Acer Swift Go 16 review: Multimedia laptop with dazzling OLED display

Slim, light and twice as cool is how Acer advertises the Swift Go 16. As evident in the name, this laptop comes with a 16-inch screen. The Taiwanese manufacturer has created a premium laptop suitable for home offices with a large OLED display, good connectivity and aluminum casing.

So far, the laptop has been available with either an Intel Core i7-13700H or an Intel Core i5-1335U and 16 GB of RAM. Customers can also choose between silver or steel gray and 512 GB or 1 TB terabyte in terms of color and hard drive size, respectively. Our test device comes in a stylish steel gray with the larger storage configuration and the Core i7.

In our tests, the laptop proves mostly powerful, but it has strong competitors, particularly the Huawei MateBook 16s with its extremely powerful Intel Core i9-13900H . Both laptops are very similar in size and weight, but have different focal points. Other interesting laptops are the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro , the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 or the slightly larger LG Gram 17 .

Each device has its own advantages and disadvantages. Acer uses a lot of aluminum in the Swift Go 16, which makes it robust and gives it a high-quality appearance. The darker steel gray really accentuates the angular design of the laptop.

The build quality of the individual components is impeccable, so we found no large or uneven gaps, and no creaking sounds were emitted when subjected both the screen and base to torsional stress. The notebook’s 16-inch screen can be opened up to 165° with one hand. In doing so, the base at the rear end lifts slightly, which is intended to allow for better airflow.

Only the display lid turns out to be a bit weak here, yielding noticeably under slight pressure. In terms of size, the Acer laptop is almost identical to the Huawei MateBook 16s , but the former weighs almost 400 grams less for a total of around 1. 6 kilograms.

The LG Gram is even lighter, while the Galaxy Book3 is considerably slimmer. Acer distributes the few ports of the notebook a little more skillfully than many of its competitors. The Swift Go has 16 USB Type-A ports on both sides, but also scores with a microSD card reader and a Kensington lock slot.

Two fully-fledged USB Type-C ports with DisplayPort, PowerDelivery and Thunderbolt 4 ensure a wide range of expansion possibilities. Under testing with our fast AV PRO microSD 128 GB V60 reference card, the transfer speeds of the laptop are well behind those of the comparison devices that still have a memory card reader, for the Acer’s card reader is only connected via USB 2. 0.

HP’s EliteBook and Huawei’s MateBook 16s do not have one at all. An Intel Killer Wi-Fi module handles wireless network connections in Acer’s laptop. This is reliable and fast in Wi-Fi 6.

However, the 6E network experiences significant drops in transfer speeds in our test. At a resolution of 1440p, the webcam in the Swift Go 16 provides strong image quality. The good color reproduction of the camera also stands out positively.

Even in the absence of strong ambient light, the webcam image is still reasonably convincing. A fingerprint scanner and a Kensington lock slot are available to protect our test device from unauthorized access. In addition, there are the security features of Intel’s Core i7.

Apart from an extensive collection of information leaflets and a matching USB Type-C power supply, no other accessories are found in the box of the Acer Swift Go 16. To get inside the 16-inch laptop, you first have to remove ten TX6 screws. Afterwards, the base cover can be prised open quite easily with a plastic tool.

A good starting point for this are the two short edges on the left and right of the hinges. Only the WLAN module and NVMe SSD are replaceable, so there are no free slots for expansion here. Aside from several screws, adhesive strips also hold the laptop’s battery in place.

In Europe, the Acer Swift Go 16 comes with a two-year warranty. This may differ in other regions, so interested buyers should double check before purchasing. With a key travel of only 0.

9 mm and minor haptic feedback, the typing feel on the Acer Swift Go is rather spongy. At least we find a NumPad here. The number keys are a little smaller than the rest of the backlit keyboard.

At 12. 6 × 8. 5 cm, the built-in ClickPad is pleasantly large and responds to up to five touch points.

Its surface is made of environmentally friendly OceanGlass. Plastic waste from the ocean is collected and recycled to make this. The OLED display of the Acer Swift Go 16 has a resolution of 3200 × 2000 in 16:10 format, which means that individual pixels can hardly be seen.

Thanks to the true black of OLED displays, there are no illumination errors and the 371 cd/m² bright screen boasts an infinitely high contrast ratio. Moreover, the screen is Vesa DisplayHDR 500 certified. However, this advantage is clearly weighed down by the OLED panel’s highly reflective surface.

