Acer Swift Edge SFA16-41 review: An incredible OLED display let down by equator elsewhere | Media Pyro

OLED is one of the big buzzwords in the laptop world right now, and the Acer Swift Edge SFA16-41 is the latest laptop to try to join the party. It’s no wonder manufacturers are rushing to cram OLED displays inside portable devices. This cutting-edge technology swaps traditional backlighting for individually-illuminated pixels, allowing displays to deliver perfect contrast and more vivid colors.

Acer’s latest laptops pair a 16in OLED display with a thin, light chassis and a low-power AMD Ryzen processor. That sounds good on paper, and the price of £1,333 ex VAT isn’t bad – hardly dissimilar to the Intel-based LG Gram 16, which costs £1,290 ex VAT for the Core i7 model.

Acer Swift Edge Review: Design

Before you get to the OLED hardware, though, you need to tackle the Swift’s design – and there’s a lot to say in this department. Acer’s notebook uses a magnesium-aluminum alloy, and it looks the part; the design is dark and effortless, with clean lines throughout. It is easily equal to the LG in this department.

It works well on the scales, too. The Acer weighs 1.18kg, so it’s lighter than the LG, and it’s slimmer, too – the Acer’s 13mm body stretches to 16mm when you include its rubber feet, but the Gram tops it at 17mm . The Acer is much slimmer and lighter than its beefier rivals, too. If you consider Dell XPS 15 for a little more power you will have to accept a laptop that is 19mm thick and weighs at least 1.84kg. The Apple MacBook Pro 16 is only 17mm thick but weighs 2.1kg.

Acer’s biggest issue is its build quality. There is too much movement in the alloy around the keyboard, and the display is too easy to flex. There is also no sign of MIL-STD-810G testing. This build quality is not catastrophic, but we would recommend a protective sleeve. The LG rig was stronger, and the heavier Dell and Apple notebooks were even better.

Acer Swift Edge review: Keyboard and trackpad

The weakness of the chassis carries over to the keyboard. The buttons are shallow, light and flimsy, and it’s all too easy to see the metal move as you hammer. This typing equipment is fine for the job, but it lacks the crisp, robust feel common to all competitors – it’s not particularly satisfying.

The layout is also disappointing. This laptop has a lot of space, but the Acer still has tiny up/down keys and small dot buttons. The function keys are tiny, and there’s no keypad – something the LG includes. The trackpad is best: large, smooth and consistent, with responsive buttons. It’s easily good enough for creative work and fast-paced multitasking, even if the accompanying keyboard can’t keep up.

Acer Swift Edge Review: Display

The OLED display is the undoubted star of the show. The 16in panel has a resolution of 3,840 x 2,400, so everything is pin-sharp, and the Acer matches all rivals by deploying a 16:10 aspect ratio – so you get a little more vertical space compared to a larger 16:9 display shorter. .

The colors are sensational. OLED technology means creative work, movies, box sets and casual games look incredibly vibrant. The perfect black levels deliver great contrast, too, so there’s plenty of depth. The screen gave 100% of the sRGB color gamut at 166.9% volume, and produced almost 100% of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts with volume figures beyond 100% – and the Delta E of 1.43 provides accuracy. This screen does a great job with all the colors you need.

The biggest issue with the panel is brightness. While it tops 500cd/m2 in HDR mode, during SDR workloads it only peaked at 378cd/m2. That’s fine for indoor situations, but not bright enough for outdoor use. However, the Acer panel is easily superior to the IPS hardware used inside the LG. Its contrast slightly exceeds the Mini LED technology inside the Apple, too, and you’ll only get OLED technology inside the Dell if you spend at least £1,833 without VAT.

Acer Swift Edge review: Hardware and performance

It’s unusual to see an AMD laptop processor these days, but AMD’s Ryzen 7 6800U includes eight multi-threaded cores and a top turbo speed of 4.7GHz, so it’s reasonable on paper. On the graphics side, it has an AMD Radeon 680M core with 768 processing units.

