Acer Swift Go 16 Review

The Swift series, one of Acer’s most attractive product lines, is currently undergoing a brand-new rebranding. Acer intends to sound younger by incorporating “X,” “Air,” and now “Go” into the name convention.

We will demonstrate the 16-inch Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71) today. It comes in many different configurations, depending on the display, for instance. Its top-tier model has a 3.2K OLED screen, while the entry-level model has a more practical 1920 x 1200 IPS screen.

The possibilities for processors are a little unclear right now, but we can be confident that it will include the Core i5-1335U and the Core i7-13700H. Both the Core i7-1355U and Core i7-13620H should be included.

However, since the Swift series has always succeeded in this area, the product’s lightness would be the most persuasive selling point. You will discover more about that shortly, but let’s first glance at the specifications page.

Inside the Box

A 65W USB Type-C charger and some paperwork were included in the delivery. At least at this point will the U-series CPU be available. Power adapters rated at 100W should be included with laptops powered by H-series processors.

Design

We mustn’t pass up the chance to compliment the Swift Go 16’s (SFG16-71) aesthetic. It has rounded corners, flat surfaces, and sharp edges. This contributes to the exterior’s luxury appearance together with the all-aluminum construction.

The laptop is 1.60 kg in weight, which is excellent for a 16-inch device. Its 14.9mm thickness is likewise not too bad. With so much portability, one may anticipate some stiffness flaws. This is undoubtedly false, as we could only detect a tiny amount of flex when we turned the lid.

Sadly, it cannot be opened with just one hand. The rubber feet at the bottom half of the lid, however, start to hold the desk once you travel past 80 to 85 degrees, which raises the base’s back off the ground. The fans within have greater room to breathe as a result. The display’s bezels, as you can see, are quite narrow. The camera, which has a 1440p video resolution and has Temporal Noise Reduction, is more striking in this case.

As we turn to look at the base, we can see a NumberPad and a backlit keyboard. The feedback is quite clicky, however the key travel is not particularly lengthy. This makes us happy with how comfortable typing is. Additionally, the keyboard’s power button, which is in the top-right corner, also functions as a fingerprint reader.

This is advantageous because it ensures that a fingerprint reader won’t obstruct the touchpad’s space in the future. Additionally, Acer gave this notebook a sizable surface area. It not only responds quickly, but it also boasts an OceanGlass-based texture that is exceptionally smooth. Essentially, this is plastic that has found its way into the water. As a result, it is not only cosy but also environmentally friendly.

Two speaker cutouts are positioned on the device’s bottom. The ventilation grill is also located on the bottom panel. The cooling fans receive cool air from it. The heat is subsequently released as exhaust through a sizable vent on the base’s back, virtually blowing downward towards the display’s bottom.

Ports

Two Thunderbolt ports are located on the left, followed by an HDMI 2.1 jack, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and two Thunderbolt ports. Then, on the right, there is a MicroSD card slot, an Audio jack, another USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a security lock slot.

DISPLAY

The WUXGA IPS panel on the Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71) has the product number BOE NE160WUM-N61 (BOE0A6C). It has a refresh rate of 60Hz. Its dimensions are 16.0′′ (40.6 cm) in diagonal and 1920 x 1200p in resolution. In addition, the screen aspect ratio is 16:9, the pixels have a 141 ppi density, and their dimensions are 0.18 x 0.18 mm. When seen from a distance of at least 61 cm, the screen can be deemed Retina (at this distance, the typical human eye cannot discern the individual pixels).

There are pleasant viewing angles. To assess the quality, we present photographs taken from various perspectives.

With a maximum variance of just 3%, the maximum measured brightness is 477 nits (cd/m2) in the centre of the screen and 470 nits (cd/m2) on average throughout the surface. On a white screen with maximum brightness, the Correlated Colour Temperature is 6360K.You can see how the display works from a uniformity perspective in the example below. In this example, at 29% Brightness (White level = 144 cd/m2, Black level = 0.08 cd/m2), the graphic below depicts how things are for operating brightness levels (about 140 nits). If you want to use the laptop for work that requires a high level of colour sensitivity, values of dE2000 > 4.0 should not occur (a maximum tolerance of 2.0). The 1700:1 contrast ratio is excellent.

We want to offer you a brief introduction to the sRGB colour gamut and the Adobe RGB to make sure we are all on the same page. The CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram is a good place to start because it depicts the range of colours that can be seen by the human eye and helps you understand how well the colour gamut is covered.

The standard colour gamut (sRGB), which is utilised by millions of people on HDTV and the web, may be seen inside the black triangle. Regarding Adobe RGB, it is used for printing in professional cameras, monitors, etc. In essence, the black triangle contains all of the colours that are often utilised, making it a crucial component of a mainstream notebook’s colour quality and colour accuracy.

However, we’ve also included other colour spaces, such as the widely used DCI-P3 standard for film production and the digital UHD Rec. 2020 standard. However, Rec.2020 is still a thing of the future, and current displays struggle to adequately depict that. The so-called Michael Pointer gamut, often known as Pointer’s gamut, which stands for the hues that surround us every day in nature, is also featured.

The colour gamut coverage of the Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71) is depicted by the yellow dotted line.

Its display supports 72% of DCI-P3 and 86% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE 1976.

The ideal colour temperature (6500K) is delivered by our “Design and Gaming” profile at 140 cd/m2 brightness and sRGB gamma mode.

With 24 frequently used colours, including light and dark human skin, blue skies, green grass, orange, etc., we evaluated the display’s accuracy. Results can be viewed both under factory settings and while using the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71) test results with the default settings (left) and the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right) are shown below for comparison.

The next image demonstrates how well the display can simulate extremely dark areas of an image, which is crucial for watching films or playing video games in dimly lit environments.

