. The trackpad is good, but not exceptional, and the size is neither a pro nor con in my book. Stylus support is fine, but not as useful as I'd hoped, and Windows continues to pile in features, apps and promotions that aren't really all that useful. If you're after a big, beautiful screen in a slim, portable package, the Swift 16 AI is definitely worth a look. Just make sure you're okay with the trackpad implementation and the current state of Windows 11 before you buy.

I was unsure about this laptop initially. Acer has always been a great budget brand, however where they cut corners in the past were places I do value like, build quality, display, keyboard, and track pad. That has completely changed with the Acer Swift 16 AI. Wow, I am completely blown away by this computer on all fronts. It's incredibly fast, battery life for ages, a beautiful display, great build quality, and a keyboard and touch pad that I actually love to use. This is a new benchmark when it comes to PCs and I'm incredibly impressed. There are three main things that I use this computer for. Easy tasks like internet and writing, obviously these run on the laptop no problem. No amount of tabs I throw at the Swift cause any sort of slowdown and it sips battery life during. While writing this review, I only saw a 3% battery drop (which is exceptional for Windows especially with a OLED screens). Next main thing I use this for is programming. Compiling applications/games I'm building move incredibly fast, even when unplugged. This is a great development laptop, even for game development as I am about to get into next. The last big thing I'm using this laptop for is gaming. In the past, integrated graphics worked fine for small 2D indie games and some bigger 3D games if you scale the graphics and screen resolution down substantially. The new Core Ultra X7 with integrated Arc B390 graphics is a game-changer and that is not hyperbole. I was shocked by the performance, and the battery life. I'll start with some simpler indie games. I played all of Forbidden Solitaire in one sitting on battery. Full resolution, 75% brightness, Bluetooth headphones connected. When I finished the game after 7 hours, I still had 25% battery life. INSANE. Was able to throw any 2D indie game at it no problem. What's even more surprising is that 3D bigger games can get anywhere from 30-45 fps at medium-low setting at full resolution. I tested 2 bigger games, first was Avowed. I set it to auto-detect settings and it set graphics setting to low and performance AI scaling. I was able to get a steady 35 fps playing in the very open areas. Unreal Engine 5 games are notorious for having poor performance so I was impressed I was able to hit 30+ fps! I next tried Lies of P which the developers have done wonders to optimize and it shows! In the big open-world sections I was hitting 45 fps on Medium/High graphics settings, 60fps in the indoor sections. Truly impressive for integrated graphics. Future gaming handhelds with this chip technology are going to be so good. The pros vastly outweigh the cons but I do want to touch on those. Specifically that the speakers are not good. They aren't the worst I've ever heard but I do wish they were better. I will be using headphones whenever I want to watch or listen to anything on the Swift. While the display is brilliant, I do feel like 16:10 is not a great aspect ratio. Something closer to a 3:2 screen is preferable for my workflow. While writing this review, my palms have been resting on the touch pad since it's so large. It does a good job of ignoring input when typing but it's not perfect and I have had clicks registered 3 times during this review. Not terrible, but is slightly annoying. Lastly is just general Windows computer issues. Dedicated Copilot button is dumb, especially as I hear rumblings that Microsoft is pulling back on pushing Copilot. And while I'm sure the bloatware installed on this PC helps keep the price down, it is obnoxious and I really wish we could get away from that. Overall, I'm extremely happy with the Acer Swift 16 AI. It's almost everything I want from a laptop but I wish the speakers were better. A gaming, programming, and all around powerhouse with excellent power efficiency. I am impressed! Pros: FAST Great battery life Gorgeous OLED display Surprisingly great gaming performance Build quality has increased DRAMATICALLY since my last Acer laptop Excellent price Large touch pad doubles as drawing tablet (pen comes with!) Cons: Speakers are middling, will definitely be using headphones Screen aspect ratio of 16:10 feels outdated, wish it was closer to a 3:2 Touch pad is so big that sometimes it registers clicks when you are typing (though not often) Dedicated Copilot button is going to age poorly SO much bloatware preloaded on PC