On the other hand, the smooth surface also makes the picture look much sharper than that of some matte screens. The Acer Swift Go 16 almost completely reproduces all three essential color spaces. The AdobeRGB color space brings up the rear here at 98.

87%. We measured quite moderate color deviations on the display of the Acer Swift Go, which falls rather short of the target value of ΔΕ 3. The laptop overshoots in the green and blue tones, which may be improved via further calibration.

Meanwhile, the ICC profile we created (available for download in the info box) provides for improved grayscale reproduction. The screen’s brightness is sufficient for good legibility in outdoor use. However, depending on the angle to the sun or other bright light sources, reflections can strongly influence the readability of the screen.

As is typical for OLED displays, the screen of the Acer Swift Go 16 allows very steep viewing angles. However, the perceptible brightness also decreases at very steep viewing angles. Our test device is equipped with the Intel Core i7-13700H and 16 GB of RAM.

The notebook does not have a dGPU. Thus, the Intel Iris Xe mit 96 EUs of the i7 handles all graphics tasks. Hence, for a multimedia laptop, the Acer Swift Go is suitably equipped.

The Acer Swift Go 16 has three performance plans. As with most Acer laptops, these are accessed via the FN+F key combination. Here you will find a Quiet , a Balanced and a Performance mode, which all affect the cooling and performance of the processor in their respective ways.

In Performance mode, the boost power (PL2) of the i7 is around 80 watts. Even though 82 watts is specified here, we could not prove this value in the generated logs for any of the tests. In the other two operating modes, PL2 is around 64 watts and is regularly slightly exceeded.

The Balanced and Performance modes begin with a continuous power supply (PL1) of 45 watts. In Balanced mode, however, this is readjusted to 35 watts after around six minutes under full load. The processor subsequently maintains this value.

In Quiet mode, the continuous supply falls from the initial 35 watts to 20 watts. We decided to carry out all benchmarks in Balanced mode, although the significantly higher boost performance of Performance mode would probably lead to around 10% better results in many benchmarks. The Intel Core i7-13700H is at work in the Acer Swift Go 16.

The high-end CPU from the Raptor-Lake-H series outperforms many other processors. Especially the i7 processors from the P and U series have a hard time keeping up. The boost power of the Acer Swift Go is comparatively high at around 66 watts in Balanced mode.

Consequently, the laptop often surpasses the average of all tested devices with the Intel Core i7-13700H. The Huawei MateBook 16s with its even stronger Intel Core i9-13900H is even more powerful, although both processors have six performance cores and eight efficiency cores. Acer’s notebook also performs well in the system performance benchmarks with PCMark 10 and CrossMark.

Although laptops with a dGPU should have a clear advantage here, the LG Gram 17 , for example, doesn’t really make full use of it. So, the first four laptops in our comparison are in a very narrow range. But Acer’s Swift Go 16 and Huawei’s MateBook 16s have a somewhat clearer advantage in the CrossMark benchmark, where the Intel Raptor Lake H-series processors are able to display their strengths.

The Acer laptop is a strong all-rounder that can serve most requirements apart from demanding 3D graphics. With 16 GB of RAM, the most that could become a problem is the processing of very extensive databases, as can occur in the image processing of Adobe Lightroom. The latencies we measured suggest that serious issues may arise in real-time applications such as audio processing.

At least when playing our 4K60Hz YouTube test video, there were no skipped frames and thus no issues here. The Micron 2400 with one terabyte of storage space delivers decent speeds and can also maintain these for long periods of time in the Swift Go. No signs of overheating were present.

The integrated GPU of the Intel Core i7-13700H is responsible for all graphics tasks. The Intel Iris Xe mit 96 EUs is completely sufficient for most tasks. The iGPU can even tolerate a bit of gaming, as the benchmarks with 3DMark show.

Unfortunately, Intel’s GPUs do not yet have the same program interfaces as Nvidia or AMD graphics cards, which means they cannot be used for GPU acceleration of certain programs. Devices with a dGPU, such as LG’s Gram 17 , promise a little more graphics performance. As long as you stick to low or medium quality settings in games, the Intel Iris Xe mit 96 EUs can theoretically keep up with 96 EUs.

