Make it PC on yourself

Why agonise over which superpowered laptop to blow your life savings on when one of these budget models can do the job?

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Acer Swift

What’s the story? 

The Acer Swift 1 is one of the most affordable ultrabooks in the known universe. But how have they done that?

It has a mostly aluminium casing. It’s small and light, and its screen looks way better than those of the more basic laptops Acer sells for similar cash. The Swift 1 even has a backlit keyboard. Acer’s aim here is to get us thinking this is basically a R16 000 laptop selling for less than half the cash.

Is it any good?

The illusion works, until you ask the Swift 1 to do more than the basics. It’s packing the Pentium N6000 – a processor low-powered enough that this laptop doesn’t even need a fan.

Video editing, hardcore multitasking, Skyrim Special Edition — with 4GB of RAM, this is not really the best machine for those activities.

The Acer Swift 1 is not a do-everything laptop, then, but it is one of the cheapest ways to do the basics on the go and in style.

We love the sharp and contrasty screen, even if the colour isn’t brilliant. And while the trackpad is a tad spongy, nothing’s stopping you from adding a mouse… or a monitor, as there’s a full-size HDMI socket.

For browsing, streaming and admin, the N6000 holds up just fine. And this thing isn’t going to look out of place if you pull it out in a cafe full of people tapping away on MacBooks.

Battery life only adds to the portable cred: you won’t get the 16hrs Acer claims, but it managed 10.5hrs of video streaming for us.

This is a case of the style becoming the substance: a slim and light laptop that looks and feels good. Just don’t buy one for gaming.
R6 000 / hificorp.co.za