Acer Swift Go 16 review: Premium performance for a decent price

The Acer Swift Go 16 is a powerful machine that won’t cost you a fortune.

Finding the perfect balance between price and performance isn’t easy, and not every company knows what to sacrifice to lower the cost without destroying a laptop’s positive qualities. However, the Acer Swift Go 16 does a great job of this, maintaining a reasonable price point while featuring strong performance, long-lasting battery life, and a colorful display in a sleek chassis.

I’m not saying it’s cheap by any means, but you can often expect to pay far more for this quality of machine. It has some flaws, particularly its dim display and mediocre keyboard, but keep reading to see if this is the right laptop for you.

Acer Swift Go 16: Specs

Acer Swift Go 16: Price and configuration

The Swift Go 16 we reviewed is available at $1,199 at Amazon. It’s built with an Intel Ultra 9 185H processor, Intel Arc integrated graphics, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage. It also has a 16-inch, 1,920 x 1,080-pixel display at 60Hz refresh rate. It can be upgraded with up to 8TB of SSD storage, which is an enormous amount of space, but could be useful for specific types of consumers.

Acer Swift Go 16: Design

I was surprised by how thin and light the Swift Go 16 is for its size, and when I pulled it out of its box, I was taken aback by how easy it was to hold. Its minimalist lid and Iron color finish (pretty much a darker silver) also give it an appealing professional look. Atop its shiny lid is a reflective Acer logo, and lifting the lid reveals a sleek deck with a large keyboard.

Unfortunately, the deck is malleable, and placing pressure against its surface causes it to bend inwards slightly. While it is built with aluminum and feels sturdy for the most part, it especially feels thin around the trackpad and keyboard.

The Swift Go 16 weighs 3.5 pounds and measures 14 x 9.6 x 0.6 inches, which is pretty lithe for its size category, but a competitor like the Asus Zenbook S16 UM5606 (3.3 pounds, 14 x 9.6 x 0.5 inches) comes in a bit thinner and lighter. The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 (3.2 pounds, 12.4 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches) and Lenovo Yoga 9i (2.9 pounds, 12.4 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches) are 14-inch laptops, so they’re unsurprisingly smaller.

Acer Swift Go 16: Ports

With a competent selection of ports, the Swift Go 16 fulfills what you need a productivity laptop to do. It has two Thunderbolt 4, one USB Type-A, and an HDMI port on its left side. On its right, there’s another USB Type-A port, a microSD slot, an audio jack, and a Kensington Lock.

Acer Swift Go 16: Display

Built with a 16-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 display, the Swift Go 16 won’t particularly impress with its 1080p resolution and subpar brightness. However, it has a surprisingly colorful panel that will make watching films more than satisfactory.

I watched the trailer for the animated The Lord of the Rings prequel The War of the Rohirrim, and I was stunned by the vividness of Middle-Earth. Early in the trailer, there’s a shot that overlooks the Golden Hall in Rohan, and the view of the starry night sky contrasting with the warm orange glow of torches against the intricate carvings on the wooden structure was stunning.

The Swift Go 16 did pretty decently on our color tests for an LCD panel, reproducing 86 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut. This is a bit above the 83 percent mainstream laptop average, while it’s also ahead of the Zenbook S16 (80 percent) and Inspiron 14 (69 percent). Meanwhile, it’s absolutely no shock that the Lenovo Yoga 9i (136 percent) took heads with its gloriously vivid OLED panel.

It did worse on our brightness tests, hitting a peak of 332 nits on average, which is well below the 378 nit category average. This is dimmer than the Zenbook S16 (357 nits), Inspiron 14 (470 nits), and Lenovo Yoga 9i (357 nits).

Acer Swift Go 16: Audio

The Swift Go 16’s speaker system isn’t anything to write home about, with lower volume than expected, but it’s clear and balanced enough.

I listened to “Calma” by Madreblu and while the audio was sufficient, you still might wish you could turn it up. At the very least, the sound of the strings in the background wasn’t lost against the percussion and loud vocals. And as the chorus intensifies in the latter half, it doesn’t become flat or overbearing.

While watching the trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, I was disappointed by the volume. It’s not necessarily low, but it lacks a punchiness that would make watching films feel impactful. However, it’s clear and well-balanced at the very least, as the epic soundtrack and voices were easy to distinguish from the intense sound effects.

Acer Swift Go 16: Keyboard and trackpad

I took the 10fastfingers typing test and managed 110 words per minute with 97 percent accuracy, which is around what I can normally do on my mechanical keyboard. However, I didn’t love the feeling of the Swift Go 16’s keys. It’s shallow and spongy, and especially after the exceptionally clicky Lenovo Yoga 9i I recently tested, it couldn’t compete.

At the very least, it features a dedicated number pad courtesy of its larger 16-inch size. As a result, the keys are too scrunched together, but it was still more than enough room for someone with decently sized hands.

The 4.9 by 3-inch trackpad is smooth and I had no issue moving files, browsing the web, and performing multi-finger gestures. It also benefits from its entire surface being clickable, although the less-than-sturdy material of the deck makes the material bend inward every so slightly when clicking, which isn’t the most appealing visual.

