ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. The process is already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate as the technology improves, as more people gain access to it, and as more learn how to use it. What’s shocking is just how many tasks ChatGPT is already capable of managing for you. While the naysayers may still look down their noses at the potential of AI assistants, I’ve been using it to handle all kinds of menial tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples. Further reading: This tiny ChatGPT feature helps me tackle my days more productively Write your emails for you Dave Parrack / Foundry We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it. Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start. A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails. Generate itineraries and schedules Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide. As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me. As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like. Break down difficult concepts Dave Parrack / Foundry One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements. Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking! Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images. Analyze and make tough decisions Dave Parrack / Foundry We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice. It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic. It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life. Plan complex projects and strategies Dave Parrack / Foundry Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts. ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up with a step-by-step plan, and break it down further into phases (if required). If ChatGPT doesn’t initially split your project up in a way that suits you, try again. Change up the prompts and make the AI chatbot tune in to exactly what you’re looking for. It takes a bit of back and forth, but it can shorten your planning time from hours to mere minutes. Compile research notes Dave Parrack / Foundry If you need to research a given topic of interest, ChatGPT can save you the hassle of compiling that research. For example, ahead of a trip to Croatia, I wanted to know more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a brief summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened. After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of the major events, further helping me to understand how the conflict played out. ChatGPT then offered to provide me with battle maps and/or summaries, plus profiles of the main players. You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, which is now available to free users, up to 5 Deep Research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on large amounts of information across the internet. A Deep Research task can take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it’ll save you hours or even days. Summarize articles, meetings, and more Dave Parrack / Foundry There are only so many hours in the day, yet so many new articles published on the web day in and day out. When you come across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to run them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary is lacking in any way, you can go back and plow through the article proper. As an example, I ran one of my own PCWorld articles (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a brief summary of my points and broke down the best X alternative based on my reasons given. Interestingly, it also pulled elements from other articles. (Hmph.) If you don’t want that, you can tell ChatGPT to limit its summary to the contents of the link. This is a great trick to use for other long-form, text-heavy content that you just don’t have the time to crunch through. Think transcripts for interviews, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is to never share private details with ChatGPT, like company-specific data that’s protected by NDAs and the like. Create Q&A flashcards for learning Dave Parrack / Foundry Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding in a new role, prepping for an interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer have to painstakingly create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you’re studying. You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), as well as various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific sub-topics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference. You can also use Google’s NotebookLM app in a similar way. Provide interview practice Dave Parrack / Foundry Whether you’re a first-time jobseeker or have plenty of experience under your belt, it’s always a good idea to practice for your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might’ve had to ask a friend or family member to act as your mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do it for you—and do it more effectively. Inform ChatGPT of the job title, industry, and level of position you’re interviewing for, what kind of interview it’ll be (e.g., screener, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with CEO), and anything else you want it to take into consideration. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way. When I tried this out myself, I was shocked by how capable ChatGPT can be at pretending to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for each answer you give is invaluable for knocking off your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you’re interviewed by a real hiring manager. Further reading: No, don’t threaten ChatGPT for better results. Try this instead Read...

Double Data Rate 4 memory—or DDR4 RAM if you’re short on time—has had a good run. It first popped into PCs over a decade ago, but at this point it’s hard to find a new laptop that hasn’t moved on to DDR5, and it’s only really relevant on the desktop side for budget mini PCs and AMD’s AM4 platform. DDR4 manufacturing is winding down, and that means it’s getting a whole lot more expensive. There appears to be something of a rush on the existing stock of new DDR4 memory. TrendForce reports that retail prices for DDR4 RAM kits being tracked have gone up shockingly fast, with the price of some SKUs having gone up by almost 40 percent in the last week. That’s due to several compounding factors, including decreased production from memory manufacturers and the Trump administration’s import taxes (tariffs) feeding anxiety over pricing. Those short-term price increases are, in fact, considerably higher than TrendForce predicted just a few weeks ago, where consumer-grade DDR4 modules for PCs was projected to rise 18 to 23 percent in the third quarter of the year. As Tom’s Hardware observes, this is an unprecedented situation: DDR4 might become more expensive than the much faster DDR5, based purely on scarcity as manufacturers like Micron and Samsung have wound down production. A few quick searches show that DDR4 prices haven’t yet eclipsed DDR5 at the consumer retail level, though the former is definitely higher than it should be for a technology that’s on its way out. I’m more concerned about devices that use soldered memory modules in more affordable form factors, which can’t easily switch to new hardware that supports DDR5. The newest Raspberry Pi is still running on a design that’s six years old, with DDR4 memory that can’t be replaced. If that memory suddenly doubles in price, the Pi 4 will be forced to rise in price, too. It might also be the final, arguably long-overdue death knell for AMD’s AM4 socket. AMD has been producing shiny new CPUs for the nearly 10-year-old platform as recently as this month, but it all depends on cheap and easily available DDR4 RAM to make financial sense. Without that component, we might see the end of a continually supported CPU socket that’s lasted through five chip generations and change. Read...

