Acer Swift Edge 16 review

The Acer Swift Edge 16 is an impressive piece of technology considering its weight class and large 16-inch display combination. However, that great first impression quickly falls apart when you look at the rest of the system.

For $1,499, you get a wonderfully light notebook with a colorful OLED display backed by powerful AMD performance. Unfortunately, you are also stuck with a shallow keyboard, a pair of muddy speakers, and short battery life.

Needless to say, this is not one of the best laptops you can buy, but if you don’t care about battery life or your keyboard experience, then the Acer Swift Edge 16 might be for you.

Acer Swift Edge 16 price and configurations

There are only two configurations for the Acer Swift Edge 16. We tested the cheapest model, at $1,499, which is outfitted with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 16-inch, 2400p display.

For $100 more, you can pick up the model with a Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U CPU and a CineCrystal display.

If you’re looking for something cheaper, check out our best budget laptops page.

Acer Swift Edge 16 design

The Acer Swift Edge 16 offers an astonishingly light chassis coated in a sleek black-with-a-dash-of-olive paint. It could use a bit more olive, and the lid could have more going on. Its only defining feature is a small Acer logo at the top.

Popping it open revealed a massive display with little-to-no bezels. The keyboard dips downward, cut away from the touchpad and vent above. The layout is fine, but the hinge of the display was too easy to move. It shifts with any small movements.

At 2.2 pounds and 14 x 9.5 x 0.5~0.6 inches, the Acer Swift Edge 16 has an incredible edge over the competition (pun intended). The Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (4.5 pounds, 14.1 x 10.1 x 0.8 inches), Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro (3.4 pounds, 14.0 x 9.9 x 0.5 inches), and Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022) (2.7 pounds, 12 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches) can’t compare to Acer’s weight class.

Acer Swift Edge 16 ports

It’s light, but does the Acer Swift Edge 16 skimp on ports? Nope.

On the left side you’ll find two USB Type-C ports, one USB Type-A port, and an HDMI port, while the right side holds room for a security lock slot, one USB Type-A port, and a headphone jack.

If you need more ports, check out our best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations pages.

Acer Swift Edge 16 display

The Acer Swift Edge 16 sports a gorgeous 16-inch, 4K OLED display that’s going to rock your eyeballs.

In the trailer for Paint, which depicts a fictional version of Bob Ross, Owen Wilson’s frizzy afro was detailed on the display. The forest backdrop at the end of the trailer popped on the screen, bringing vibrant greens and yellows to life and completing that warm 80s feel. The panel was bright enough to capture the details off set, like the coffee machine, sweeteners, and honey. However, since the display is glossy, it does catch some glare.

According to our colorimeter, the Acer Swift Edge 16 clocked in an average of 141% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which crushes the average premium laptop (89.9%). The Inspiron 16 (70.4%), Galaxy Book (87.3%), and MacBook Air (75.9%) couldn’t even break triple digits.

At 367 nits of brightness, the Acer Swift Edge 16 is reasonably bright, but just falls short of the category average (392 nits). It outshines the Inspiron 16 (288 nits), but not the Galaxy Book (377 nits) or MacBook Air (489 nits).

Acer Swift Edge 16 keyboard and touchpad

The click clacks weren’t very clicky or clacky on the Acer Swift Edge 16’s keyboard. The keys are too shallow and tightly spaced which it made it difficult to navigate around. And there’s not a lot of depth to distinguish the keys from each other.

I typed an embarrassingly low 67 words per minute, which falls short of my typical 78 wpm average. This is mostly due to the placement and shallowness of the keys. It reminds me of typing on a MacBook during its worse keyboard-era.

The 3.2 x 4.9-inch touchpad is sticky, and while it offers a decent click, it’s not smooth enough to satisfy my fingers while navigating through Google Docs or various web pages.

Acer Swift Edge 16 audio

Much like its keyboard, the Acer Swift Edge 16’s bottom-firing speakers are shallow. They just sound muddy.

I listened to “Just Pretend” by Bad Omens and I could barely hear the opening guitar meant to coincide with the vocals. The vocals themselves are clear, but not crisp. When the chorus hit, the guitar and percussion muddled together into one big mess. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of bass to highlight the deeper instruments.

