Acer Swift 16 Ai Review: OLED Brilliance With All-Round Performance

Acer Swift 16 AI

Reviewing the new Acer Swift 16 AI: A premium AI laptop featuring a stunning 16-inch OLED display and powerful hardware.

8.6

The premium Acer Swift 16 AI impresses with its stunning OLED display and solid performance, earning our Gold Award despite trade-offs.

Possitives

• Stunning 16-inch OLED Display (2880x1800, 120Hz, Excellent Colour Accuracy, HDR TrueBlack 500)
• Solid Performance (Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, 32GB LPDDR5X RAM)
• Premium Aluminum Build Quality & Design
• Generous I/O Port Selection (incl. 2x Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1)
• Full-size Keyboard with Number Pad
• Latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 Connectivity

Negatives

• Glossy Display Finish (prone to reflections)

Just last week here at HelloExpress.net, we took a deep dive into the Acer Aspire 14 AI, Acer’s foray into the new generation of AI-powered laptops. Now, it’s time to turn our attention to its larger sibling, the Acer Swift 16 AI. While it shares the same potent heart – the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor – this new contender wraps that AI power in the sleeker, more refined Swift package we know and love.

This means a potentially thinner profile for its size, enhanced portability despite the larger screen, and often, a more premium feature set compared to the Aspire line. We ranked the this laptop quite favourably, praising its performance and endurance, but noted its primary drawback was the rather lacklustre standard display, especially concerning colour reproduction。

The big question then is: Can the Acer Swift 16 AI, particularly with its often-equipped stunning OLED panel, overcome the Aspire’s main weakness? Could this be the more complete, go-to AI workhorse laptop many Malaysians are looking for in 2025? Let’s find out if the Acer Swift 16 AI delivers the total package.

Acer Swift 16 Ai Overview

Build

Straight out of the box, the Swift 16 Ai makes a solid impression. Acer opted for a full aluminum chassis here, giving it a reassuring rigidity and premium feel compared to some mixed-material competitors. The main body sports a sophisticated matte black finish, which likely cover with a layer of anti-fingerprint coating which does a decent job of keeping casual smudges at bay, though dedicated wipe-downs are still needed eventually.

What really sets the Acer Swift 16 AI’s design apart is its departure from the more utilitarian, almost brutalist-inspired blockiness we saw on its Aspire 14 AI sibling. Instead, the Swift 16 AI embraces a cleaner, Mid-century modern aesthetic.

This is characterised by sharp, defined lines and an elegant dual-tone colour scheme. The primary matte black is tastefully complemented by light gold accents along the sides, finished with a subtle brushed metal texture that catches the light nicely.

Acer continues this design language around the keyboard deck, which sits slightly recessed within the chassis – a sort of shallow, sloped area leading down to the keys. It’s a subtle touch that adds a bit of depth for better typing experience.

Functionally, the hinge design is quite clever. Like the Aspire, the Acer Swift 16 AI can lay fully flat at 180 degrees, which is great for sharing content across a table.

But the Swift adds another trick: when you open the display on a flat surface, the hinge mechanism cleverly lifts the rear of the laptop base slightly. This creates a noticeable gap underneath – think of it like a small ravine – providing valuable space for improved air intake and cooling during heavier workloads.

One similar design decision with the Aspire 14 AI is the exhaust vent placement – located on the top right of the main chassis, venting air upwards towards the bottom edge of the screen. As mentioned in our Aspire 14 AI review, we have some minor thoughts on this long-term, but observed no immediate issues with heat affecting the display. For a deeper dive into our perspective on this specific vent design, do check out that previous review!

Display

If there’s one area where the Acer Swift 16 AI aims to knock it out of the park, it’s the display. We’re looking at a gorgeous 16-inch OLED panel, pushing a sharp 2880 x 1800 pixel resolution and boasting a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

Thanks to the tunning contrast ratios that make images and videos with OLED technology, you get those infinitely deep blacks and s pop. It also carries VESA DisplayHDR TrueBlack 500 certification, meaning HDR content on platforms like Netflix or YouTube looks spectacular, with bright highlights coexisting alongside perfectly dark shadows.

The 120Hz refresh rate just makes everything – from scrolling web pages to watching fast-paced action – feel noticeably smoother than standard 60Hz screens.

