Acer Launching Lightweight Swift 5 Laptop in Malaysia Soon – Should You Get It?

Acer just announced that the slim and light Swift 5 laptop is coming to Malaysia soon. Touted as the world’s lightest 15-inch laptop, the Swift 5 is a very interesting machine. But beyond its lightweight nature, is there anything else that’s interesting about the Swift 5? Let’s find out.

So what makes the Swift 5 such a light laptop? It comes down to the notebook’s build material. The top and bottom cover – as well as the palm rest area – of the Swift 5 are made out of magnesium-lithium alloy, and in normal usage, it should be durable enough. Of course, you can flex the laptop quite a bit, but the laptop still feels well-built.

Again, in normal usage, the Swift 5’s flex shouldn’t be too much of a concern.

Okay, so how light is the Swift 5? 990g. That’s right, this laptop weighs less than a kilogram, and that’s really impressive. There are only a handful of laptops in the market that are as lightweight as the Swift 5, and even fewer have a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS touch display like this machine.

Speaking of which, I’m a fan of the Swift 5’s minimal bezels – Acer claims an 87.6% screen-to-body ratio with this laptop. Thanks to this, the footprint of the laptop is reduced quite a bit, and it gives the Swift 5 a modern aesthetic. The best part is, unlike other ultraportables with slim bezels, Acer still manages to put the webcam at the top of the display. You won’t have to worry about awkward angles with this laptop.

Powering the Swift 5 is Intel’s latest eight generation Whiskey Lake processors, and the highest-end CPU that can be fitted into this laptop is the Core i7-8565U processor. Sporting four physical cores with eight threads, the i7-8565U has a base frequency of 1.8GHz. When you need more power, it can boost up to 4.6GHz – a respectable figure.

Basically, for a productivity-focused laptop, the Swift 5 has more than adequate performance level for its intended usage. On top of that, you should be able to do some light gaming on it too. While the Swift 5 doesn’t have any dedicated GPU, its integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 should be powerful enough to, say, play Dota 2.

Other specifications of the Swift 5 include up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM – although it’s not known yet if the Malaysian market will receive this much RAM – as well as up to 512GB of fast PCIe NVMe SSD storage. Aside from that, the Swift 5 also supports Windows Hello with the laptop’s built-in fingerprint reader.

Positioned at the bottom right side of the keyboard, the fingerprint sensor is easily accessible. While it may seem trivial, I’m glad the sensor isn’t placed in the trackpad itself like certain laptops. It takes up precious trackpad space, especially on a trackpad as compact as the one on the Swift 5.

The Acer Swift 5 will be available in two colours once it arrives in Malaysia: Charcoal Blue and Steel Grey. Unfortunately, Acer did not reveal the laptop’s local pricing yet, but expect it to cost a premium.

In the US, the Swift 5 retails from $1,099, which comes up to about RM4,595. That’s quite a hefty price tag – especially for the base model of the laptop – and at that price point, the Swift 5 would have to compete with plenty of other premium ultraportables.

Of course, the Swift 5 stands out from the crowd with its lightweight chassis and sleek design, but it needs more than that to make it a compelling laptop. For example, Acer promises up to 10 hours of battery life with the Swift 5; if the laptop can truly deliver this quoted battery life, it will make this notebook that much more attractive.

Should you get the Acer Swift 5? Well, it will largely depend on how much Acer will price the laptop. If priced well – and it can deliver a good user experience – the Swift 5 is a lightweight laptop to keep an eye on.