Acer Swift GO Thin & Light 16" 2024, Core i7-1355U, 16GB, 1TB SSD, Iron

The Acer Swift GO 16 gives you a big touchscreen, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD for a reasonable refurb price. Performance is average for everyday tasks but gaming is a no-go. Reliability is a concern, so the included warranty matters.

The 1355U handles the basics without breaking a sweat. Ten cores sound impressive, but only two are performance cores. The rest are efficiency cores meant to sip power. That's why this thing lands in the middle of the pack for CPU performance. The 16GB of DDR5 is solid, and the 1TB SSD sits at the 80th percentile for storage, which is a genuine highlight. Gaming is the weak spot. The Iris Xe graphics score a 13.4 out of 100 in our gaming category. You can play older titles or indie games at low settings, but anything modern will chug.

Stacked against the Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro or Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition, the Swift GO 16 loses on performance, build quality, and battery life. Those machines are in a different league, and they cost like it. The Lenovo Legion 5i and MSI Raider are gaming laptops with dedicated GPUs, so they crush the Acer in that category. But none of them offer a 16-inch touchscreen with 1TB of storage at this price. If you want a big screen for documents and streaming without spending a fortune, the Acer holds its own.

At CAD 909 for a refurb with a one year Acer warranty, this is a tempting deal. You're getting a large touchscreen, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. New units with these specs typically cost more. The catch is reliability. Our data puts this model at the 10th percentile, which is a real red flag. The warranty helps, but a laptop that might fail is never a bargain.

The Acer Swift GO 16 is a big screen thin and light that leans hard into productivity and media. You get a 16-inch 1920x1200 touchscreen, 16GB of DDR5, and a full 1TB NVMe SSD. That's a lot of laptop for the money, especially since this is a refurb unit with a one year Acer warranty.

But it's not a powerhouse. The Core i7-1355U is a 10-core chip built for efficiency, not raw speed. Our database puts the CPU at 43rd percentile and the integrated Iris Xe graphics at 49th. Fine for everyday work, rough for anything demanding.

Skip this if you need a gaming machine or a laptop for heavy creative work like video editing or 3D rendering. The integrated graphics will frustrate you. Also skip it if you travel constantly and need something compact. This model scores in the 20th percentile for compactness, so it's not the easiest to toss in a small bag.

This is a good pick for students, office workers, or anyone who wants a large screen for web browsing, video calls, and document work. The touchscreen and fingerprint reader add convenience. Just don't expect to edit 4K video or play demanding games. And given the reliability concerns, make sure that one year warranty is part of the deal.