That expansive 16-inch size provides some serious screen real estate, arguably among the largest you can comfortably get on a portable laptop today. For those who juggling multiple documents, large spreadsheets, or having reference material open alongside your main work window becomes significantly easier without feeling cramped.

Now, let’s talk colour. Acer claims 100% DCI-P3 coverage, the standard used in digital cinema. Subjectively, this is hands-down one of the best displays I’ve laid eyes on recently – colours are rich, vibrant, and simply stunning. Our own calibration tests confirmed this excellence, measuring 100% of the sRGB gamut, an impressive 95.8% of Adobe RGB, and a stellar 97.6% of DCI-P3. While just shy of the perfect 100% DCI-P3 claim in our specific test, these results are outstanding and place the Acer Swift 16 AI’s display firmly in the top tier.

This level of performance makes the screen incredibly versatile, suitable for below user group:

• For Professionals: The sheer size, sharpness, and clarity are fantastic for productivity.
• For Media Binge-Watchers: The OLED contrast, HDR support, and vibrant colours make watching your favourite dramas on Viu or movies on Netflix an absolute joy.
• For Content Creators: The wide colour gamut coverage, especially the high Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 results, means this display is genuinely suitable for colour-sensitive work like photo editing or video grading, offering excellent accuracy for the price point.

To learn more about OLED, check out our dedicated article here:

Audio

Audio on laptops is often functional rather than fantastic, but Acer aims to elevate the experience somewhat on the Acer Swift 16 AI with the inclusion of DTS:X Ultra support. This technology is designed to create a more immersive, spatial audio experience, potentially offering a wider soundstage and better separation for movies and even some games, especially when using headphones.

The sound itself is delivered via a pair of downward-firing speakers located on the underside of the chassis. While this placement can sometimes lead to slightly muffled audio if the laptop is placed on a very soft surface (like a bed or thick carpet), on a hard surface like a desk here in our office, it allows the sound to reflect, which can help create a fuller perceived sound profile. We expect this setup, combined with the DTS:X processing, should provide a noticeably better audio experience than basic, non-enhanced laptop speakers.

Of course, for critical listening, focused gaming sessions, or just enjoying your music without disturbing others, nothing beats dedicated headphones or external speakers. Thankfully, Acer includes the essential 3.5mm audio combo jack on the Acer Swift 16 AI, providing that necessary port for a more personal and potentially higher-fidelity audio approach.

I/O

Connectivity is a strong suit for the Acer Swift 16 AI, offering a generous selection of modern and legacy ports that should cover almost every need without immediately resorting to dongles – something we always appreciate seeing.

On the connectivity front, you get:

• 2 x USB Type-C™ ports: These aren’t just basic Type-C ports. They support the latest high-speed standards including:
  • USB4® (up to 40Gbps): Blazing fast data transfer speeds.
  • Thunderbolt™ 4: Offers the same 40Gbps speed plus support for external displays and power delivery (meaning you can charge the laptop via either of these ports).
• 2 x USB Standard-A ports: Essential for older peripherals like mice, keyboards, or thumb drives. Both support USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds, with one specifically offering power-off USB charging, letting you juice up your phone or other gadgets even when the laptop is asleep or turned off.
• 1 x HDMI 2.1 port: This is the latest standard, perfect for connecting to high-resolution external monitors or modern TVs, supporting higher refresh rates and resolutions compared to older HDMI versions.
• 1 x 3.5mm Headphone/Microphone Combo Jack: The standard, indispensable port for wired audio.

Personally, I really appreciate the balance Acer struck here with two USB-A and two USB-C ports. In a practical sense, this means you can easily connect a mouse and an external drive using the A ports, while still having one C port free for other high-speed accessories (like an external SSD or dock) even when using the other C port to charge the Acer Swift 16 AI at full speed. It’s a thoughtful configuration that caters well to real-world multitasking scenarios.

Network

Acer has equipped the Acer Swift 16 AI with the latest in wireless technology, featuring Wi-Fi 7. This is cutting-edge stuff for April 2025, offering potentially higher speeds, lower latency, and better performance in congested areas compared to older Wi-Fi standards – provided you have a compatible Wi-Fi 7 router, which are starting to becoming a staple standard.

The specific chipset used is the Killer™ Wi-Fi 7 1750i. Now, that “Killer” name isn’t just fancy branding; it signifies the inclusion of Killer’s well-regarded network management software suite (usually the Killer Intelligence Center).

