you know it's funny it seems like just yesterday I was making a video about the
thinnest notebook in the world and here I am doing the same damn thing again
meet the Acer Swift 7 it is even thinner
than the old King while costing significantly
less cooler Masters master case maker 5
features their free form modular system allowing you to customize adjust and
upgrade make it yours at the link in the video
description so naturally today's video is going to contain a lot of comparisons
to the previous finest notebook Champion
the HP Spectre 2016 so let's begin then
with the raw physical Impressions we will start of course with thickness or
thinness is the Acer Swift 7 thinner
than the HP Spectre the answer is yes
was it impossible for me to tell without
running down to the workshop for a level or a caliper tool also yes so then it
would appear that we've arrived at the point where declaring one's device to be
thinner is purely an exercise in bragging rights as opposed to a
meaningful Advantage for the actual user
so let's move on then on the bottom of the clam shell we find a unibody
aluminum design with an aluminum bottom plate that is more rigid in my hands and
squeaks less while it flexes making it
feel more premium but that ends up
actually performing worse in my Bend and
see if it stays bent test than the specter's aluminum carbon fiber hybrid
approach with that said it's definitely
not the worst I've seen so if you don't keep bowling balls in the same backpack
as your laptop this shouldn't be a huge issue and Acer comes back swinging with
the display get it swinging like on a
hinge anyway while HP may be very proud
of their Fancy Pants hidden hinge in practice Acer's more traditional hinge
design gives the display less Flex overall and more importantly brings
screen wobble back down to a level that I would consider acceptable
on the subject of acceptable let's talk
about IO HP crushes Acer in this
department with two Thunderbolt 3 ports
each capable of carrying a display Thunderbolt or USB 10 gbit data signal
and a third 5 GB USB port that doubles as a dedicated power input while Acer
brings only two 5 GB USB 3S to the back
end of its type-c connectors with only only one of them even capable of
carrying a DisplayPort signal I mean this is still better than Apple's
MacBook because at least I can use either of the included adapters HDMI or
usba and or third party ones that I purchased at the same time as charging
the device and at least it's got you know a headphone microphone combo Jack
but um but this is about as barebones as it
gets these days without being un reasonable Imo
Acer does make up some ground and then also loses some when we make our way to
the keyboard and trackpad the spectre's trackpad is simply put too small and the
Swift sevens is especially by comparison
glorious the extra width adds more
convenience than I would have at first expected and once I turned off enhanced
pointer Precision which is trash by the way and turn down the speed in Windows
to a reasonable level I was actually really impressed with it the keyboard
though is a bit more of a mixed bag for me the keys feel a bit spongy requiring
a lot of pressure to press down but without much of a tactile feel though as
far as typing speed goes while I don't like them they don't slow me down much
so I can't complain too much about that so I'll complain about the lack of a
backlight instead I mean how many fractions of a millimeter would that
have cost me here Acer no
backlight which brings us I guess finally then to specs and performance
eight gigs of RAM DDR3 RAM by the way a
256 gig SATA 3 SSD which was a
noticeable downgrade compared to hp's PCI Express based model and for the CPU
Acer has gone a very interesting route here opting for a 4 and2 watt Intel
uclass processor so I've got a core i5 7
y54 in mind instead of a normal 25 wat
notebook chip but what does that mean for performance performance then well
looking at a couple Choice benchmarks here we're going to be running anywhere
from 25 to 35% slower than hp's beast
but this comes with an advantage too so
let's get into some of the more experiential stuff battery life for the
Swift 7 is great and while cinebench
certainly ran slower it also ran without
turning on any kind of cooling fan and
without bringing the temperature of the bottom of the unit above slightly warm
to the touch which is damn impressive considering that it still has the power
to do the sorts of things that most people are interested in doing on their
Ultra portable notebooks like watching movies on the very good Gorilla Glass 4
top 13.3in 1080p IPS display or using
video chat applications to talk to their friends over the Internet that is
provided their friends don't mind the potato quality of the included 720p we
Cam and that they don't mind the unexceptional speakers that manag to
make it to the 50% Mark which is good enough to watch a movie at home with a
little bit of ambient noise without this subtle Distortion setting in the Spectre
speakers are better there's more good news though there's nothing on this
machine that I would consider to be bloat other than maybe the pre-installed
Office trial the onboard mu mimo 2x2 AC
Wi-Fi solution manages easily in Access of 30 megabytes per second sustained
transfers on a wave 2 AC access point and I found the side positioned IO
however scant more natural to use than the ports on the butt of the Spectre
which means the conclusion pretty much comes down to price here sort of if you
want the world's thinnest or second thinnest notebook then at MSRP the
Spectre is positioned as a more premium product with faster performance better
IO and subjectively more sex appeal if
you want to save a few bucks and Dodge the screen wobble issues at the expense
of Creature Comforts like keyboard backlighting Swift 7 is your go-to but
bear in mind I said if you want the world's th notebook do you I feel like
it's become a bit of a pissing contest at this point and I'd like to see
products built to Target a use case rather than a z height measurement so
let me know in the comments if someone built a notebook with a u processor with
like the power of the Swift 7 but twice as thick that lasted for like two to
three days of continuous use on a single charge would you be interested in that
or tell me do you think Acer nailed it I
really really would like to know
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watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or
check out the link to where to buy this notebook at Amazon in the video
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