- When it comes to the idea of the Surface Pro
and how powerful it is, versus how powerful it should be,
well, let's just say opinions are divided.
Luckily we have the Acer Switch 7 Black Edition,
which is, well, pretty powerful,
but there's some compromises as well.
Today I'll share with you what those are.
Stay tuned.
(mellow hip hop music)
Okay, before we get started, let's talk a little bit
about the history of this device,
because it's really interesting.
It was announced in September 2017,
but didn't come to the market
til nearly a year later,
and now we're a couple months into that,
and we're gonna finally cover it.
It's a weird device, too, because it does have
really intriguing things.
For instance, it's got a 13 1/2 inch display,
and it also has a GeForce MX150 graphics processor,
and does this with a Core i7 completely fanless.
And all that sounds really amazing.
Sure, that dream Surface Pro that many of you have wanted,
but before I give you my final verdict, well,
let's do a complete product tour,
and I'll show you what I mean.
All right, looking at the display,
wow, there's a lot going on here.
Let's call attention to those giant bezels.
Now, I'm not really one to really
rip on devices for bezels,
but these are pretty thick.
You do get some cool stuff, though.
But let's talk about the display resolution.
We're talking 2256 by 1504, which is a little bit strange.
It is 13 1/2 inch.
You do get a web camera on top
and to the right, for whatever reason that is.
It's an okay camera.
Definitely not the best I've used, but it gets the job done.
Now one of the things they did do with these thick bezels
is while there's a fingerprint reader
built into that bezel, which, I have to admit,
is a clever use of a bezel,
although it's an okay optical fingerprint reader
that is kind of hit and miss.
So definitely not one of my favorites.
I would have preferred Windows Hello facial recognition,
but I'll take it.
Now, being a full Windows 10 tablet PC,
you do get a pen, now look at that.
It's built right into the chassis.
I'm just kind of a big fan of this.
This is a Wacom EMR pen.
Now obviously, if you're gonna be drawing a lot,
you'll want to pick up a third-party pen,
maybe one of the Dual Protocol ones,
but this is a pretty solid one,
and it's not too bad at all.
One final note about this display,
so it gets around 300 and it's a bright,
it's probably a little bit less.
And it's not the brightest display I've used.
It's merely okay.
It looks nice, the color contrast and everything
is pretty solid, but you know,
this is a pretty mediocre display.
Now, when it comes to the keyboard,
Acer did a pretty solid job here.
So this does click up, it has magnetic,
just like a Surface Pro,
and the keys are a little bit smaller than I'm used to,
but it's actually a very good typing experience.
You do get a little bit of a rattling, too, to it,
so that's just Acer, but I actually enjoyed typing on it,
so no complaints.
It is backlit as well.
Let's take a look at this trackpad
with the fancy little Black Edition
scribbled across there.
This trackpad's a little bit smaller than I would prefer.
I feel like they could have made this a little bit larger.
Having said that, it is precision, it is glass,
it's smooth, and it even has a really nice click to it.
So I actually really like this trackpad.
And in using it, I had no issues.
All right, looking here at the right hand side,
you can see a USB Type C.
That is Thunderbolt 3, I'm happy to report.
So if you ever wanted a Surface Pro,
but Thunderbolt 3, well, this is an option for you.
You also do get USB type A, which is pretty solid.
You get a barrel charger, really weird.
Acer likes to do that.
You don't need to do it, though.
If you have a powerful enough type C charger,
and this is isn't a huge processor,
you should be able to use that
and charge the device that way.
Now, at the bottom here, you do get a headphone jack,
and look at that, a Micro SD card slot on the side.
Turn to the left hand side, you can find the pen.
You just pull it out with your fingernail, not too bad.
You also get a power button and volume rocker.
And these are pretty flush with the device,
so you'll have a little trouble feeling them,
but that's all right.
Let's talk a little bit about this kickstand.
U-style design.
HP has used this in the past, it's actually pretty cool.
Nice and metal too, so it's pretty solid.
But there's no way to pick it out there
with your fingernails as far as I know.
Instead, there are two buttons
on the bottom of this, and what happens is
you press down and the kickstand kicks out,
and it works pretty well if you're on a table.
And that's the thing about this device.
You'll want to use this on a table.
You could use it in your lap.
You'll need to physically press those buttons though,
and it's a little bit large.
But you get this kickstand, and it's kind of cool.
You can do things like press down on it
and it'll automatically adjust,
and if you bring it back up, it too will adjust there.
The downside of this design
is if you're gonna use the keyboard
and you just want a better angle,
well, you've got a variable angle, it works perfectly.
It's not so hot though if you want to draw on it,
because as you can see, it just has no resistance.
All right, let's get to power performance
and all of that good stuff.
So this is running a Core i7-8550U.
That's a Kaby Lake R processor.
Not Whiskey Lake, but still, it's pretty modern,
and it gets very good performance out of it,
and what makes it really interesting,
like I said earlier, this is a fanless system
so they have a dual loop cooling system
that's built in here.
Having said that, if you do push this for a long time,
yes, it will throttle.
It just has to, right?
There is no way for that heat, it's gotta go somewhere.
