Acer Swift Edge 16 review: A lightweight laptop with a beautiful OLED display

There’s no shortage of excellent 16-inch Windows laptops available in 2024, but the bulk of these laptops are, well, bulky. Acer’s Swift Edge 16 is among the few to deliver a 16-inch display in a laptop that weighs under three pounds, and it pairs a thin, light profile with good all-around performance and an affordable price tag. But keeping the price and weight low requires compromise and, in this case, it’s battery life that takes the hit. 

Looking for more options? Check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best laptops available today.

Acer Swift Edge 16: Specs and features

The Acer Swift Edge 16 is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U processor, which has eight cores and 16 threads. It’s paired with 16 GB of RAM and AMD’s integrated Radeon 780M graphics, which includes 12 graphics cores. The laptop also has a 16-inch OLED display with a stunning resolution of 3200×2000 pixels and a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 8840U
• Memory: 16GB LPDDR5
• Graphics/GPU: AMD Radeon 780M
• Display: 16-inch OLED 3200×2000 120Hz refresh rate with HDR support
• Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen 4 solid state drive 
• Webcam: 1440p with dual-mic array
• Connectivity: 2x USB-C 4 with DisplayPort Alternate Mode and 65 watts Power Delivery, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x microSD card reader, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack
• Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3
• Biometrics: Fingerprint reader
• Battery capacity: 54 watt-hours
• Dimensions: 14.18 x 9.78 x 0.72 inches
• Weight: 2.71 pounds
• MSRP: $1,299.99

Acer currently sells just one configuration of the new Swift Edge 16, which is the configuration reviewed. It carried an MSRP of $1,300 at the time the system was tested. Though not a budget laptop, the Swift Edge 16’s price is reasonable considering the processor, OLED display, and other hardware that Acer includes. LG’s Gram 16 and SuperSlim laptops, though comparable in size and weight, are often more expensive with models starting around $1,400 (with less RAM and storage).

Acer Swift Edge 16: Design and build quality

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

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    </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Matthew Smith</p></div>

The Acer Swift Edge 16 doesn’t make a great first impression out of the box. It’s a simple, matte black slate that lacks any detail, flair, or texture. There’s nothing wrong with the design, but shoppers craving a premium look will need to look elsewhere.

Build quality is a similar story. The laptop is built from magnesium-aluminum alloy, a strong yet light material frequently used by ultra-thin PC laptops. However, the alloy lacks the rigidity of brushed aluminum; in fact, it’s easy to mistake for plastic. The laptop’s lack of rigidity and heft makes it feel like an inexpensive, budget-oriented machine.

The magnesium-aluminum alloy does its job, however. The Swift Edge 16 weighs just 2.71 pounds and measures no thicker than 0.72 inches. Its weight is especially low for a 16-inch laptop; only LG Gram laptops are drastically lighter. It’s easy to forget the Acer is in a backpack once stowed, and picking up the laptop from an edge or corner is hardly a strain. That makes the Swift Edge 16 attractive if you travel often but also want a large display.

Acer Swift Edge 16: Keyboard, trackpad

IDG / Matthew Smith

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    </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Matthew Smith</p></div>

An enjoyable keyboard and number pad stretches across the Acer Swift Edge 16’s interior. The layout is spacious, although some keys, such as the number pad keys, are slightly undersized. Key travel is lengthy and ends with definitive bottoming action that provides some tactile feedback. It’s not an amazing keyboard, but it’s surprisingly good for a thin, lightweight laptop.

The keyboard includes a backlight that’s extremely bright at its maximum setting, so visibility is never an issue. Acer also packs the usual array of function keys, including the new Copilot key, and a shortcut to open the Acer software which manages most laptop settings.

A responsive and large touchpad sits below the keyboard at an offset to the space bar, which means there’s less palm space on the left than on the right. The touchpad surface measures about five inches wide and three and a quarter inches deep. Though not as large as the touchpads found on premium competitors like a Dell XPS 16, it still provides plenty of room for activating multitask gestures, and is similar in size, or slightly larger than, the touchpads on price-competitive laptops like the Asus Vivobook 16 and Dell Inspiron 16.

Acer Swift Edge 16: Display, audio

IDG / Matth