Acer Swift Go 16 Review: Power And Endurance At An Affordable Price

In this current economy, price is a serious factor when choosing a laptop, even more so than specs, displays and features. Acer’s here to answer the call for a value-focused laptop with the Acer Swift Go 16. Priced well below $1,000, the Swift Go 16 is a stylish, lightweight laptop that packs a surprising amount of power. Plus, it’s got an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) so you can take all those shiny new AI apps that are launching left and right. Not only that, it’s got stamina lasting over 10 hours, making it a contender for the best laptops for battery life as well as one of the best Acer laptops in general.

But sadly, there are a couple of things holding the Acer Swift Go 16 back from landing a spot among the best laptops on the market. The display could use some work as it’s both dim and dull. And the speakers need a total overhaul. The webcam, while passable, could use some work. But mobile professionals and students looking for a powerful laptop with solid endurance will find a great notebook in the Acer Swift Go 16.

About this review: Acer supplied XDA with a review unit of its Acer Swift Go 16 2024. It had no input on the content of this article.

Acer Swift Go 16 (2024)

Great value

Great performance with a few compromises

The Acer Swift Go 16 combines great overall and graphics performance with AI capabilities, over 10 hours of battery life in a stylish, sleek chassis for under $1,000. However, the laptop is stymied by a dim, dull display and weak speakers.

Pros

• Excellent overall and graphics performance
• Great battery life
• Lightweight, stylish design
• Competitive pricing

Cons

• Dull, dim display
• Weak audio

Pricing and availability

Acer offers several configurations of the 2024 Acer Swift Go 16. My review unit costs $999 and has a 2.3-GHz Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor with 32GB of LPDDR5X 5,400 MT/s RAM, a 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen 4 SSD, Intel Arc Graphics, and a 16-inch, 1920×1200 touch display. But not so fast! If you are a Costco member, you can snatch up this configuration for $100 cheaper, making it an excellent laptop under $1,000.

Priced at an attractive $849, the Swift Go 16’s base model has an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 3200 x 2000, 120Hz, OLED touch panel.

Design and ports

Understated bling

Leave it to Acer to employ some stealthy bling. When I first unboxed the Swift Go 16, I was ready to check “boring design” off in my cons box. And then the light hit the lid of the laptop’s Steel Gray aluminum chassis, revealing the chamfered edges with a deliberate shine. It’s a nice addition to the glossy Acer logo embedded at the top in the center of the slight lip.

Flip the laptop over to see the gray aluminum bottom panel. You also get a good view of the hinges, two rows of vents, four gray rubber feet, a pair of speaker grilles towards the front and ten black screws holding the undercarriage in place.

Opening the laptop reveals the large keyboard residing in its recess with the touchpad directly below. And as the laptop opens, the hinges raise the keyboard dock ever so slightly, allowing more air to get to the dual fans in Acer’s TwinAir Cooling system. It also puts the keyboard on a slight incline, which makes for a more comfortable typing experience.

The top and bottom bezels encasing the display are a little thick for my taste, but I do like the little Acer emblem peeking out on the bottom bezel.

1:55

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The Swift Go 16 has a good cast of ports such as a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, microSD card slot, headset jack and a Kensington lock slot on the right. The laptop has a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left alongside a HDMI 2.1 port and another USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port.

Weighing in at 3.8 pounds, the Swift Go 16 is noticeably lighter than the 2024 HP Spectre x360 16 (4.5 pounds), albeit slightly thicker. The Lenovo Slim 7i 14 (3.2 pounds) and Lenovo Yoga 7i are lighter, but they’re also 14-inch systems.

Display, webcam, and audio

Everything needs work

Matte displays, while extremely glare resistant, which makes them great for outdoor use, are susceptible to dimness and duller color. Such is the case with the Swift Go 16’s 16-inch, WUXGA (1920×1200) 16:9 aspect ratio touch display. As I watched an episode of “Riches” on Amazon Prime, I noticed the normally rich bronze skin of the actors looked a little ashy. The bright red wall looked washed out while the rich eggplant sweater worn by actor Nadia Williams, almost looked black. The details were sharp enough to see the two moles around actor Jasette Amos’ right eye as well as the ribbing in the off-color sweater.

Measuring the display’s color gamut, I discovered that while the screen hit 100% of the sRGB gamut, the Adobe sRGB and DCI-P3 gamut only reached 81%. And the NTSC gamut only reproduced 76%. Acer has the display brightness rated for 350 nits, which isn’t all that bright to begin with. However, the panel is even dimmer at 300 nits.

One bright spot is the touchscreen’s agility and responsiveness. Laying the screen flat made it easy for me to doodle in MS Paint. And since the display has a matte finish, it didn’t pick up fingerprints as much as a glossy display would. I still wish Acer had included a stylus of some sort.

Despite having a webcam that captures stills in 2560×1440, I was disappointed by the lack of detail. You can barely make out the pattern on my black lace shirt. It just looks like little fuzzy blobs running the length of my shirt. My skin and the various shades of red in the painting in the background looked OK, however. Ultimately, if you want sharp detail, you’ll want to check out our best webcams page.

