Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) Review: Lightweight But Lacks Power

Acer has thrown me for a loop with its latest laptop, the Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44). A mid-range laptop, this 16-inch laptop is one of the lightest I’ve reviewed this year. At a mere 2.7 pounds, the Edge puts a lot of 13 and 14-inch laptops to shame. But Acer continued to sweeten the pot with an alluring OLED display and one of the best webcams of the year. And it only costs $1,300, which is pretty good for a mid-tier machine.

But before you fall head over heels, there are some trade-offs here that can’t be overlooked. The Edge 16 is an all-AMD affair, which frankly, I love. But the Ryzen 7 8840U CPU places the laptop firmly in the light-to-mid productivity range of laptops. It’s fine, but what’s unforgivable is the battery life, which falls short of six hours. The Edge 16 is truly a must-see, but it lacks the ingredients to be a true blockbuster.

About this review: Acer sent us a Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) for the purposes of this review. The company had no input in this article, and did not see its contents before publishing.

Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44)

Ultralight chassis, mid-range performance

At 2.7 pounds, the Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) is an absolutely waifish laptop, putting smaller laptops to shame with their bulk. But that’s not all. The laptop also has a jaw-dropping OLED display and one of the best webcams this year. However, all that slimness comes at the cost of performance and battery life, which leave something to be desired.

Pros

• Super lightweight frame
• Stunning OLED display
• Superb webcam

Cons

• Weak performance
• Short battery life
• Poor audio

Pricing and availability

The Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) is currently available at Acer’s website as well as Amazon for around $1,300. It features AMD as I mentioned, starting with a 3.3-GHz AMD Ryzen 7 8840U processor with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, a 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD, AMD Radeon 780M Graphics, and a 16-inch, 16:10, 3200 x 2000, 120Hz refresh rate display with a 1-millisecond response rate.

Acer knows that variety is the spice of life and, as such, has a few more models for you to consider. For $999, there’s the SFE16-43-R2Y6 configuration, which brings an AMD Ryzen 7840 CPU to the mix.

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Design and ports

I can’t believe it’s so light!

It’s astounding. Even my boyfriend came up to me with the Edge 16 in his hands and an incredulous look in his eyes. “What is this?” he demanded. “The Acer Swift Edge 16. Why?” I answered. “It’s so light!” he replied.

And indeed, he’s right. The Edge 16 is so light, I even thought Acer had mistakenly sent me a dummy shell model. But no, I hit the power button/fingerprint reader and the dainty device sprung to life, dazzling me with its mesmerizing OLED display (more on that in a few), surrounded by some rather thick bezels particularly on the top and bottom. The keyboard deck, like the majority of the chassis, is made of ultra-light Olivine Black magnesium-aluminum alloy. The backlit keyboard sits above the palm rest in a shallow recess.

The lid is solid black except for the shiny small Acer emblem located at the top center. Make sure you have a microfiber cloth nearby, as the lid will quickly pick up fingerprints. Flip the laptop over, and you’ll find four raised dark gray rubber feet, ten screws, and an air vent big enough to see the pair of stereo fans and some of the heat pipe. The speakers are along the sides towards the front of the system.

With such a lean frame, there isn’t much room for ports or slots, and yet Acer fits just enough, so you could create a viable workstation if necessary. The notebook has two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a pair of USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a slot for a microSD card, an HDMI 2.1 port. A headset jack, and a Noble lock slot.

By now, you’re probably wondering just how light the Edge 16 is? The notebook measures 14.1 x 9.7 x 0.51 inches and weighs a scant 2.7 pounds. That’s almost as light as the LG Gram Pro 16 (2.64 pounds, 14.1 x 9.9 x 0.48 ~ 0.5 inches). But the Acer is definitely lighter than the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge (3.4 pounds, 14 x 10.1 x 0.48 inches), Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (3.7 pounds, 13 x 9.4 x 0.72 inches), and Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i 16 (Intel, 2024) (4.3 pounds, 14.02 x 9.88 x 0.69 inches).

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Display, audio, and webcam

Dazzling OLED display with a webcam to match

I will never get tired of staring into an OLED display. The colors are so vivid, you can almost see the afterimage when you close your eyes. The Edge 16 has one of Acer’s CineCrystal 16-inch OLED non-touch panels. The 3.2K display is DisplayHDR TrueBlack 500 certified, which means deeper, more defined blacks, which comes in handy during darker scenes.

It definitely helped as I watched the trailer for “Back on the Strip.” With many scenes awash in lurid neons, actor Wesley Snipes’ ebony skin seemed to glow. The sharpness was such that I could see the intricate details in Snipes’ baby blue Versace shirt as well as a few fine wrinkles near his brow line.

The jaw-dropping panel continued to impress when I measured for color gamut and brightness. The screen hit 100% on both the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts with results of 97% for Adobe sRGB and 95% on NTSC. And for brightness, my light meter yielded a measurement of 393.6 nits, which is a stone’s throw from the 400 nits that Acer estimated.

