The latest Acer Swift 5 and the MacBook Air with M2 are both great laptops, but which one is the best? That’s the question we’ll try to answer here.
Each packs the latest Apple and Intel laptop-centric chipsets, making them two of the best laptops you can buy right now. So, which one should you buy? Let’s find out.
ACER SWIFT 5 VS MACBOOK AIR M2: PRICE AND VALUE
It’s definitely not surprising that Acer is offering more money than Apple. Of course, when you look at the lowest possible prices, the base MacBook Air M2 is $1,199, and the Acer Swift 5 is $1,549.
Considering the cost, the Acer Swift 5 comes with an Intel Core i7-1260P processor, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD. To get similar specs in the MacBook Air, you’ll need to shell out $1,899, because honestly, 256GB of storage isn’t enough in the base model.
ACER SWIFT 5 vs MACBOOK AIR M2: DESIGN
Apple moved decisively to make the Air look like a MacBook Pro. Gone are the sleek, stylish receding wedges that gave the Air a near-impossible size, replaced by a uniform thickness. Open the lid and you’ll see the full-size backlit keyboard at the top of the Starlight keyboard deck is slightly recessed. Directly below is a larger trackpad.
As for the Swift, Acer claims it has a “refined design,” although many OEMs tend to exaggerate with catchy buzzwords and enticing wording.
The Swift 5 measures 12.2 by 8.4 by 0.6 inches and weighs 2.7 pounds, while the MacBook Air is slightly smaller at 12 by 8.5 by 0.4 inches, but weighs the same, at 2.7 pounds.
ACER SWIFT 5 AND MACBOOK AIR M2: PORTS
The Acer Swift 5 wins handily with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a headphone jack, and a Kensington Lock.
The M2 MacBook Air does improve slightly over its predecessor by moving charging to the dedicated MagSafe port, which leaves the two Thunderbolt 4 ports free next to the 3.5mm headphone jack.
ACER SWIFT 5 vs MACBOOK AIR M2: DISPLAY
In the Acer Swift 5 and MacBook Air, you get gorgeous, spacious screens with tiny bezels. Digging into the details will tell you exactly where Acer starts to lead slightly
The MacBook Air now has a 13.6-inch, 2560 x 1664p Liquid Retina display, compared to the previous version’s 13.3-inch. The aspect ratio is technically 3:2, but since the notch at the top forms part of the taskbar, you actually get a work area that’s closer to 16:10.
When passing our lab tests, the Air recorded a DCI-P3 color gamut of 75.9 percent and an impressive average brightness of 489 nits. In real-world use, as expected, the M2’s screen is rich in color and crisp in detail, enhanced by Apple’s proprietary TrueTone technology.
Meanwhile, the Acer Swift 5 features a 14-inch WQXGA 2560 x 1600 pixel Corning Gorilla Glass touchscreen with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The test results showed how the Acer fared in 93.3 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, but trailed the Air slightly at 457 nits of brightness. With numbers like these, monitors inevitably emit rich, saturated colors.
There will be people who would like the extra brightness, but in my workload the priority is always color accuracy, and the Acer gets away with it here. I can see myself working on Photoshop with ease and enjoying all kinds of vivid content, but the Swift 5 is clearly more realistic.
ACER SWIFT 5 vs MACBOOK AIR M2: PERFORMANCE
How does the laptop-centric M2 chipset stack up against similar competitors like the Intel Core i7-1260P? The answer may surprise you.
On Geekbench 5.4’s overall performance test, the Swift 5 scored a whopping 9,859, beating the average laptop average. Meanwhile, the M2 Air also performed well in our synthetic benchmarks, but fell behind in raw power, with a Geekbench score of 8,919.
The Swift 5 also leads in our HandBrake benchmark — transcoding a 4K video to 1080p in just 7 minutes 36 seconds, compared to the Air’s 7 minutes 52 seconds.
In real-world use, both systems are excellent working systems – handling multitasking with ease. But while the MacBook Air is better in the graphics department, we have to compare each system as a whole, with the Swift 5 going to be slightly faster for your productivity needs.
ACER SWIFT 5 vs MACBOOK AIR M2: BATTERY LIFE
The final round saw the M2 MacBook Air come to the fore, taking a toll on the Acer Swift 5. As you might have predicted, with Apple’s legendary laptop battery life and any system that uses its own silicon, the Air is the king of endurance.
It might be slightly shorter than the M1 MacBook Air, but at 14 hours and 6 minutes, it offers insanely long life for any commute or even a long flight. Meanwhile, the Acer Swift 5’s Laptop Mag Battery test came in pretty good at 11 hours and 24 minutes, but it clearly didn’t hold up to the Air’s prowess.
>>>>>>>>>>>>Laptop battery