I have always been a big fan of Acer computers. They seem to draw a good line of offering a lot in their computers at very reasonable prices, so I was excited to check out this new model of laptop. Out of the box, it feels like a solid machine. None of the parts feel cheap or flimsy at all. The basalt gray color that I got has a very cool golden design on the top. Definitely sets it apart from the boring black or silver laptops you normally see. It has a beautiful 16” OLED display with a resolution of 2880x1800. I always love the 16” computers because 14 or 15 always seem to small. The 16 is a great balance giving you size while keeping the portability. On the topic of portability, this laptop is only 3 ½ pounds and comes with a nice protective sleeve that is included to easily slip in your bag or briefcase. One other thing to note is that it also comes with a stylus making this great for drawing or graphic design work. Under the hood you have an Intel Core Ultra processor with 16GB of memory and a 1TB SSD drive. I have not opened this up to see if either the RAM or SSD is upgradable, or if there is an option to add a second SSD. For ports, you get a HDMI2.1 and 2 thunderbolt ports, 2 USB-A 3.2 ports, 2 USBC/charging ports, headphone jack, and even a MicroSD card reader. I always love when companies include the CD card reader. I do a lot of photography and I have a drone as well and it makes transferring files very easy to do! The laptop has a nice backlit keyboard making it very easy to use in dim or dark rooms. The keyboard feels like most laptop keyboards too. Not the greatest compared to a desktop keyboard, but it was very easy to use and I had no problems tying on it. The touchpad is pretty massive on this thing. You might find yourself accidentally activating the touchpad while you are trying to type. But, it does make it a lot easier to use if you are using the included stylus to use it as a drawing tablet. So, there are pro’s and con’s to it. One other small thing to note is that it does have a 1080p webcam making those video calls or Teams meetings very easy to do anywhere you are at. As far as performance goes, this laptop was able to handle everything I threw at it. Going from web surfing, to watching online videos or streaming services, to photo editing in Photoshop, video editing in premiere, it has absolutely no problems handling anything at all. This will even work for gaming as well, it even comes with 2 free months of Xbox game pass premium. Granted, its not going to be as good as your PS5, it can handle some gaming on the go. It also comes with all the AI features as well if you are into using that. It’s a Copilot+ PC meaning it has tons of AI features integrated into the operating system to try to make tasks easier. Your results may vary while using that. Finally, I will touch on the audio quality. I found it to be pretty good for a laptop. It has a DTS:X Ultra Audio system, that sounds pretty good at reasonable volumes. I don’t really have any complaints about it. Overall, this would be a great business machine, great for students, or even great as your main PC. Definitely check it out if you are in the market for a new computer!

This review is for the new Acer Swift 16 laptop. This new laptop is very well made having an all-aluminum chassis that is extremely light weighing around 3.5 pounds. Very light for a 16” laptop. The laptop runs the latest Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor and Arc B390 graphics card. This model has 16GB of memory and 1TB SSD storage. The laptop is very fast. It does come with a lot of unnecessary software that needs to be cleaned up. It has a touchscreen 2880X1800 3K OLED 120Hz display that is bright with excellent color. I was running the Jennifer Gala 4K videos and the picture is stunning. The display is glossy and can be annoying with bright lighting. Ports wise, on the left side is a HDMI 2.1, a USB-A 3.2 and (2) Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports. On the right side is an additional USB-A 3.2, a microSD card reader and 3.5mm headphone jack. I do wish they had put a USB-C port on the right side. The display and keyboard are well hinged and can open completely flat. The keyboard has excellent feel and travel and is very easy to use. It includes a small number pad which places the keyboard slightly offset. Acer claims they have the largest touchpad available, and it definitely is large. Due to the offset nature of the keyboard, it is pretty much impossible not to have your palms resting on the touchpad. The palm rejection of the touchpad seems to work as designed as I have had no issues with the touchpad while using the laptop. The touchpad is a Haptic touchpad and has a great feel and works perfectly. The keyboard is backlit and adjustable. The laptop comes with a pen which only works on the touchpad and not on the screen. It also comes with a nice, padded sleeve with storage for smaller items. I am keeping the pen in the pouch but would not carry the power adapter in it. I found very little to no flex in the keyboard and the screen has had no movement. There is a 1080P webcam with a shutter to cover the camera. Charging for the laptop is with a supplied 100W USB-C power adapter. The battery performance has been outstanding. I have been using the laptop for several hours a day for multiple days and still have a good amount of battery life left. I would estimate around 15 hours of battery life. Unfortunately, the speakers are mounted on the bottom of the laptop and do not have the best sound quality compared to other laptops I have in this price range. They sound OK but not great with very limited low end. I wish they were mounted on top of the laptop. The laptop runs extremely cool and I have yet to hear any fan noise. They call the color of the laptop Basalt Gray, and it is a great looking color compared to the more common silver. It is however a fingerprint magnet. The build quality and performance of this laptop is outstanding for its price point. There is an obvious competitor at a somewhat higher price point that uses the lower 356H processor and lower graphics card but with much better speakers, (it can be had with the 358H processor at a significantly higher price) which I think makes the Acer a better value. I would give this laptop 5 stars if not for the fact of the unnecessary software, the pen can only be used on the touchpad and the speaker performance. Overall, this is a well-built laptop that performs extremely well priced right for the market. Given the state of the memory market and costs associated with it I would not be surprised to see this laptop increase in cost soon.