The thing I like about web cameras: I keep getting older, and they just keep getting higher resolutions, or whatever Matthew McConaughey said. The Edge 16 boasts a 2560 x 1440 webcam that delivers beautiful stills and video, making the need for an external cam unnecessary. The camera did a fantastic job of capturing not only the color of my lime green top, but the blue, purple, pink, orange, and green in my locs. Plus, the detail is sharp enough that you can read the text on my shirt barring the slight blowout on the left side. I was surprised that Acer didn’t install a physical shutter to give users a way to manually keep potential peepers out.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but most bottom-mounted speakers are doing the laptops they’re attached to a disservice. The notebook is already fighting a battle to get enough air through to keep things cool and push sound through relatively tiny speaker enclosures. Why put the speakers in a position where they’ll potentially be muffled? That’s what happened to the Edge 16’s speakers, tragically muffled when pressed against my juicy thighs. To be fair, using the laptop on a desk turns the flat surface into a rudimentary amplifier, although it doesn’t add that much of a boost.

When I listened to Vince Staples’ “MAMA’S BOY,” I immediately noticed the weak low-end and what was there was hollow. The electronic instruments had an ethereal underwater sound that certain genres of music employ. The electronic flute bordered on being tinny while Staples’ laid-back vocals flowed through. The audio volume isn’t much to write home about, even with the DTS Audio Processing software. I wouldn’t recommend disabling the app, however, as what little volume the speakers can muster fades when the software is turned off.

Keyboard and touchpad

Type your troubles away

Springy feedback with generous spacing and large key caps. That’s what you can expect from the Edge 16’s full-sized keyboard and numpad. The backlighting is strong enough that I can read them in any setting, no matter the lighting situation. As for the actual typing, I reached 75 words per minute on the keyboard, which is a little better than my usual 70 wpm.

The touchpad is made from OceanGlass, plastics recycled from the ocean. Aside from being environmentally friendly, the input device is smooth with plenty of real estate and good palm rejection. As with most touchpads, performing Windows 11 multigestures was a breeze. The bottom corners depress with an audible click.

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Performance

Never send a U-series chip to do an H-series’ job

The Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) has an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U CPU with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. That U series designation lets us know the processor is designed to focus on power efficiency in lieu of performance. That doesn’t mean that the Edge 16 can’t handle a beefy workload. On the contrary, the laptop had no problem juggling my 70 Google Chrome tabs with its wild array of G-Suite apps, YouTube videos, social media and news sites while doing some light photo editing. So feel free to work to your heart’s content.

But while the U series CPU is capable when it comes to actual power, it can’t match up to performance-tuned H series chips, whether they’re AMD or Intel. Even Qualcomm’s new Elite X processor gave the Edge 16 a run for its money. There were, of course, a few exceptions. When I ran the PCMark 10 benchmark with the laptop plugged in, the Edge 16 scored 6,803, while the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i 16 (Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU) and LG Gram Pro 16 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU) reached 7,025 and 6,084 respectively.

During the Geekbench 6 test, the Edge only managed to defeat the Gram Pro 16 in the single-thread test. The Acer fell short of the rest of the competing systems, especially on the multi-thread benchmark. I saw similar results on Cinebench 2024. The Edge 16 fared somewhat better on the Crossmark benchmark, defeating the Samsung Galaxy Book Edge 16 (Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 CPU) while coming within a couple of points of matching the Surface Laptop 7 15 (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 CPU).

The integrated AMD Radeon 780M GPU, like most integrated graphics chips, is not really built for hardcore gaming or GPU-intensive tasks. You can definitely play some older and indie titles, but you’re definitely not going to play Cyberpunk 2077, Controlor God of War. Unless stuttering jumbles of unplayable gobbledygook is your jam, then by all means, give it a go. I did get a smooth playthrough of Hades IImy latest rogue-like obsession.

However, the Edge 16 didn’t beat any of the competing systems on the 3DMark Time Spy test. I didn’t expect the Acer to topple either the Gram Pro 16 or the IdeaPad Pro 5i 16 with their discrete graphics. But I was disappointed to see it didn’t do better against the notebooks with integrated graphics.

And while the gaming test was a bummer, the bigger disappointment was the battery life. Again, a U-series chip is designed to be power efficient. So I was surprised to see the notebook only lasted 5 hours and 22 minutes on the PCMark 10 battery test with the display brightness lowered to 200 nits. And yes, OLED displays can have an adverse effect on battery life, but not to this extent.

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Should you buy the Acer Swift Edge 16(SFE16-44)?

You should buy the Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) if:

• You want a super lightweight 16-inch laptop
• You want a laptop with an exquisite OLED display
• You want a laptop with a high-quality webcam

You shouldn’t buy the Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) if:

• You want a laptop with stronger performance
• You want a laptop with longer battery life

Man, I really like what Acer has going on here. The Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) has me in a chokehold with its barely-there, super-svelte design and captivating OLED panel. And I love that Acer slapped AMD components in this bad boy, since competition is great for the consumer and industry overall. Also, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt compelled to talk about a webcam in an intro or outro, but the 1440p shooter is just that good. As a mid-tier system, the price is definitely right.

However, I want more. I don’t want to sacrifice power and longevity in favor of slimness, something I’m forced to do with the Edge 16. If Acer went with an AMD H-series processor, I could make peace with the short battery life. (Not really though. Laptops, with the exception of gaming and workstation notebooks, need to last at least eight hours on a charge.) But as it stands, it’s a no from me dawg. If you want an ultra-thin laptop that has performance and longevity, check out the LG Gram Pro 16. Still, the Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44) is really for those looking for a big, gorgeous screen on an extremely lightweight laptop; for this group, the Edge 16 is a good choice.

Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-44)

Ultralight chassis, mid-range performance