Acer Swift Go 16: Performance

The Swift Go 16 is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, 1TB of SSD storage, and 32GB of LPDDR5X-6400 DRAM. It features excellent performance thanks to its high-end Meteor Lake processor, and considering you can get it with up to 8TB of SSD storage, it’s a powerhouse for productivity.

On the Geekbench 6.2 overall performance test, the Swift Go 16’s multi-core score of 13,088 is pretty great. This is far above the category average of 9,883, but was in a pretty similar range with the AMD-powered Zenbook S16 (AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 13,282) and Snapdragon-powered Inspiron 14 (Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100, 13,281). The Lenovo Yoga 9i (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 12,455) was a bit behind, which isn’t a surprise considering it features an Ultra 7 versus the Swift Go 16’s Ultra 9 processor.

We converted a 4K video into 1080p using the HandBrake app and the Swift Go 16 managed to accomplish the task in 4 minutes and 51 seconds, which is better than the 7 minutes and 54 second category average. The Zenbook S16 (5:08), Inspiron 14 (6:23), and Lenovo Yoga 9i (5:10) were all a little slower, but none did poorly.

The Swift Go 16 duplicated 25GB of multimedia files in 18 seconds at a transfer rate of 1,468 megabytes per second, faster than the 1,235MBps category average. The Zenbook S16 (1TB SSD, 908MBps) and Lenovo Yoga 9i (1TB SSD 1,016MBps) were far behind, but it was in a similar lane as the Inspiron 14 (512GB SSD, 1,510MBps).

Acer Swift Go 16: Graphics

Gamers shouldn’t expect an Intel processor to carry a laptop’s graphics alone by any means, but since the Swift Go 16 features the higher-end Intel Ultra 9 185H processor, you’ll get okay integrated gaming performance out of it.

We played Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm at 1080p and the Swift Go 16 achieved an average of 48 frames per second. Considering the Zenbook S16 (63 fps) has an AMD processor, it’s by far the best in gaming performance. Meanwhile the Qualcomm-powered Inspiron 14 (21 fps) and Lenovo Yoga 9i (35 fps), with a weaker Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, were a bit behind.

On the 3DMark FireStrike synthetic graphics benchmark, the Swift Go 16 scored 8,642. This is better than the 6,894 category average, meanwhile, the Zenbook S16 (7,468), Inspiron 14 (5,965), and Lenovo Yoga 9i (8,468) did worse.

Acer Swift Go 16: Battery life

On the Laptop Mag battery life test, which involves continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits, the Swift Go 16 lasted 10 hours and 35 minutes. This is close to the category average of 9 hours and 59 minutes, and it’s well within the realm of what we’d recommend for solid longevity. However, the Zenbook S16 (11:35) managed to last a whole hour longer, while the Inspiron 14 (18:20) pulled an unbelievable feat off with its efficient Qualcomm processor. On the other hand, the Lenovo Yoga 9i (7:24) couldn’t quite compete.

Acer Swift Go 16: Webcam

The Swift Go 16’s 2,560 x 1,440 webcam is crisp, snapping a detailed picture of my room with the pink on my walls looking as vibrant as it does in reality. The light coming from my lamp appeared a tad overexposed, causing my ceiling to turn blinding white, but the image was quite impressive overall. You probably won’t need one of the best webcam when using this laptop.

Acer Swift Go 16: Heat

If you’re worried about your laptop getting uncomfortably warm, we found that the Swift Go 16 shouldn’t get too hot. During our heat tests, the touchpad was cool at 81 degrees Fahrenheit, the G/H key hit 90 degrees, and the underside was 86 degrees. This is all a good bit below our 95-degree comfort threshold, but Its hottest point was 96 degrees underneath the vents on the bottom, which is a bit toasty but still not too bad.

Acer Swift Go 16: Software and warranty

Installed with Windows 11 and featuring Acer’s built-in applications, there’s not much to say about the Swift Go 16’s software. Acer has never had anything too grand in this regard, with something like AcerSense offering a simple collection of features allowing you to swap system usage modes, perform laptop checkups, and swap some personal settings. There’s also Acer JumpStart, which exists just to advertise things to the user, and the application does nothing but take you to Acer’s website.

The Swift Go 16 comes with a one-year limited warranty. You can see how Acer did in our Tech Support Showdown special report.

Bottom line

Maintaining a solid price point while offering premium performance isn’t easy, and the Acer Swift Go 16 further drives its excellence with a colorful panel, solid battery life, and decent speakers. While its panel could benefit from an increase in brightness, alongside its aluminum chassis feeling a tad thin in areas, it does more than enough to be worth its $1,199 price point.

And if you’re a sucker for storage (and don’t want to have to open up a laptop to increase space yourself), it can be built with up to 8TB of SSD storage. If you want a 16-inch productivity laptop as an alternative, the Asus Zenbook S16 is an absolute killer. Otherwise, the Acer Swift Go 16 is still fantastic.