Acer Swift 1
What’s the story?
The Acer Swift 1 is one of the most affordable ultrabooks in the known universe. But how have they done that?
It has a mostly aluminium casing. It’s small and light, and its screen looks way better than those of the more basic laptops Acer sells for similar cash. The Swift 1 even has a backlit keyboard. Acer’s aim here is to trick us all into thinking this is basically an £800 laptop selling for less than half the cash.
Is it any good?
The illusion works, until you ask the Swift 1 to do more than the basics. It’s packing the Pentium N6000 – a processor so low-powered that this laptop doesn’t even need a fan.
Video editing, hardcore multitasking, Skyrim Special Edition — they’re all out. Even sauntering around Windows feels a bit leaden, which is not helped by the paltry 4GB of RAM.
The Acer Swift 1 is not a do-everything laptop, then, but it is one of the cheapest ways to do the basics on the go and in style.
We love the sharp and contrasty screen, even if the colour is weak. And while the trackpad is a tad spongy, nothing’s stopping you from adding a mouse… or a monitor, as there’s a full-size HDMI socket.
For browsing, streaming and
