In 1975, the world was introduced to the IBM 5100. It’s perhaps the first ever laptop, in the sense that it was a ‘portable computer‘. The younger ones among you probably won’t even recognise it as a true laptop, seeing as it weighed 25kg and had, quite literally, no battery life as you still needed to plug it in to a wall wart to actually use it.
These days though, being as light as possible with a long battery life is almost the norm among laptops, if you’re willing to ignore gaming laptops of course. Every manufacturer seems to have some variation of the ‘ultraportable, ultralight’ machine, and today we have Acer’s take on it for review: the Swift Edge 14 AI.
A true featherweight champ
This year’s Swift Edge 14 AI is Acer’s latest attempt at the sub-1kg laptop, a curious category of laptops that has seemingly cropped out of nowhere over the last couple of years. It’s not the thinnest, nor is it the lightest, but it certainly ticks all the important boxes; it measures as little as 7.4mm thin and weighs in at a mere 990g.
It achieves this with a stainless steel magnesium alloy chassis, and has a mostly minimalist design; the lid has an etched design complete with the Acer Swift logo. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t do enough justice at showcasing just how impressively light it is. My everyday work laptop weighs 1.23kg, which isn’t that much heavier than the Swift Edge 14 AI, but every time I grabbed the Swift Edge 14 AI I’m reminded by just how light it is as I barely feel it in my hand.
What I don’t like though is that it’s a little flimsy. It bends a little when you try to twist the chassis, and there’s a little deck flex too when I rest both hands on the keyboard. That being said, it’s not unusual to see this on these sub-1kg laptops, and it’s not even as bad as the Zenbook A16 I checked out recently.
The Swift Edge 14 AI, as you perhaps could tell from its name, has a 14-inch display, with the OLED panel pushing a 2880 by 1800 resolution in a 16:10 aspect ratio, replete with a 120Hz refresh rate and full coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. It results in deep blacks and rich, vivid colours, the type of visual experience that only really OLED can offer. The speakers paired with it though unfortunately weren’t a match for the display, as while it gets somewhat loud it’s not particularly great and lacks a little on the low end.
One curious feature is of course the Swift Edge 14 AI’s multi-control touchpad. There’s a neat-looking Swift logo lit up on the bottom of the touchpad, and by simply swiping my finger across it I unlock media controls and another swipe gets me controls for video calls.
It’s not a new feature from Acer, but it is the first time I’ve reviewed a laptop with one of these, and I kinda like it. No more fiddling around trying to remember what key to press with the Fn key to adjust the volume or pause my music, just a simple swipe and voila.
Solid everyday performance, excellent battery life
The Acer Swift Edge 14 AI was never going to win any awards for performance, and part of me thinks even Acer knows it. That’s because while it does come with Intel Panther Lake processors, they’re not the attention-grabbing H-series silicon. Instead, our model comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 355, mated to 32GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 1TB SSD.
Overall though, it’s fine. Day-to-day use was snappy and while not amazing, the processor was more than capable of handling the multitude of Chrome windows and other random apps in the background like Steam, Discord and Spotify; I never found myself waiting for it to respond while I was working on it.
Benchmark tests seem to reflect this, with results that are mostly up to par; the only odd result seemed to be in Cinebench 2026 multi where it scored a little lower than similar hardware.
As for games, the Intel Graphics integrated GPU with its four Xe cores was never going to match discrete graphics, but it does hold up well once I pushed it. You will want to turn on FSR or XeSS, but I still managed to get a mostly playable experience on titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Sid Meier’s Civilization VII.
| Game | FPS | Notes |
| Black Myth Wukong | ~48FPS | FHD+, low settings, FSR and frame gen |
| Total War: 3 Kingdoms | ~79FPS | FHD+, low settings |
| Marvel Rivals | ~35FPS | FHD+, low settings, XeSS |
| Marvel Rivals | ~37FPS | FHD+, low settings, FSR; higher 1% lows |
| Sid Meier’s Civilization VII | ~30FPS | FHD+, medium settings, FSR3 |
| Sid Meier’s Civilization VII | 14s/turn | Turn time benchmark |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | ~40FPS | FHD+, low settings, XeSS 2.0 |
Battery life meanwhile was excellent, with the Swift Edge 14 AI more than comfortably handling a day’s worth of work with brightness between 60-100%. Your mileage may vary of course, but I think if you’re okay with dimming it down you could ostensibly get closer to one and a half or two days of use out of it.
The Swift Edge 14 AI also luckily dodges the trap of going too thin to the point of only offering USB-C ports. In fact, I’m happy to report that it not only has two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports but also two USB-A 3.2 ports, a HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5mm audio jack.
One minor nitpick I have with the Swift Edge 14 AI though was that it came pre-loaded with quite a lot of bloatware and ads, resulting in various pop-ups and windows appearing during the first couple of hours with the laptop. For the more technically savvy, a fresh Windows install should do the trick, or you could also simply just uninstall the bloatware one-by-one.
Great option for anyone with a weight requirement
If you’re someone who needs a lightweight laptop, then the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI makes a lot of sense. I mean, yes there are compromises like the build quality and the bloatware, but it becomes much more appealing when you check out its price tag.
If you want a sub-1kg laptop, your options include the 0.99kg Asus Zenbook A14 with a Snapdragon X2 Elite, priced at RM7,199. Then there’s the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Ultra Aura Edition that starts at RM7,044, with similar specs to the Swift Edge 14 AI while slightly lighter at 975g. If you’re willing to cheat, there’s also the Microsoft Surface Pro 13″, a Snapdragon X2 Elite-powered Windows tablet at just 895g without keyboard, but that starts at RM6,999 for just 256GB of storage.
That actually puts the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI in a rather good position, as compared to its sub-1kg competitors you’re getting more hardware-per-ringgit. It starts at just RM5,899 for the base model with the Intel Core Ultra 5 and goes for RM6,999 for the Core Ultra 7 model we have for review. It’s still not cheap, but compared to the rest of the sub-1kg crowd, it’s decent value.
Of course, all of this is dependent on whether or not going below the one kilo mark is that important to you or not. Personally, I think the MacBook Neo that’s a little heavier at 1.2kg is perhaps a better deal, seeing as it starts at just RM2,999, but I do know people who really do care about their laptop and backpack being as light as possible.
If every gram in your backpack matters, the Swift Edge 14 AI deserves a place on your shortlist. It isn’t perfect, but in an industry ravaged by components shortages and price hikes, it’s one of the better-value options available among today’s sub-1kg Windows laptops.
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