Acer?s latest Swift 5 is light on your back and lighter on your wallet

You’ll only find a few lighter 14-inch models on the market, including the LG Gram, the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, and Acer’s own sub-two-pound Swift 7.This is all to say: almost everything about the new Swift 5 is fine. Where it stands out is portability — and compared to previous Swift models, it asks remarkably few sacrifices in exchange.I’m used to 12- and 13-inch laptops feeling light, but I’m still in the process of convincing myself that a 14-inch device can actually be this weightless. After one day with the Swift 5, the inside and outside were already covered in visible smudges.Again, it’s not that the laptop is ugly — if you can stomach stubborn fingerprints, it’s fine. I also like the smooth feel of the matte surface, but some folks prefer the friction of a glossy screen.One thing to note: the Swift 5’s screen, like its chassis, is a fingerprint hellscape. The screen is bright enough that the smudges aren’t visible head-on, but anyone looking from the side will notice them.The Swift 5 has a 1280 x 720 front-facing camera, and it’s actually usable. That feels like a blessing, given that the Acer Swift 7’s webcam was crammed into a pop-out module on the left side of the keyboard deck, and could only photograph people’s fingers and chests.The camera’s pictures are a bit grainy, but well lit. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.As with other Windows 10 computers, the Acer Swift 5 presents you with multiple things to agree to or decline upon setup.The mandatory policies, for which an agreement is required, are:In addition, there is a slew of optional things to agree to:Add it all up, and you have four mandatory agreements and 17 optional ones.Our Swift 5’s 10th-gen Core i7 processor had no trouble accommodating all the multitasking of my typical work day, not to mention my streaming and browsing after hours.