The main focus Acer had when developing the S wift 5 SF515-51T was its weight, which the company wanted to be as low as possible. The project was successful: The slim notebook weighs just under one kilogram and therefore is one of the lightest 15.6-inch devices available. Currently, there is not a lot of competition for the Swift 5 to beat. The only similarly light-weight 15.6-inch notebook we found in our database was the.
We have therefore also included the two 14-inch devices and into our expanded comparison table. Despite their compact builds, both devices weigh more than the Swift 5. When holding the Swift 5 in your hands it feels as if it's simply an empty case. A press of the power button confirms otherwise.
Acer's laptop weighs only 999 grams. (Yes, we weighed it. Our scales displayed 998.5 grams precisely.) This is over 100 grams less than the - already very light -.The low weight is made possible by its light-weight build: Both the RAM and the SSD are firmly soldered onto the motherboard and cannot be removed.
Acer has also chosen a good-looking slim magnesium case. Our test unit is silver; the Swift 5 is also available in blue. The battery cannot be removed nor is there a maintenance hatch.
It is possible to remove the bottom cover - more on that later.The slim, light-weight case boasts perfect workmanship. The gap dimensions are great and there are no sharp edges.
However, the case is not immune to warping. Both the base unit and particularly the display cover can be warped significantly.
This is the price you have to pay for such a light build. Pressure on the back of the lid is not visible on the screen. The hinges keep the display in position, except for minimum wobbling.
The maximum opening angle is 180 degrees. KeyboardThe 15.6-inch device is equipped with a backlit chiclet keyboard that is made up of flat, smooth keys. Each key has short travel and a clear pressure point, but we feel that the actuation force could be slightly stronger. The keyboard gives way a little in the center while typing, but this was not particularly bothersome. The backlighting can be turned on and off via a function key (there is only one brightness level). Overall, Acer has equipped the Swift 5 with a decent keyboard, suitable for everyday tasks but not top of the range.
The Acer's panel already displays decent colors ex-works. We measured a Delta-E 2000 deviation of 2.10, which means it is within the ideal range of below 3. The display does not suffer from a blue cast and grayscales are well-balanced too. Calibrating the panel only improved things slightly. The color deviation dropped to 1.11 and the grayscales are displayed even better. The color-space coverage is promising as well: We measured coverage of 63% (AdobeRGB) and 98% (sRGB).You can use our color profile to improve the Swift 5's screen according to our calibration. However, the changes are hardly noticeable as the display is already well-calibrated ex-works.
Should you still want to use our color profile, please make sure that your device is equipped with the same display model (manufacturer + model number) as our test unit. Otherwise, using the color profile could make colors look even worse instead of improving them.
Manufacturers often use panels from different makes within one notebook series. This slim device runs on the ULV quad-core processor (TDP of 15 watts), which is based on the current Whiskey Lake architecture. The CPU offers sufficient power for all common areas of use and should satisfy the needs of most users. The Core i7 works at a base clock rate of 1.8 GHz and can reach turbo rates of 4.1 GHz (four cores), 4.5 GHz (two cores) or 4.6 GHz (one core).The Cinebench multithread tests we ran were completed at clock rates between 2.4 and 2.7 GHz. The single-thread tests resulted in clock rates from 3.8 to 4.6 GHz. These are the rates when connected to an external power supply. On battery, the CPU reaches speeds of 1.9 to 2.4 GHz (multithread) and 1.5 to 3 GHz (single thread).
The Cinebench R15 results are considerably lower at 64 points (single thread) and 336 points (multithread). Acer uses an NVMe SSD from SK Hynix that has a capacity of 512 GB. 440 GB of this is available to the user after initial setup. The remainder is taken up by the Windows operating system and Recovery partition. The transfer rates are good despite this model not belonging to the fastest NVMe SSDs around.The SSD cannot be exchanged for a faster model, as the storage device is firmly soldered onto the motherboard. However, the Swift 5 does have another free M.2 2280 slot that can be connected to a suitable SSD.
This slot only accepts NVMe SSDs; we tried connecting a SATA III model without success.Should there be a problem with the soldered-on SSD, the storage device could be turned off in the device's BIOS. Users would have to connect a second SSD in the M.2 slot and install Windows 10 on that in order to continue using the notebook. The Windows installer will find the Windows license key on its own in the BIOS. The Swift SF515 does not offer a dedicated GPU and uses Intel's integrated instead. The GPU clocks at between 300 and 1150 MHz. The results in the 3DMark benchmarks are normal for this GPU.
The Swift benefits from its RAM running in dual-channel mode as this makes better use of the integrated graphics chip. Therefore, the device offers higher performance than devices that only have single-channel RAM.The decoder that is integrated in the GPU can relieve CPU load when displaying videos in the usual formats such as H.264, HEVC/H.265 and VP9. This also includes videos with resolutions beyond Full HD. Due to the slim build of the SF515 combined with the strong quad-core processor, we expected that a hard-working cooling system would be necessary to keep the notebook cool enough. This is not the case. The cooling fan is usually turned off while idling or running at low load (for example during office applications) and the device is silent.
This means that the device can also be used in quiet surroundings or for work that requires high concentration. The cooling fan continues to lie low under maximum load and never becomes particularly loud. We measured 35 dB(A) during the stress test. Overall, the Swift and the have similar characteristics in regard to their noise emissions.