This is the first of my reviews for machines launched at the very end of November by Acer in Glasgow, those who saw my launch report will know it was not cold, wet or snowy; I got the very cold bit almost as soon as I got back to the south of England.
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The Acer Swift 3 measures 33.5x23x1cm, the last figure at the back while it is little more than half of that at the front, it weighs 1551 grams. Silver Grey in colour with only the four round rubber feet and the black hinge being different when closed. Open the lid and again the majority is Silver Grey with only the hinge and the keys of the keyboard being black.
The viewable screen is 31x17.5cm which gives the notional diagonal imperial measurement of 14 inches; the screen resolution is full HD at 1920x1080. A web cam is mounted just above the centre of the screen surround.
The keyboard has 88 keys which are backlit for 20 seconds after a key is touched, great for typing in less than perfect light. The 2.5cm area behind the keyboard is clear and the same distance is also clear either side of the keyboard. A 10cm strip exists in front of the keyboard with the 10.5x7.5cm trackpad mounted 9.5cm from the left and 14cm from the right side, just in from the right side in front of the keyboard is the finger print scanner.
Shutdown is only three seconds while boot up is a very rapid twelve seconds. Swift seems to be a very good Acer name for this machine.
The stated ‘up to 12 hours’ for battery should be achievable. I got seven hours in my first run of the battery being four hours of streaming live TV full screen, two hours of heavy Internet use and an hour or normal use which I was satisfied with.
A full recharge from 0% when off to 100% was 170 minutes.
The left side has the power input, HDMI, USB3 which remains live to charge external devices, USB 3.1 and two LEDs complete the left side. The front is totally clear with the right side having SD card slot, Headphone socket, USB2 and Kensington lock socket. The rear is also clear as the keyboard comes down to 180 degrees.
It came with an Intel i5 processor running at 2.4GHz, 8GB of RAM and a 237GB SSD drive with 210GB free.
While my review period was short at only a week this all metal unit was lovely to use.
As those who read my launch report at the end of November will know my first task was to upgrade from Windows 10 v1511 to the ‘Anniversary’ v1607 just over 3 hours in time but it is a different operating system and while touch is still what Windows 10 was made for even on this non touch machine there are great advantages to be had from v 1607. According to someone in the know this will be the last huge upgrade and from 2017 smaller but more frequent Windows updates will take place.
In use I was able to switch between programs seamlessly and everything ran smoothly, I have no real complaints and surely soon the ‘Anniversary’ update will come pre-installed with all new machines.
The exact specs will vary according to which outlet you buy it from and if I could choose maybe a larger SSD would be my choice.
Currently the nearest match I can find is sold by Amazon for £484.43 with free delivery although that has an i3 processor
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