Acer does include the DTS audio software, which offers options for Music, Movies and Games. It also features a custom setting that you can configure yourself, but overall, it’s not a miracle cure for the laptop’s audio issues.

If you choose the Acer Swift Edge 16 then go ahead and toss a pair of the best wireless headphones in your cart with it, as you don’t want to rely on these speakers for your audio.

Acer Swift Edge 16 performance

Tucked within the light hood of the Acer Swift Edge 16 lies an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor with 16GB of RAM. It’s more than enough to power through a couple dozen Google Chrome tabs and a handful of YouTube videos.

On the Geekbench 5.4 overall performance test, the Acer Swift Edge 16 scored 7,718, overpowering the average premium laptop (7,078). The Inspiron 16’s Intel Core i7-12700H processor (11,939), the Galaxy Book’s Intel Core i5-1340P CPU (9,746), and the MacBook Air’s M2 chip (8,919) all scored better than Acer.

Despite that, the Acer Swift Edge 16 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 7 minutes and 20 seconds, which beat the MacBook Air (7:52) and category average (8:28). The Inspiron 16 (5:49) and Galaxy Book (6:41) were still faster, however.

Acer’s 1TB SSD has a transfer rate of 1,121 megabytes per second, which isn’t far from the premium laptop average (1,302 MBps). The Inspiron 16’s 512GB SSD (404 MBps) and the Galaxy Book’s 256GB SSD (436 MBps) couldn’t keep up, but the MacBook’s 1TB SSD (2800 MBps) crushed it.

Acer Swift Edge 16 graphics

With integrated graphics, the Acer Swift Edge 16 isn’t set up to play demanding games or handle wild workloads.

On the Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p) benchmark, the Acer did manage a playable 33 frames per second, but it’s lower than the premium laptop average (50 fps). The Galaxy Book 3 (33 fps) and MacBook Air (40 fps) were comparable, both with integrated graphics. However, the Inspiron 16 packed an RTX 3050 Ti GPU, which hit 83 fps. 

Acer Swift Edge 16 battery life

Sad. That’s how I felt when I saw the Acer Swift Edge 16’s battery life. On the Laptop Mag battery test, the Acer died out at 7 hours and 42 minutes, falling a couple hours short of the 9:50 premium laptop average. It might have outlived the Galaxy Book (6:51), but it died way before the Inspiron 16 Plus (10:30) and MacBook Air (14:06).

Acer Swift Edge 16 webcam

I’ve never felt uglier. The Acer Swift Edge 16’s 1080p webcam is bad.

In my test shot, the display did a lot of work for the webcam, highlighting the green and orange colors in my floral shirt. However, it couldn’t hide the completely blown-out background. Usually, the contrast fails at my window, but the camera couldn’t even handle the light above me and the white ceiling around it. Do yourself a favor and pick up one of the best webcams.

Acer Swift Edge 16 heat

There’s not a lot of heat around this machine. After streaming a 15-minute 1080p video, the Acer Swift Edge 16’s underside crawled up to 87 degrees Fahrenheit, which is far below our 95-degree comfort threshold. The center of the keyboard and the touchpad hit 85 and 75 degrees, respectively. Meanwhile, the hottest it got was 95 degrees, located on the rear-center underside.

Acer Swift Edge 16 software and warranty

The key software in the Acer Swift Edge 16 is the Acer Care Center, which offers the system and warranty information as well as tools to fix, update, or reconfigure your system.

Unfortunately, there is some bloatware, like ExpressVPN and Forge of Empires.

The Swift Edge 16 comes with a one-year limited warranty. See how Acer performed on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking.

Bottom line

The Acer Swift Edge 16 is light and pretty, but shallow everywhere else. A laptop is supposed to be an all-around package for a PC experience, but there are a few items missing in this package.

If you want longer battery life in a big display, consider picking up the Inspiron 16, which is only $100 more and even comes with a discrete graphics card.

However, if you want to prioritize a big, colorful 4K OLED display, then the Acer Swift Edge 16 isn’t a bad choice.