It's always supplemented by the fact
that it has a GeForce MX150,
and this is the lower wattage one,
the 10-watt I believe it is.
So not quite as powerful as the 25-watt,
but this is really nitpicky at this point.
Now, the MX150's roughly equivalent to
what the Iris Pro Graphics were,
but they don't have that for this generation of processor,
so that's why everybody uses the MX150,
and it's nice to have, but it's not gonna really
do anything for gaming too much.
If you're doing some sort of platformers
and 2-D stuff, it's all right.
If you're doing first-person shooters and triple A,
well, you don't want to use it on this device.
You do get Thunderbolt 3, though,
so you can use an external GPU if you want it.
Now, RAM is 16 gigabytes at DDR3, which is pretty standard,
and for storage you can get up to 500 gigabytes,
and this is where it gets a little weird.
So they're using a SATA drive on here.
So it's not PCIe and VME, which is the really fast stuff.
So you're talking about 500 megabytes for read and write,
which is pretty slow.
Now, you don't really feel it
when you're using it, and it's still much faster
than, like, a hard disk drive,
but it's weird to see in a premium device like this,
someone using SATA, but I've seen this
from some manufacturers recently
as a way to save money.
All right, let's bring it all in.
Let's talk about what I do like about this device.
It's very powerful.
If you wanted a Surface Pro
but you want something with a little extra power,
well, this is it.
The fact that it's a fanless system
is also kind of cool, pun intended there.
The MX150, though, won't do anything really huge,
but if you're doing some graphics processing,
gonna do some video editing,
well, it gives you a nice little boost.
But there are a lot of downsides to this device as well.
For instance, it weighs 3 1/2 pounds, or 1.6 kilograms,
and you do feel it.
Every time I give this device to someone,
they feel like it's super heavy for what it is.
It's also a little bit large,
and because of that, using it in your lap,
well, it's not gonna be really easy.
If you had an issue with the Surface Pro in you lap,
well, this is definitely not any better.
This is better suited for someone
who works at a desk all day.
In that sense, it's sort of a neat idea
to have a larger Surface Pro
that's meant for more of a professional.
Having said that, if you're a regular consumer
or a student, well, and it's gonna be a lot of compromises.
And I haven't even talked about audio yet.
So they do have front-facing speakers
in those giant bezels there, which is pretty nice.
And it has Dolby Audio Premium
and some other gimmicks involved,
but these aren't very good speakers at all, folks.
These are what I would call good speakers
three or four years ago, but the standards have
gone up so high, these are just not very impressive.
And I actually found them a bit of annoying.
Now, one thing I want to point out,
and I usually don't call companies out for this,
it's bloatware, and Acer has a lot on this device.
Now, it can be all uninstalled, of course,
but everything from eBay to booking.com to Amazon
to all these other sort of apps I've never used before
are all pre-installed on this device,
making it the exact opposite of a Signature Edition.
Now, when it comes to battery life, it's not terrible.
It's actually, I would say, on par with Surface Pro.
Now, it's gonna depend if you're gonna use that MX150,
which will drain the battery more
and how much screen brightness you're using,
but yeah, you could probably push seven hours out of this.
Which, when you consider it's a quad core Core i7 processor,
it's not so shabby.
Okay, let's talk about pricing.
So this comes around $1,700, which is definitely not cheap,
but you are getting 500 gigs of storage,
16 gigs of RAM, a pen built in,
and you're gonna get that keyboard.
Compared to Surface Pro 6, with similar specifications,
well, the Surface Pro 6 is also $1,700,
but you're not getting the pen
and you're not getting the keyboard,
which will add another $250 to $280
depending on what you get.
And that brings us to my final conclusion here.
Is that $250 actually worth it?
I'm gonna say no.
While I appreciate what Acer's trying to do here
by delivering us a much more powerful Surface Pro,
they succeeded there, this is a lot of compromises as well.
Having a SATA drive and something with
this much performance is a little weird.
Those bezels are also not really pretty.
The speakers are pretty terrible.
The cameras are okay.
The fundamentals are all right.
The screen I can live with.
The keyboard is good.
The trackpad is solid, too.
And the overall design does feel very quality.
I don't want to say anything about this feels cheap.
Quite the opposite, it feels very solid.
I just feel like for the pricing, the size,
an everything about it, you start to lose
what was really cool about the Surface Pro 6,
which is its size, its thinness,
its battery life, and how all the fundamentals
just worked well together.
So I'm gonna have to give this device a pass,
but I'd like to encourage Acer to keep it up.
I think they're onto something here.
And I wouldn't mind seeing more manufacturers try this,
to bring us something different from the Surface Pro 6,
and either make it cheaper or more expensive
and give us something a little bit different.
All right, so there's a quick look at the
Acer Swift 7 Black Edition.
Now, we'll have more information about this device
in the description below so you can go click those links.
Leave me a comment though and tell me
what you think and how you think Acer can improve it.
Otherwise, if you like this video,
give us a thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
Take care, everyone.
I guess...
Okay, pause for a sec.
I just need a sec.
Okay, so there's your quick look at the
Acer Swift Black 7...
- [Man] Swift 7 Black Edition.
- You're right.
Acer Swift 7 Black Edition.