Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here.
00:02This laptop here holds the current title of the world's thinnest laptop,
00:05and that is a title that gets transferred between different companies, different product lines,
00:09because some company will make a really thin laptop, it's the world's thinnest,
00:12and then a few months later, some company will shave off a millimeter here,
00:15millimeter there, and just, it bounces around between the different brands
00:18as to who has the world's thinnest at that time.
00:21Right now, the Acer Swift 7 has the thinnest title,
00:24and it's a 9mm thick laptop, actually a little bit less than that.
00:28If you put it into perspective, there are smartphones that are thicker than this.
00:32Like, it's a very thin device.
00:35The build quality is quite good.
00:37It's obviously a form factor that is going to inherently be more difficult
00:41to keep structural integrity because it's so thin,
00:43but they've done a really good job with it.
00:45It's milled aluminum, and it's made well.
00:47Now, the target demographic for a product like this isn't huge, right?
00:51Not everyone's going to be buying something super thin just for the sake of buying something thin.
00:54You've got to really need or really want something that looks like this.
00:58And, I mean, there's some compromises.
01:00We'll get to those in a little bit, but there's a lot of good stuff going on here as well.
01:04So the screen is a 14-inch 1080p touch panel.
01:07It's bright with vibrant colors, great for media consumption.
01:10It's bigger, so instead of the 13.3-inch screen that we often see in most Ultrabooks,
01:15it is a touch bigger, but visually, it's not a huge difference.
01:18The keyboard is also quite good.
01:20I expected this keyboard to be not great because it's such a thin device.
01:23Traditionally, really thin laptops have kind of mediocre keyboards.
01:27This one's pretty good.
01:28My one complaint is the layout.
01:30There's just a few keys that feel out of place.
01:31For example, the Delete and Backspace key.
01:33They're really close together, and I was making a lot of mistakes when I first started using this keyboard.
01:37Same with the Page Up and Page Down keys.
01:39They're just right by the arrow keys.
01:41It's just a real tight cluster of stuff that you can hit by accident.
01:44And it's a very good and comfortable keyboard, but that layout takes a while to get used to.
01:49There's also a fingerprint sensor on the side.
01:52I usually like fingerprint sensors on Windows devices.
01:55I can't even think of one that I haven't liked.
01:57This one, for whatever reason, I'm just getting a lot of misreads and errors.
02:01Like, I wasn't able to log in consistently with my finger.
02:04Probably one out of every two or three tries at best.
02:07So, it could be a software thing.
02:09I hope it's not a hardware thing, but this particular sensor on this review unit wasn't great.
02:13The components on the inside are decent.
02:16There's nothing in here that's particularly high-powered.
02:18It's geared more towards energy efficiency and just low energy consumption.
02:22There's also a SIM card in here for constant 4G LTE access.
02:25It even has an eSIM option.
02:27The battery in here is also good.
02:29I'm getting around 8 hours of use with the screen at 250 nits.
02:32And it's charged via USB-C.
02:33So, the performance on this device is okay.
02:36It's actually powered by a Kaby Lake Y processor.
02:38So, that's the 7th Gen stuff.
02:40It's fanless, and it'll handle any kind of light computer tasks,
02:43like browsing, email, media consumption, stuff like that.
02:45But don't expect any kind of heavy lifting.
02:48Now, there are some compromises when it comes to making thin and light devices like this,
02:52particularly something as thin as this.
02:54So, stuff like ports, there's only two USB-C ports.
02:56They don't support Thunderbolt 3, and there's no USB-A ports.
02:59In terms of the speakers, they're located on the bottom.
03:01They don't sound particularly great.
03:02They don't get particularly loud.
03:04They're, I mean, they're Ultrabook speakers.
03:06When you compare them to something like the MacBook, like 12-inch MacBook,
03:09similar in size, well, similar-ish, they're both really thin,
03:13but the 12-inch MacBook speakers just blow these out of the water.
03:16Then you have stuff like the webcam, which is located at the bottom of the screen on the bezel.
03:19It's something that we see in a lot of thin and light devices,
03:21but that's just one of the minor compromises you have to make when it comes to stuff like this.
03:26There are some bigger ones, though.
03:27Some bigger compromises, in my opinion, are almost deal-breakers for this particular device.
03:32The big one for me is the trackpad.
03:35This is a trackpad that does not have any moving parts.
03:39So, the button mechanic, or rather the click mechanic, is not even a click.
03:43It's a tap.
03:44So, I've been using this device for a little bit over a week,
03:46and I've been using the trackpad frequently.
03:48I can't get used to it.
03:49It's something that I feel like if you're used to any kind of tactile response with your trackpad,
03:54you will find it very difficult to use this.
03:56It's not so much the tactility, like that's annoying that it's not there,
03:59but it's the imprecision.
04:00So, if you want to do drag and drop, it's very difficult to do it on this trackpad.
04:04And I often find that I'm getting missed clicks or just unregistered clicks because of the mechanism.
04:08And I think this is a result, or the reason why this trackpad is like this,
04:12is because this laptop is so thin.
04:14I feel like they couldn't put that mechanism of a click, or of a cantilever,
04:18or any kind of like depression device into this super thin form factor.
04:22And, like to me, that's not worth it.
04:25Like, if you're going to do this, if you're going to build a device like this,
04:28that costs this kind of money, this, like this is one of the pillars of use, right?
04:32This is a very, very important part of any kind of laptop experience.
04:36And if this is no good, the trackpad, the whole experience feels a little bit shaded.
04:40And that leads me to my second thing.
04:42Because this thing is so thin, the price premium on this product is huge.
04:46This starts at $1,700.
04:48That is a lot of money.
04:49And when you look at the market and you kind of see what else is out there in this kind of form factor,
04:53there are other devices out there, like the Razer Blade Stealth, the XPS 13, the LG Gram.
04:58They're very similar in overall experience to something like this.
05:02Not as thin, but it's still very, very portable.
05:06So you're paying a pretty big premium on this just because of the ultra-thin form factor.
05:10And it's cool that Acer or other companies out there are kind of just in that pursuit of thinness.
05:15It's cool, but when you step back for a second and kind of look at the overall, like, reason,
05:20is this really that useful?
05:22Like, is there someone out there that really needs something so thin that they can, you know,
05:26what's the major benefit of something that is so thin compared to something that's a little bit thicker,
05:32like, fractionally thicker, but doesn't have the compromises like an extremely high price tag
05:37and a trackpad that does not click?
05:41Like, that's, this feels weird.
05:43Like, really, really weird.
05:45Okay.
05:47Overall thoughts on this device.
05:48I love the fact that Acer's trying something like this.
05:51Thin is cool, and maybe in the future we'll have the tech to kind of make everything work
05:55with clickable trackpads and better performance and all that stuff in ultra-thin devices like this.
06:00But right now, I really feel like that pursuit of thinness needs to chill out for a second
06:04because now we're getting to the point of compromised product,
06:07and I just don't recommend this thing for most people.
06:10Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.
06:11Thumbs if you liked it.
06:12Subs if you loved it.
06:13See you guys next time.