My favorite 16-inch laptop of 2025 hits all the right notes (without inflating the price)

jul / 2025

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Acer’s Swift 16 AI is a thin and light laptop with a gorgeous OLED display, nice full-sized keyboard, and Intel Core Ultra 7 or 9 “Lunar Lake” processor starting at $1,200: a competitive price for a device that feels more premium than you’d expect.

I’ve been commuting with the Swift 16 AI for the past month, and it’s become a surprise favorite of the year. It stands out as a great-value ultraportable that’s as versatile as it is capable and has fantastic battery life.

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The Acer Swift 16 AI features a minimalist build, with an all-over, metallic matte black coating that looks a lot like the LG Gram Pro 16. Its full-sized keyboard and generous selection of I/O make it practical for a variety of uses. All in all, it’s rather non-descript (in a good way) with one subtle Acer logo to identify it.

The configuration I tested had an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1TB SSD — a flexible loadout that can do a little bit of everything. It’s particularly well-suited as a work device with Wi-Fi 7 and a responsive, very comfortable keyboard with a slight upward tilt thanks to Acer’s hinge design.

I was happy to see that both USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4, which is great for folks who want their external monitors. Otherwise, you also get an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution. The webcam is also surprisingly good, with 1440p resolution for a crisp image during video calls.

The glossy, 3K OLED display at 120Hz is one of the laptop’s strongest features. It’s a crisp and vibrant image that looks fantastic whether you’re gaming, editing video, or just working in productivity software. Despite its very thin clamshell design, I experienced very little screen wobble — one of the first things I look for when I see a display this thin.

You can also get some surprisingly good gaming performance out of this laptop with the Intel Arc GPU, as long as you’re not pushing the limits on top-tier titles. I ran a handful of my usual Steam titles, and although it’s not a gaming laptop, it feels competitive and responsive, only stuttering with texture shaders turned up to max.

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The only thing is that the display is incredibly glossy — we’re talking near-mirror status. You will need to adjust it if you’re in an office or somewhere with overhead lighting, something I found myself doing rather frequently. If you’re sitting with your back to a bright window, it becomes borderline unusable.

That said, the display looks fantastic otherwise, so I’d still recommend this laptop to most users unless you’re specifically looking for a device to use outdoors or are not a fan of a glossy display.

Another critique I have of this laptop (which is an inevitable result of its price point) is its speaker system, which is not great. While it’s true that laptop speakers are infamously lacking in bass and depth, this one takes that reputation and runs with it.

Usually, I would say this is a trade-off I don’t mind, but it’s a bit of a bummer that the sound is so shallow when the gaming performance is so good. If you’re someone who always has a pair of headphones on, however, this won’t be an issue.

Ultimately, the Acer Swift 16 AI’s strengths outweigh its drawbacks. When it comes to everyday use, the performance is there, and as a portable 16-inch laptop, it’s well-designed and easy to commute with.

The battery is also a banger. The laptop has a very thin form factor, but still manages to fit in a large 20Wh battery with a 65-watt charge. Depending on how you use it, you can get multiple days of use on one charge, and it ranks up there with other efficient devices I’ve tested this year such as the Asus Zenbook A14, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, and the Dell XPS 13 with the Snapdragon X Elite chip.

During our standard video playback test, I got nearly 18 hours of video playback on one charge. When it comes to using this laptop for work, you’ll easily last through the work day and into the next, unless you’re pushing it with more demanding workloads. Like all of the other Lunar Lake-powered devices I’ve tested this year, power drain drops to a trickle when it’s not in use.

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The Intel Core Ultra 7 chip generates little to no heat during everyday use, but pushing it with heavier task loads and plugging in the charger will result in temperature increases.

Notably, the charging process seems to be hotter during the first 30 minutes, or below 30%, then tapers down to a much cooler temperature at higher battery percentages. Also, when you start or stop charging, the laptop emits a chirp. All that said, it charges very fast and can approach 100% in about an hour in Balanced Mode.

Beyond gaming, this laptop makes for a competent laptop for creatives with its fast refresh rate and lovely display. The 16GB of RAM might limit high-end workloads with large video files or 4K rendering, but it’s otherwise a joy to work on.

Comparing this laptop to some peers, we see very close (with one identical) benchmarking scores to Dell’s XPS 13 with the same Intel Core Ultra 7 “Lunar Lake” chip.

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ZDNET’s buying advice

The Acer Swift 16 AI is a fantastic value and a sleeper hit from Acer’s lineup. The bottom line here is that for around $1,250, you’re getting a 16-inch OLED display at 120Hz and 3K resolution, a sleek, minimalist build, full suite of I/O, and a marathon battery. Those elements alone work together to make a practical, capable main driver that can do a bit of everything.

As a work laptop, it feels premium and powerful, despite the subpar speakers, which is a tradeoff I’m willing to take.

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Why the Acer Swift 16 AI gets an Editors’ Choice award

We’ve awarded the Acer Swift 16 AI our Editors’ Choice award primarily for its features, hardware, and build quality relative to price. The “Lunar Lake” Intel Core Ultra 7 processor future-proofs this laptop with commendable performance, and its physical build feels more premium than its price point would suggest.

Ultimately, it’s an excellent choice for anyone wanting a gorgeous display paired with fantastic battery life. Starting at $1,250, it’s already a value, and if you can catch it on sale, it’s even better.