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+Acer's latest high end ultrabook, the Swift 7, is incredibly thin. As Derek Zoolander might [say](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHHEcmZtJvY), it's really, really, really, ridiculously thin.
+
+At a mere .39 inches thick, 14 inches wide, and weighing under two pounds, the Swift 7 is a commuter's dream. It fits easily in your bag and even after lugging it around all day you'll hardly notice it's there.
+
+*(Note: When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small affiliate commission. [Read more](https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/) about how this works.)*
+
+## Really, Really, Really Thin
+
+Unboxing the Swift 7 I honestly thought that the little black package inside was the instruction manual. But no, it turned out to be the actual laptop. It really is that thin.
+
+And Acer didn't cheat on the thinness -- there's no conspicuous hinge bulge like you find in some thin laptops. In fact the hinge is so flush it's difficult to even see, which is step up over the previous version. The overall design is understated. The Swift 7 features a matte black case with a single LED to indicate battery status. The case is a blend of magnesium-lithium and magnesium-aluminum alloys that make the Swift 7 feel more solid than plastic, but less solid than a (albeit heavier) aluminium case on something like the Macbook Air.
+
+Somehow Acer has managed to cram this tiny package with a 14-inch 1080p screen, a 1.5-Ghz Core i7 (i7-8500Y), 16 gigabytes of RAM, and a 512 gigabyte hard drive. Perhaps even more impressive there's two USB-C ports in addition to a headphone jack. Take that Apple. Not only is the Swift thinner than the Macbook Air, it manages to include two USB-C ports. Acer also helpfully includes a three-port dongle adapter with USB-A, another USB-C, and an HDMI port.
+
+While it's plenty powerful enough for business use, none of the Acer's specs are earth shattering. The i7 Y-series chips are down stepped to 1.5-GHz to improve battery life and keep temperatures down, which is important in a machine this thin. What makes the Swift special isn't its power, but its relative power squeezed into an impossibly thin, light package. The Swift 7 weighs in at 1.96 pounds and is small enough to fit in most shoulder bags or even a large purse. Did I mention it's small and light?
+
+Once you get past the thin factor the other standout in the Swift 7 is the very nearly edge-to-edge display. The display is a touchscreen 1080p IPS panel protected by Gorilla Glass. Acer is very proud of the very thin bezel, and spends quite a bit of time on it in press releases. It is maybe marginally smaller than bezels on the Dell XPS 13 I normally use, but I fail to see how a thin bezel really improves the experience in any significant way.
+
+The Swift 7's touchscreen panel isn't the highest resolution. In fact when Acer announced the Swift 7 the universal reaction at WIRED was too bad about the low resolution screen. It turns out that 1080p at this size isn't as bad as you'd think. The IPS display isn't 4K nice, but it's plenty bright and sharp. The default Windows 10 zoom level was set too high for my tastes, but a quick trip into the settings will fix that and get you level of sharpness that's better than the 1080p screen on my Lenovo x250, but not quite as good as the 4K screen of the Dell XPS 13. Still, I'd trade a few millimeters of extended bezel for a 4K screen.
+
+As for the touch experience, the Gorilla Glass definitely has a different tactile experience, but is no less responsive. It's nice to know too that the sort of minor bumps and jostling of everyday carrying shouldn't crack your screen.
+
+As expected, the down-stepped CPU did not perform quite as well in benchmarks, though I did not notice sluggish performance in real world use. Browsing the web, working with large image documents, even playing back 4K video clips didn't faze the Swift. The only time I noticed the Swift struggling was rendering a 4K video, which took a bit longer than it did on my Dell. 
+
+The upside to the Swift 7's chip is that you get all day battery life. In normal use--web browsing, document editing, Slack messaging--I routinely got ten hours out of the battery. Looping a video with Wifi off brought that down to nine hours and benchmark battery tests got me eight and one half hours.
+
+While the chip isn't the speediest the Swift 7 has impressive specs in the rest of its hardware. With 16 gigabytes of RAM and 512 gigabyte NVMe SSD you're unlikely to be wanting in storage space or memory. 
+
+## Achilles' Nose Cam
+
+To get that ultra thin screen bezel Acer has moved the built-in webcam down into the body of the laptop in a clever little pop-up housing. On the bright side, the camera is blocked when not in use, meaning you don't have to resort to covering it with black tape. But, while the hinged camera is clever, it introduces the dreaded nose-cam effect. 
+
+Video chatting with a camera pointed more or less directly up your nose is disconcerting for all parties involved. As with the Dell XPS 13, which recently, finally, eliminated a similarly positioned webcam, if you do a lot of video chatting you'll want to invest in a separate webcam.
+
+The other main problem with the latest Swift 7 is the keyboard. It's comfortable to type on. The keys are well spaced and provide good tactile feedback despite how flush they are, but the key arrangement is, most charitably called, curious. The Caps Lock key is half size to make room for the backtick key. I know, I know, who uses Caps Lock? Me. I remap it to be a Control key. In two weeks of using the Swift 7 my muscle memory still has not adjusted to losing half the Caps Lock key. The delete key is to the left of the Backspace key, which I also find odd, though less annoying on a practical level.
+
+The other worry I had for this laptop was that something so thin would be difficult to open, but thankfully that's not the case. The Swift 7 has a tiny, but helpful protrusion on the top edge that helps pry the laptop open without requiring Howard Hughes fingernails. It is definitely a two-handed operation, but that's par for the course with laptops this thin.
+
+These complaints are minor, but worth considering. In the end the Swift 7 is a very capable, very portable machine well suited to everyday tasks. It's not a video editor, it's not gaming powerful. It's a tiny little work machine you'll hardly notice in your bag. Did I mention how thin and light it is?
+
+
+*(The [Acer Swift 7 costs $1699 from Acer](https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX.H98AA.001){: rel=nofollow} (also available in [White](https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX.HB4AA.001){: rel=nofollow}, [B&H Photo Video](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?ci=8612&fct=fct_brand_name|fujifilm%2bfct_camera-model_6331|fujifilm-instax-mini-liplay&N=4288586279&){: rel=nofollow}, [Best Buy](https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?st=Fujiflim+LiPlay&_dyncharset=UTF-8&id=pcat17071&type=page&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=&sp=&qp=&list=n&af=true&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&keys=keys){: rel=nofollow}, and [Adorama](https://www.adorama.com/l/?searchinfo=fujifilm+instax+mini+liplay){: rel=nofollow}.)*