You’ll also want to get a pair of headphones. The bottom-mounted speakers just don’t sound good, even with DTS:X Ultra software enabled. I was immediately turned off as soon as I started listening to Coco Jones “Spend It.” The flute was distorted, the bass was nonexistent and at full volume, the audio sounded tinny. Jones’ alto was the only thing that sounded good and that was in spite of the speakers, not because of the preinstalled software. And whatever you do, do not turn off the Internal Speakers button in the DTS:X Ultra software unless you want even worse results.

2:25

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Keyboard and touchpad

Quiet and comfortable

Even though I don’t use the num pad often, I’m never going to say no when one’s included. But that’s not all Acer added to the Swift Go 16’s full-sized, island-style keyboard. You have a fingerprint reader hiding out in the power button. A special key emblazoned in the Acer “A” in the Function key row, launches AcerSense, a diagnostics hub where you can check your laptop’s health. You can also tweak the performance mode, battery charge mode and the BluelightShield. And if the need arises, you can contact Acer Tech Support.

Finally, there’s the Microsoft Copilot button in the bottom row, next to the arrow keys, which launches the AI chatbot.

I had a comfortable time typing the review on the Swift Go 16’s keyboard. Outside of tiny clicks now and then, the keyboard is fairly quiet. The keys are nice and springy and made sure that I didn’t bottom out. Backlighting is nice and bright and was easy to read in a darkened setting.

The touchpad, made from OceanGlass (recycled ocean-bound plastic waste) is very smooth and has excellent palm rejection. Whether I was scrolling through a news article or using multitouch gestures to zoom-in and out, the touchpad offered near-instant response.

Performance

A knockout performance

The laptop’s 2.3-GHz Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor with 32GB of RAM and integrated Intel Arc Graphics gave Acer a clean sweep during both my real world and synthetic testing. The processor has 16 cores, 22 threads, and a 25MB cache and runs 45W TDP. However, it’s capable of reaching 155W. And as the newest member of the AI PC club, the Swift has an NPU, which takes care of all the AI-powered apps, so don’t be afraid to make prodigious use of the Copilot button along with Acer PurifiedView and PurifiedVoice to see what AI can do.

The laptop pushed through my 80 open Google Chrome tabs with its mix of G-Suite apps, social media, YouTube videos and news and shopping websites, barely breaking a sweat. The Swift Go 16 remained unbothered throughout the course of the synthetic tests. For instance, on the PCMark 10 benchmark, which measures overall CPU performance, the Swift Go 16 produced 7,434. The Slim 7i 14 and Spectre x360 16 with their Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPUs got 6,805 and 6,668, respectively. The Yoga 7 14 with its AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor came the closest to Acer with 7,216.

The Swift Go 16 continued with its winning ways during Geekbench 6, scoring 2,418 on the single-core portion of the test and 13,144. Both scores are enough to keep competing systems at bay. I saw the same result on the Crossmark and Cinebench 2024 benchmarks. The Acer also dominated on the 3DMark Time Spy (4,008) and Time Spy Extreme (1,937) benchmarks, which test graphics performance.

2:47

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Acer estimates that the Swift Go 16’s 65 Wh 4-cell Li-ion battery will last 12.5 hours of battery life (20 hours of video playback). I got 9 hours and 45 minutes of battery life during my real-time usage, which included several web meetings, writing this review, answering emails, checking my social media, and going down a few YouTube theory holes. I also ran the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery test which simulates an average workload including video conferencing, a spreadsheet and document script, running a few videos and other activities. I set the display brightness to 200 nits of brightness and put the power profile to best performance. The Swift Go 16 lasted 10 hours and 12 minutes.

Should you buy the Acer Swift Go 16?

You should buy the Acer Swift Go 16 if:

• You want a laptop with impressive performance
• You want a laptop with great battery life
• You want a laptop with a lightweight, stylish design
• You want a sub-$1,000 laptop

You shouldn’t buy the Acer Swift Go 16 if:

• You want a laptop with a bright, vivid display
• You want a laptop with good audio

Never sleep on Acer. Because its laptops will surprise you every time. Starting with the Acer Swift Go 16’s understated, yet slightly blingy design, the laptop zigs when you expect it to zag. Belying its relatively thin form factor, the laptop houses an Intel Ultra 9 processor and integrated graphics that not only stands toe-to-toe with its contemporaries, it surpasses them with ease. The 10+ hours of battery life will get you through the work day and then some, which will make mobile professionals and students alike pretty happy. And sweetening the pot is the price, which is well under $1,000. Don’t be surprised when the Swift lands on the best 16-inch laptops list.

However, there are some compromises being made to achieve that price. While I can appreciate a matte display, particularly in a touch panel, I do wish the panel was brighter and more vivid. The speakers are simply horrid and the webcam could definitely be better. But if you want a workhorse of a machine for under $1,000, the Acer Swift Go 16 is a great choice.

Acer Swift Go 16 (2024)

Great value

Great performance with a few compromises