The image’s right side shows the display with “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated, while the left side shows the display with its default settings. The grayscale is located on the horizontal axis, and the luminance of the display is located on the vertical axis. You can quickly see for yourself on the two graphs below how your display handles the deepest nuances, but bear in mind that this also varies on your display’s settings, calibration, viewing angle, and external lighting conditions.

Gaming Capabilities or Response

Using the traditional “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” methods, we measure the pixel response times from 10% to 90% and the opposite.

33 ms were captured as Fall Time + Rise Time.

Then, using the standard “Gray-to-Gray” method, we test the pixel response times between 10% and 90% of the amplitude and 50% White to 80% White.

Health Impact: PWM (Screen flickering)

Monitor brightness can be easily adjusted using pulse-width modulation (PWM). The backlight’s light output is not reduced when the brightness is reduced; instead, the electronics turn the backlight on and off at a frequency that is undetectable to the human eye. These light impulses hurt your eyes because the brightness doesn’t fluctuate while the light/no-light time ratio does. Our specialised article on PWM has further information about that.

The display on the Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71) doesn’t flicker at any brightness setting. This makes using the screen for extended periods of time fairly comfortable.

Health Impact: Blue light emissions

By installing our Health-Guard profile, you may get rid of PWM and lessen the hazardous Blue Light emissions while maintaining the perceptually accurate colours of the screen. If you’re not familiar with blue light, the short explanation is that it emits rays that are bad for your skin, eyes, and overall health. More details on that are available in our special article on blue light.

By installing our Health-Guard profile

Glossy-coated displays can occasionally be uncomfortable in bright environments. When the display is off and the measuring angle is 60°, we present the amount of reflection on the screen for the relevant laptop (in this case, the result is 51.1 GU).

Sound

The speakers on the Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71) deliver passable sound. However, there are some clarity issues in the low, mid, and high tones as well.

performance

We were able to find this gadget with either the Intel Core i5-1335U or Core i7-13700H as of the time of writing this evaluation. However, according to the information we have, the Core i3-1315U, Core i7-1355U, Core i5-13420H, Core i5-13500H, and Core i7-13620H processors should be included with the laptop.

3D rendering

Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)

GPU Options

The laptop only has an integrated graphics solution available.

Gaming test

Temperatures, comfort, and Battery Life

Motherboard

In this test, we employ 100% of the CPU cores while keeping an eye on the chip’s temperature and frequency. The first column displays a computer’s response to a brief load (2–10 seconds), the second column mimics a demanding activity (15–30 seconds), and the third column provides a useful indication of how well the laptop performs under prolonged loads, such as those required for video rendering.

Average P-core frequency; Average E-core frequency; CPU temp.; Package Power

Intel Core i5-1335U (15W TDP)	0:02 – 0:10 sec	0:15 – 0:30 sec	10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71)	3.29 GHz @ 2.46 GHz @ 65°C @ 45W	3.06 GHz @ 2.37 GHz @ 71°C @ 42W	1.80 GHz @ 1.98 GHz @ 61°C @ 28W

Comfort during heavy load

Despite having two fans inside, the laptop doesn’t make a lot of noise even when it’s working quite hard. Additionally, the outside temperature is just about 33°C at its highest.

Battery

Now that Windows Better performance is enabled, the screen brightness is set to 120 nits, and all other programmes are closed other than the one we are using to evaluate the notebook, we do the battery tests. A 53Wh battery pack is included with our setup. It can be used for 10 hours of movie playing or 17 hours and 47 minutes of web browsing.

Browsing

Disassembly, Upgrade options, and Maintenance

There are a total of 10 Torx-head screws that must be removed in order to gain access to this laptop’s internals. The bottom panel should then be lifted apart from the chassis after being pricked with a plastic tool.

We can see a 53Wh battery pack inside. Unplug the battery connector and remove the two Phillips-head screws holding the battery in place to get rid of it.

The memory is soldered to the motherboard in this instance. The notebook is available with either 8 or 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. There has one M.2 PCIe x4 slot for storage, which supports Gen 4 SSDs.

Two tiny fans are used to remove heat from the chassis using one heat pipe that is connected to a lengthy heat sink.

Our Verdict

We had a great tool in our office today. With a few small exceptions, it is a device that will meet all of your demands for your home and workplace. It boasts a modern appearance that is well-built, slim, and light. You can feel the superior spark of the goods and feel secure because of the robust structure and aluminium body panels.

Its hardware, which ranges from reasonably powerful to a beast, is interesting. The majority of the well-known low-intensity games on the market can still be played, despite the lack of dedicated graphics.

The display, though, might be its best feature. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure the OLED option for ourselves.Its IPS unit, on the other hand, should never be tampered with.

excellent contrast ratio. 86% of the sRGB colour spectrum is covered. It’s interesting that while the colour accuracy is horribly incorrect, the whole coverage is only slightly off. The Average dE in question is 7.1.

Thank goodness, our gaming and web design profile may lower it to a number of 1.8, which is perfectly acceptable for professional work. Additionally, despite having a rather high maximum brightness, the backlight of this monitor doesn’t regulate its brightness via PWM.

So what are the shortcomings I mentioned? The memory is soldered to the motherboard, so let’s start there. You essentially have two choices for LPDDR5 RAM: 8GB or 16GB. Honestly, if you’re into video editing, this could be a touch low. The sound quality is another unimpressive feature. Although the speakers are a little too quiet, it is not horrible.

Positively, you receive a QHD Web camera, which is excellent for conference calls. Additionally, it has a good assortment of ports, including a MicroSD card slot, two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, and more.

The Acer Swift Go 16 (SFG16-71) is the best laptop you can get for portability, a great visual experience, and a respectable level of power.

Pro’s & Con’s