We have no complaints about the rest of Acer’s internals: you get 16GB of dual-channel DDR5 memory and a 1TB SSD with impressive read and write speeds of 6,242MB/sec and 5,243MB/sec. The tests saw reasonable performance levels provided by the AMD chip. In our image editing benchmark its score of 200 points was a notch ahead of the 186 scored by the LG’s Intel Core i7-1260P. Its video encoding score of 189 was thirty points above anything LG could muster.

The two chips traded blows in Geekbench: Acer’s single-core score fell behind the LG but the Swift was faster in multi-core benchmarks. In Cinebench R23, the Acer returned single and multi-core scores of 1,504 and 10,291, the latter better than the Intel chip.

The AMD chip is a better choice for content creation than the Intel part, although this low-powered CPU will only handle moderate photo and video work. Happily, you have plenty of power for everyday multitasking and won’t struggle with loads of browser windows or office tools. Its integrated Radeon GPU also does a better job with casual games than Intel’s Iris chip. If you push the internals, you will see the fan noise but the output was kept moderate and at the same level as the LG. It wasn’t too hot outside, either.

Acer’s biggest weakness comes from battery tests, which is no surprise when you consider the power-hungry OLED panel. In our standard video test with the display at 170cd/m2 and airplane mode selected, the Acer lasted for 9 hours 16 minutes, which is seven times behind the LG and the MacBook. You’ll get just about a day’s work with the Acer, but not your commute or evening.

If you want more power Dell and Apple laptops fit the bill better, but those notebooks are bigger, heavier and more expensive than the Acer – the Dell starts at £1,624 ex VAT if you want a Core CPU i7 and the cheapest MacBook Pro 16 costs £1,999 ex VAT.

Acer Swift Edge review: Ports and features

The Acer laptop includes two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, with one full-size USB port on each side. Each USB-C port also handles DisplayPort output and charging, although one of them is needed to power the notebook and it’s a shame that both sit on the left edge – which may require peripherals and dongles to be difficult.

Elsewhere, physical connectivity comes from an HDMI 2.1 output and an audio jack, but there’s no Thunderbolt 4 support and no card reader. Above the display you’ll find a 1080p webcam that delivers good quality – but no facial recognition, and no privacy shutter. If you want to log in with biometrics, you’ll need to use the fingerprint reader in the power button. Internal connectivity comes from the usual pairing of Wi-Fi 6E and dual-band Bluetooth 5.2, but there’s no room for wired internet. The Acer has good security credentials with a TPM 2.0 chip and a Microsoft Pluton processor.

LG’s slim machine includes a similar Intel processor, so it’s got Thunderbolt – and it has a card reader and facial recognition. The larger Dell XPS 15 also ticks those boxes, while Apple’s notebook adds Thunderbolt and SD support but doesn’t include a full-sized USB. It’s a mediocre set of features, and the Acer feels underwhelming in another key area: software. Boot up this machine and you’ll see Dropbox, Evernote, lots of card games, some CyberLink media tools and even media apps like Spotify and Disney+. You might want to keep some apps, but the Swift feels cluttered and low-rent and doesn’t provide a clean, engaging experience.

Acer Swift Edge Review: Verdict

Acer’s best component is the OLED display: this 16in panel is bold and immersive, with brilliant colors and high resolution. If you want a display to make everyday tasks and creative workloads pop, this screen will get the job done and then some.

Elsewhere, however, the Acer stumbles. Its chassis is slim and light, but not sturdy, and its keyboard is disappointing. The low-power AMD processor is efficient, but the battery is under siege, and the Acer lacks some connectivity features and annoying software. The excellent screen and decent processor make the Acer Swift Edge an efficient light workhorse, but for the same money you could have the robust and longer LG Gram 16 if you’re happy enough to avoid OLED technology.

Acer Swift Edge specifications