This software is genuinely useful, allowing you to actively manage your network traffic. You can prioritize certain applications – like your online games or video conferencing tools – ensuring they get bandwidth priority over background downloads, which can significantly improve your online experience by reducing lag and jitter.

The chipset also includes support for the latest Bluetooth 5.4 standard for connecting your wireless peripherals.

To learn more about WiFi 7, check out our dedicated article here:

Acer Swift 16 Ai CPU and Performance

Powering the Acer Swift 16 AI is the Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 258V processor, a key part of Intel’s latest generation focused on AI capabilities and efficiency. This is paired with a generous 32GB of fast LPDDR5X RAM, which is soldered directly onto the motherboard. It’s important to note this RAM is unified memory, meaning it’s shared between the CPU and the integrated Intel® Arc™ Graphics 140V.

In terms of upgradability, what you see is what you get. The CPU and RAM are onboard, so there’s no path for future upgrades there. Honestly, though, 32GB of LPDDR5X is ample for this class of machine and likely pushes the limits of what the cooling system can effectively handle anyway.

So, how does it perform? For everyday productivity and multitasking, the Acer Swift 16 AI delivers solid performance. In our PCMark 10 benchmark runs, it achieved an overall score of 14683. Breaking that down into application tests, we saw scores of 9771 in Word, a very strong 22225 in Excel, 13293 in PowerPoint, and 15278 in the Edge browser test.

When it comes to graphics and 3D performance, the integrated Intel® Arc™ 140V graphics are, as expected, mid-range at best compared to dedicated gaming GPUs, but represent a significant step up from older integrated solutions. Our 3DMark tests yielded the following scores:

These results show that the Intel Arc 140V can certainly hold its own for integrated graphics. While you won’t be running the latest AAA titles at high settings, it demonstrates enough capability for creative tasks like light photo/video editing. And, as we found with the similarly equipped Aspire 14 AI, it definitely makes some minor gaming possible during downtime. Think less demanding titles, indie games, or older AAA games at lower settings – perfect for unwinding after a day’s work.

Battery life

Inside the sleek chassis of the Acer Swift 16 AI sits a 69 Wh Li-ion battery. Charging is handled conveniently via either of the USB-C ports using the standard Power Delivery protocol, which is great for compatibility with modern chargers and power banks.

Now, for the crucial numbers. In our standardized battery test using the PCMark 10 Applications benchmark loop, which simulates continuous productivity tasks like web Browse, word processing, and video conferencing, the Acer Swift 16 AI lasted a very respectable 10 hours and 33 minutes. It’s vital to note, however, that we run this specific test with the screen set to full brightness to maintain consistency across reviews

Acer Swift 16 Ai User experience

Ai Experience

When it comes to the specific AI-accelerated features enabled by the Intel Core Ultra processor and its NPU (Neural Processing Unit), the experience on the Acer Swift 16 AI is essentially identical to what we detailed in our recent review of the Acer Aspire 14 AI, given they share the same core processing capabilities. Check out our review on the Acer Aspire 14 AI review here.

Productivity experience

For general productivity tasks – writing documents, crunching numbers, building presentations, heavy web Browse – the Acer Swift 16 AI is a superb companion. The combination of the Core Ultra 7 processor and 32GB of RAM ensures smooth multitasking and responsiveness, translating well from the strong benchmark scores into real-world usage. Microsoft Office applications fly on this machine.

But the unsung hero for productivity on this 16-inch model is the full-size keyboard, complete with a dedicated number pad. Honestly, have you ever tried hammering out data in Excel or inputting figures without a numpad? It drives me absolutely nuts! Having that dedicated block of keys makes spreadsheet work, accounting tasks, or even just typing in PINs significantly faster and more satisfying. It’s a major advantage over smaller laptops for serious productivity workflows.

Content creator experience

The Acer Swift 16 AI shapes up to be a surprisingly capable machine for content creators, especially considering its price point. This boils down to two main factors: the display and the processor.

Firstly, that gorgeous OLED display is a massive win. With our measured 95.8% Adobe RGB and 97.6% DCI-P3 coverage, it’s just a hair’s breadth away from being a professionally calibrated reference monitor. This level of colour accuracy is fantastic for photo editing in Lightroom or colour grading video footage in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, ensuring what you see on screen is very close to the final output.