[PROS] High Quality Display: The pairing of OLED technology with 120hz is a visual delight. Although the resolution is not quite 4K, the difference in dropping down to 3K is negligible. Smooth Operation: The Intel Ultra X7 358H is a powerful processor not only in theory, but in execution as well. Chrome is a known resource hog, and I was able to use it with a dozen tabs opened and several other applications in the background. Excellent Battery: Even in 2026, using a laptop without a charger feels strange. However, I gave the Swift 16AI a proper chance. I was able to use the laptop for 8 hrs with juice to spare. The tasks that I used it for were work-related so this did not include gaming. Light Gaming: Integrated GPUs have come a long way, and the Acer Swift proves it. I was able to play a number of AAA games albeit with turned down settings and upscaling. This iGPU still faces challenges when going up against discrete graphic cards, but you should be able to achieve frame rates above 50-60 fps with tweaked settings. [CONS] Limited Brightness: 340 nits of brightness is doable for general indoor tasks. Unfortunately, this display will exhibit issues in more lit areas. More RAM?: I did wish this laptop contained 32GB of RAM. 16GB is more than sufficient for the average person. An increase would be a benefit for the "power" user. However, this can be overlooked for 2 reasons. Newer processors are designed to be more efficient with less, and there is currently a shortage which makes higher capacity RAM less obtainable. [CONCLUSION] The Acer Swift 16 AI is a well oiled machine. The great display is justified through excellent performance. It's useful for day to day use, but punches well above its weight class for demanding projects.

With only small caveats, Acer has a great looking, premium work or everyday laptop here. The OLED is gorgeous (2880x1800 120hz), and it still gets solid battery life even with the OLED (around 6-8+ hours with normal/higher brightness, 120hz, and wireless + bluetooth on). The 3rd gen Intel Core Ultra X7 is a very fast and efficient chip, plus it’s specced with the top Intel iGPU, the B390. (It also comes with the largest trackpad I have ever seen, even beyond that fruit company's biggest, 4.25” x 7”!) I will start with the biggest issues I have with this 2026 Swift 16 AI 1) First is the MASSIVE amount of Acer bloat, like I haven’t seen in years! Like a crazy amount of Acer apps that are unneeded plus some are hard to remove. 2) 16gb of shared system memory, no matter how fast, does not belong in this level of laptop, especially with the level of iGPU that is included. (even with the AI “ram crisis”) It should be 32GB, that way you can allow the B390 iGPU to use up to 8GB and have 24gb left for the system. 3) This is just a nitpick, but the charger, even though it is USB-C, is still stuck in the past with the power cord to brick to the attached cable. Should be a solid long USB-C cable with a 100w brick. Otherwise, everything else has been stellar! (I touch on a few below) The Core Ultra X7 is a great chip, the CPU performance is extremely solid, but the B390 iGPU takes the cake. (Just remember to manually get the latest drivers from Intel, I saw a *19fps* gain at the exact same settings on Forza Horizon 5 benchmark!) The OLED is phenomenal, 2880x1800, 120hz, accurate touch. Brightness gets quite high, enough that it almost hurts my eyes when it's dark and I leave the brightness up at “daytime” levels. The build quality, keyboard, the massive trackpad, all work extremely well, and its top tier especially for an Acer product. Windows hello seems to work much better on this vs other newer systems I’ve used, guessing the camera/LEDs work better. Good port selection, 2x thunderbolt, 2x USB (one seems to be 5gbps and one 10gbps) HDMI 2.1, headphone jack, plus a microSD slot. Overall a very good system with a few negatives that don't really pull it down enough to not be recommended!