Acer Swift Edge 14 AI

This is a stylish, well-built and long-lasting choice for anyone seeking a powerful, sub-1kg laptop

- TIM DANTON

Windows laptops must work hard to lift themselves from the pack these days. Sometimes that comes in ultra slim designs such as the Honor MagicBook Art 14 (see issue 373, p59), sometimes in twistable form factors such as the Lenovo Yoga 9 2-in-1 opposite. Here, Acer complements its usual aggressive pricing with a striking white design - note the embossed zigzag patterns on the lid - and a high-quality matte display.

The Swift Edge 14 AI isn’t slim by modern standards, measuring 16.6mm compared to 11.5mm for the MagicBook, but that creates more room for cooling. This is evident in the extra power Acer draws from the Core Ultra 7 258V processor compared to the Yoga, with 11,066 in Geekbench 6's multicore section versus 9,929, and 621 in Cinebench 2024 compared to 468. Honor uses a Core Ultra 7 255H chip with 16 cores to the 258V's eight, and was faster still: 14,295 in Geekbench 6 and 773 in Cinebench.

Where Acer wins is gaming. Take Shadow of the Tomb Raider with High settings: the Swift Edge averaged 45fps at 1080p versus 26fps for the Yoga and 25fps for the MagicBook, and also raced ahead in Dirt 5 at 1200p with 35fps at High settings compared to 23fps for the Yoga and 33fps for Honor's offering.