Secondly, while it lacks a dedicated NVIDIA or AMD graphics card, the Intel Core Ultra processor includes Intel Quick Syn. This dedicated media decoding significantly accelerates video encoding and decoding tasks. For video editors, this means much smoother playback and faster export times, especially in H.264 and HEVC formats, compared to relying solely on CPU power. It makes the Acer Swift 16 AI a viable option for mobile video editing without the cost or battery drain of a discrete GPU.

Media consumption

Watching movies or binge-watching series on the Acer Swift 16 AI is largely a treat. The OLED display with its HDR TrueBlack 500 capabilities delivers stunning visuals. Because OLED pixels can turn completely off, black areas are truly black, creating incredible contrast against bright highlights – perfect for those atmospheric sci-fi movies or vibrant nature documentaries.

Audio is enhanced by DTS:X Ultra support, which attempts to create a more spacious soundscape and automatically selects audio profiles based on the content. However, the physical limitations of the two downward-firing speakers mean the output, while clear and reasonably loud, isn’t exactly out of this world. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly decent laptop audio, good for casual viewing, but it lacks the depth and impact of a stand-alone speaker systems or good headphones.

One significant drawback for media consumption, however, is the high-gloss finish on the display. While common on OLED panels, it’s highly reflective. In brighter environments, or even just with a light source behind you, reflections can be quite distracting. I often found my eyes flickering between the reflection and the actual content, which slightly detracted from the otherwise immersive viewing experience.

On the plus side, the inclusion of the HDMI 2.1 port significantly expands the laptop’s media usefulness, allowing you to easily output high-resolution content (even up to 8K!) to a compatible external monitor or large-screen TV for a proper home theatre experience.

Gaming

Given the Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics, we focused our gaming tests on less demanding but popular titles, suitable for some downtime relaxation rather than serious competitive play. Here’s what we found:

• Counter-Strike 2 (CS2): Running at 1920 x 1200 resolution with Low settings, we achieved a very smooth average of around 120fps.
• War Thunder: Using the same 1920 x 1200 resolution on Low settings, performance was similarly strong, hitting around 120fps in typical gameplay scenarios.

These results confirm that the Acer Swift 16 AI is perfectly capable of handling popular esports titles and less graphically intensive games at lower resolutions and settings, delivering frame rates well above the smooth 60fps threshold, and even taking advantage of the 120Hz display in these cases.

It’s great for those casual gaming sessions after work or during study breaks. Just remember to keep expectations in check – this isn’t designed to replace a dedicated gaming laptop for demanding AAA titles at high fidelity.

Acer Swift 16 Ai Conclusion

The Acer Swift 16 AI stands as a highly compelling, well-rounded package in the burgeoning AI PC landscape. Available for RM 5,699 from the Acer official store here in Malaysia, it commands a significant RM 1,000 premium over its Aspire 14 AI sibling equipped with the same potent Core Ultra 7 processor, 32GB RAM, and 1TB SSD.

So, is that extra RM 1,000 justified? In our view, absolutely – if screen quality is high on your priority list. That extra investment gets you a significantly larger, vastly superior 16-inch OLED display that is leaps and bounds ahead of the standard panel on the Aspire. It’s a visual treat for work and play. This upgrade comes with a direct trade-off in battery life; we measured around 10.5 hours in our demanding benchmark, compared to over 16 hours for the Aspire. However, for many users, the improved visual experience will be well worth sacrificing some ultimate endurance.

Underneath the stunning display lies the same capable hardware, making the Acer Swift 16 AI a fantastic machine catering to a wide array of users. From home office warriors and corporate professionals to students, graphic designers needing good colour accuracy, and even casual gamers looking for some downtime fun, this laptop delivers.

While it requires a premium investment, users aren’t just getting the impressive hardware and display; Acer Malaysia backs the Acer Swift 16 AI with a solid 2-year local warranty, including the valuable first-year International Travelers Warranty (ITW) for added peace of mind.

Considering its excellent performance, stunning OLED display, premium build, and broad usability despite the battery life trade-off, the Acer Swift 16 AI is a standout choice in its category. Therefore, the Acer Swift 16 AI proudly earns the HelloExpress.net Gold Award.

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