You should then at least reach playable frame rates in FullHD resolution. The graphics card can only offer more in older titles with low graphics requirements. The two fans in the Acer Swift Go 16 are usually very quiet to silent in normal operation when surfing the web or during light office tasks.

However, the fans run at full speed during more demanding tasks. According to our measurements at a distance of 15 cm, the noise level climbs up to 47. 5 dB(A), resulting in unpleasantly high frequencies.

As a special feature of the Acer laptop, the two fans can also suck in air through the keyboard. A cold spot above the Enter key indicates this in our thermal images. The top left of the notebook in particular gets very warm at well over 40 °C in stress testing.

Even the left palm rest cannot be described as cool at more than 34 °C. We even measured hotspots of up to 48 °C on the underside. This makes the Acer Swift Go very uncomfortable on the lap.

Consequently, Acer’s “twice as cool” claim is not entirely accurate here. Even in the PCMark 10 benchmark, the laptop reaches a temperature of over 39 °C on the keyboard despite medium loads. The OLED display’s temperature resistance also comes into play in longer load scenarios, as it is subject to hot air directly from the fans inside the laptop.

In the Prime95 and Furmark stress tests, the Acer Swift Go was very nearly able to maintain its performance rates in Performance mode over the entire one-hour test. While the average effective clock of about 1. 7 GHz was maintained over the entire test time of one hour, the GPU clock drops slightly by about 50 MHz after about 30 minutes.

As mentioned earlier in the review (in section ‘Case’), a wider open screen ensures better air circulation under the base unit. The screen was tilted from 140° to 90° after an hour and the stress test continued. As a result, the average core temperature increased from 84 °C to around 96 °C.

The GPU clock dropped another 50 MHz. The two speakers in the Acer Swift Go offer fairly balanced sound quality from the mids to the highs. Bass is audible, but not quite as mushy as, for example, the Huawei MateBook 16s.

At a maximum volume of 81 dB(A), Acer’s notebook is reasonably loud and can clearly drown out its own fans. External speakers or headphones can be connected via Bluetooth or the 3. 5 mm jack.

The Acer Swift Go 16 is not particularly energy-hungry. When idling, the power consumption is usually well below average. Under load, it’s a different story: due to its high computing power, it also has to draw a corresponding amount of energy.

The maximum power consumption of the notebook under load was around 95 watts in our tests. Thus, the included 100 watt USB-PD power supply is sufficiently sized. The battery in our test device has a capacity of 65 Wh.

Among our comparison devices with a 16-inch screen, only the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 has a smaller battery. However, since the latter is equipped with an AMD Ryzen processor that is somewhat more efficient when idling, the Acer Swift Go has to settle for last place in battery runtimes in the WiFi web surfing test. Nevertheless, a runtime of 7 hours and 47 minutes is still quite good.

Thus, the laptop should also be suitable for several hours of streaming away from the power outlet. Multimedia laptops with 16-inch screens are now available in a wide variety of configurations and price ranges. The Acer Swift Go 16 impresses with an excellent OLED display, a powerful Intel Core i7-13700H and generally good hardware.

The number and placement of ports on the laptop is good, as is the QHD webcam. However, a correspondingly large battery in such a large laptop would have been desirable. 65 Wh is a little meager here and thus does not make for outstanding battery life.

In regard to the advertising promises about the Acer Swift Go, we have to say that the laptop, while relatively light, is neither thin nor twice as cool. The low weight comes at the cost of a rather small battery. The Acer Swift Go 16 comes with an excellent OLED display, a strong webcam and a powerful processor.

When compared to the competitors in particular, it becomes clear that all devices focus on certain aspects. The Acer Swift Go and Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 have strong OLED screens. The Huawei MateBook 16s offers the best computing performance in comparison, and the LG Gram 17 comes with comparatively strong graphics performance despite its low weight.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 16ABR is relatively inexpensive, starting at US$512. 99. Here, however, users have to accept significant compromises in the quality of the screen and case.

So if you’re looking for a 16-inch laptop, you’re spoiled for choice, but with the Acer Swift Go 16 you at least have a laptop that can convince in many respects at a starting price of US$749. 99 . Availability of the Acer Swift Go 16 appears to be extremely limited at present.

The most basic version (Intel Core i5-1335U | Intel Iris Xe Graphics | 8GB LPDDR5 | 512GB Gen 4 SSD) is available via Amazon USA for US$749. 99 . .