In my world there are two physical spaces I fiercely protect; the padded notebook pocket in my backpack and a 12 square foot space in my raised garden beds I reserve for French beefsteak and Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomatoes.
For the last several months, I’ve had a new ultraportable notebook my back pack, Acer’s Swift5 sf 514-52T-51 MV. The Swift 5 is a Windows 10 portable that’s powered by an eighth generation Intel i7855OUY processor that has a boost speed of 4 GHZ.. The Swift 5 is small 12.95 by 8.9 by 0.59 inches and kisses the scale at only 2.19 pounds. Its base configuration: also includes 16 GB of system memory and a 512 GB SSD. two USB 3.0, one USB3.1 Type C and an HDMI out, headphone/microphone in port and Acer’s True Harmony audio technology driving two speakers round the configuration.
Provided by Acer for the purpose of this review, the AcerSwift 5 SF 514-52T-51 is available for $1399 at online sites such as Amazon.com
It's been a long time since i’ve been really impressed with a notebook, but the Swift 5 sets a new high bar for design, fit and finish and general performance.
I’ve reviewed thousands of notebooks over the years and was very impressed by the Swift 5’s overall construction. All the seams on its alloy case meet, there are no rough edges that interfere with this computer’s coming smoothly out of a book bag, purse or case.
The top and bottom of the SWift 5 are made from a stiff magnesium aluminum alloy.
I’m not as eagle-eyed as I once was when I’m younger so I really like the 14- inch 1920 by 1080 pixels screen that's standard on this computer.
The screen is bright enough to use comfortably on transcontinental flights or in a dimly lighted breakfast counter at an I-5 truck stop.displayed colors are vibrant and clear.
Battery life is well above average and in severasl tests of this notebook I turned the Swift 5 on at a coffee stop here in San Diego, closed the lid and didn’t open it up again until I had crossed over the elk infested Pacheco Pass, stopped for a bio break and caffeine refill near the intersection of US 101 and ca 152. After 300 miles with its screen lid shut, I still had about 60 percent battery charge remaining. Routinely, I’m getting about 7.75 hours of battery life from this system.
One of the concerns i’ve had about thin and light ultras compacts is: often times their keyboards seem to have way too much flex. This is absolutely not the case with the Acer Swift 5, Despite my ham-handed keyboarding, i”ve never noticed any flex in this notebook’s keyboard. I’m a fan of backlit keyboards and the Swift 5’s exceeded my expectations.
The performance of this notebook is better than i expected, helped in as large measure by this portable’s 16GB of system memory and its 256GB SSDI drive, plus its fifth generation processor, which can run at 4 GHz in boosted mode.the Swift 5 blazes through computationally spreadsheets and pixel infested Powerpoint presentations.
This notebook was designed to be small and light. It doesn’t include a LAN connector and its memory is directly soldered to its motherboard, the flip side is this notebook’s dual channel wireless transceiver, which has the bandwidth I need for diving down the Youtube.com hole or watching funny Viking sitcoms on Netflix.
I prefer to listen to streaming media audio using headphones and I think the audio of this notebook could be improved.
But, with a travel weight of about 2KG, the Swift 5 doesn’t destroy my shoulder and i no longer carry a large bottle of acetaminophen to deal with a sore shoulder caused by schlepping cumbersome, weighty portables all over an airport.--Jim Forbes on 2/28/2019.
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