Acer does its best to mitigate this problem by giving you its AcerSense app (complete with the custom “a” key on the top row of the keyboard), where you can switch from discrete graphics to integrated graphics, set certain display settings like adaptive brightness and color . profile selection, running system diagnostics, and most importantly, throttling performance as needed. There are four performance levels available, ending with “Quiet” at the low end. You would think that would throttle the CPU to the point where the fan wouldn’t work at all, but that’s not the case. Even in silent mode, the fan runs regularly, albeit at a slightly slower rate. The Silent machine also suffered a hit of around 40 percent in graphics performance and a 25 percent hit when running general applications.
The Swift It will charge slowly with a generic lower power adapter, but will never reach its full capacity even if it is turned off.
Photography: Christopher Null
Don’t get me wrong, the laptop has many positive qualities. Ports are ample for a machine this size, including two USB-A and two USB-C ports (again, one is used for charging), a full-size HDMI port, and a microSD card slot. The keyboard is fine if nothing special, it sits smoothly into the chassis and the touchpad is spacious without being obnoxiously large. And the understated dark metallic gray design is both professional and modern.
It’s not the smallest machine (it weighs 3.4 pounds and measures 25 millimeters thick at its widest point), but those numbers aren’t outrageous for a laptop that packs discrete graphics into a 14.5-inch package.
Photography: Christopher Null
But to what end? Overall stability is not ideal, as I encountered strange visual issues, such as flickering images, during my week with the system. Battery life, at just over seven and a half hours, isn’t atrocious, but it’s worse than many competing laptops. And while performance is good across the board, there are plenty of devices on the market that handily outperform this system, including Acer’s Nitro 17. Sure, it’s a considerably larger laptop, but it has 50 percent better graphics performance while also being $450 cheaper. .
While there are some positives to the Swift That could be a possibility, but the Swift simply doesn’t perform well enough to justify its luxurious $1,700 price tag, and the resoundingly noisy fan and heat issues don’t help that case.