Acer Swift AI 16 vs. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7: it’s close, but the same laptop remains at the top

Microsoft makes the best 15-inch laptop with the Surface Laptop 7, at least running on the Windows platform. But it’s not the only company making large-screen, thin and light laptops that offer great reasonable productivity and lots of room for multitasking.

The Acer Swift AI 16 is among the most recent, and it offers up an even larger 16-inch OLED panel that looks great. It’s less expensive, similarly configured, but does it offer enough to unseat Microsoft’s best?

Specs and configurations

There’s just one configuration of the Swift AI 16 available as I write this comparison. That configuration features an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 16-inch OLED display, for $1,250.

Microsoft offers several configurations of the Surface Laptop 7, with a list price starting at $1,299 for a 12-core Snapdragon X Elite chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 15.0-inch IPS display (the only option). Upgrading to a 512GB SSD costs $200 and a 1TB SSD costs $400. Maxed out, the Surface Laptop 7 lists at  $2,499 with 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

Design

Contemporary laptops are almost universally minimalist, and the Swift Ai 16 is a prime example. Its edges are flared to add break up the lines a bit, mostly it’s a simple all-black design that mostly just fine. The Surface Laptop 7 adheres to Microsoft’s general Surface aesthetic, which is also minimalist but somehow comes across as a little more elegant. It also comes in several colors, which enables a more custom look.

Both laptops enjoy all-aluminum constructions, but the Swift AI 16 suffers from a slightly bendable display that makes the Surface Laptop 7 the more solid laptop overall. It’s not that the Acer feels flimsy, it’s just that Microsoft’s design seems more robust.

The Swift AI 16 is wider and deeper thanks to its larger display, but it’s also thinner and lighter than the Surface Laptop 7. That makes it feel easier to carry around even as it offers significantly more screen real estate.

The Swift AI 16’s keyboard layout is a bit cramped thanks to the misplaced decision to include a numeric keypad, and its keycaps are a bit small.In addition, its switches are reasonably light and snappy. Overall, though, the Surface Laptop 7’s keyboard has a more comfortable layout and larger keycaps, with switched that are also light and snappy but deeper. It’s better. Its haptic touchpad is also more precise and responsive. Both displays are touch-enabled, while the Surface Laptop 7’s display also supports an active pen.

Connectivity favors the Swift AI 16, with a more diverse mix of modern and legacy ports. The Surface Laptop 7 has fewer ports, but it uses a proprietary power Surface Connect for power thus leaving it with more USB-C ports for connectivity. Both have fully up-to-date wireless connectivity.

The Swift AI 16 also 1440p webcam compared to the Surface Laptop 7’s lower-res 1080p version. Both webcams have good images, and both have fast modern chipsets supporting Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC AI initiative.

Performance

The Swift AI 16 uses Intel’s latest efficiency-oriented chipset, Lunar Lake (also known as Core Ultra Series 2, with a choice of the Core Ultra 7 256V or 268V. Both are eight-core (four Performance and four Low Power Performance), eight-thread chipsets consuming 17 watts of power, with slightly different clock speeds. The focus is on battery life and not pure performance. It uses Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics that can handle basic gaming and not much more, and don’t do much to speed up creative applications.

The Surface Laptop 7 is build around the 12-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 chipset, also aimed first at efficiency. But, it also manages very good performance, leading the Windows pack in the best efficiency-performance equation. The Adreno integrated GPU is roughly equivalent to Intel Arc 140V, which means it, too, isn’t great for gaming or creative tasks.

In our benchmarks, the Surface Laptop 7 is significantly faster except in single-core tasks. Ultimately, they’re both going to be close to the same performance in standard productivity tasks.

Display and audio

The Swift AI 16 is built around a 16.0-inch 16:10 2.8K (2880 x 1800) OLED display running at up to 120Hz. The Surface Pro 7 has a 15.0-inch 3:2 2496 x 1664 IPS display running at 120Hz. That makes them almost equally sharp and with a fast refresh rate supporting a smooth user interface. But, the Acer’s OLED panel just looks quite a bit nicer than Microsoft’s IPS panel.

Our colorimeters agreed. The Surface Laptop 7’s display is significantly brighter, but that’s where its advantages end. The Swift AI 16’s display has wider and more accurately colors and OLED’s usual inky blacks.

Both are great displays for productivity use, but the Swift AI 16’s display will be better for creators and media consumers.

Audio is roughly equal. The Surface Laptop 7 has at the novelty of speakers embedded beneath the keyboard, but both laptops have audio that’s just okay.

Portability

These are both large-screen laptops, but the Acer’s lighter weight and thinner chassis makes it feel a bit easier to lug around.

While both the Lunar Lake and Qualcomm Snapdragon X chipsets are aimed at performance, the Surface Laptop 7 is a lot stronger. First, it benefits from an IPS display compared to the Swift AI 16’s larger, power-hungry OLED panel. The difference is less pronounced the more demanding a task becomes, but you’ll get well over a full day’s work with the Surface Laptop 7. You can’t say the same for the Swift AI 16.

The Surface Laptop 7 remains unchallenged, at least in Windows

The Swift AI 16 is a very good laptop that offers an outstanding OLED display that’s great for getting work done and streaming media. It’s reasonably fast, and well-built. It also benefits from an attractive price with a solid configuration.

But, there’s a reason why the Surface Laptop 7 has been one of the best large-screen Windows laptops. It’s another notch up in quality, it’s faster for many things, and it gets much better battery life. It’s more expensive and it doesn’t have OLED, but it maintains its top spot.