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Still struggling with poor video quality? We all have those precious family footage from an old camcorder, grainy concert video clips, 720p AI videos, or even modern mobile footage that came out blurry and stuttering. For years, video enthusiasts have had to either accept overly-priced software with slow processing speed, or make do with tools that yield unnatural, infamous “painterly look”. Thankfully, a new generation of AI-based video enhancers is changing the game. Leading the charge is Aiarty Video Enhancer, a newly released desktop application designed to upscale videos, fix grainy issues, and restore realistic and natural details. You can get a free license code of Aiarty Video Enhancer with this time-limited debut offer, and see for yourself how its generative AI models efficiently elevate video quality. Get a free copy of aiarty video enhancer What Is Aiarty Video Enhancer Aiarty Video Enhancer is a desktop-based AI video enhancer equipped with video upscaling and enhancement models, plus AI frame interpolation and audio enhancement modules. In essence, it helps users to denoise, deblur, and upscale videos to 1080p/4K, and restore details for skin, hair, outdoor plants, fabric textures, etc. To address the core frustrations users face with both online and other desktop enhancers, Aiarty focuses on three aspects: better video quality through tailored AI models, turbo speed for AI inference (95% GPU utilization), and batch offline processing for privacy and security concerns. Aiarty: Upscale 540p to 1080p, moDetail AI Model for Fur/TextureAiarty Why Choose Aiarty Video Enhancer to Improve Videos When it comes to video quality enhancement solutions, common frustrations discussed in video-related communities are: detail loss, edge halos, jagged edges, ghost faces at a distance, hours or days of processing time, high upfront costs, and so forth. Here’s how Aiarty handles these challenges, making it a compelling option for videographers, vloggers, YouTubers, gamers, old video archivists, animation collectors, AIGC video explorers, and anyone. Aiarty: Restore Skin Details Upon UpscalingAiarty Restore Realistic Details: Instead of just sharpening, its unique hybrid Diffusion+GAN technology intelligently generates new details for life-like textures in hair, skin, foliage, fabrics, and more. Denoise, Deblur, and Enhance for Specific Scenarios: It leverages three dedicated AI models, each prioritizing clarity, fidelity, or super quality with tailored denoising and deblurring for specific video problems. 3X Speed with Turbo Mode: By fully utilizing your GPU, it processes videos up to 3x the speed of other AI video enhancer software, turning hours of waiting into minutes. For every minute of processing in Aiarty, a competing tool might take three minutes or longer. Secure Offline Processing: Your videos are processed locally on your computer, ensuring 100% privacy and freeing you from slow internet upload speeds. All-in-One Enhancement Suite: Beyond upscaling, it includes AI-powered frame interpolation to smooth motion up to 120fps, an audio denoiser to remove distracting background sounds, and quick edit tools Aiarty: Upscale, Preview, and Batch Export EasilyAiarty Special Debut Offer from Aiarty It’s clear that Aiarty Video Enhancer is an impressive new tool for anyone, from families wanting to restore old home movies to content creators needing to polish their final product. To celebrate its debut release, the company is offering a significant discount for a limited time. Readers can get a free license code or upgrade to a lifetime version for only $165 (down from $235), which also includes a free gift – Aiarty Image Enhancer. This is a fantastic opportunity to revive your video assets and ensure your memories are preserved in the best possible quality for years to come. Save 30% on Aiarty Video Enhancer Lifetime License & Get AI Image Enhancer For Free! GRAB SPECIAL DEALS NOW Read...

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My wife always gets annoyed when we game together. Not because I complete the jump puzzles in It Takes Two faster than her (I do), but because my wireless Xbox controller is “always disconnecting.” Not regularly, not even that often, but whenever we play a game where we’re both using our wireless gamepads, my controller disconnects for a second. It’s been that way for years. And I’m an idiot… because it was such an easy fix. I’m still kicking myself for not doing it sooner. It turned out all I needed to do was update the firmware. But I actually had to look up how to do it—I don’t know if I’ve ever updated the controller’s firmware. It really was due for a bit of care. It’s easy to forget the firmware When it comes to familiar technology, we so easily fall into a rut. That controller, keyboard, mouse, or whatever doesn’t work quite like it used to, but you’re too busy to figure it out right now, so you settle for a workaround or just put up with the issue until later. That’s how it was with me and my wireless controller. I never quite knew what the issue was. It just seemed to randomly lose power for a second or so while playing. No warnings, no system crashes, no signs as to what it could be. Replacing the batteries didn’t make any difference, nor did switching from Bluetooth to the wireless dongle. Just imagine the withering glare I got every time this happened.Jon Martindale / Foundry I tell you all this because I did try to fix the problem. I’d often pause the game we were playing to spend a couple minutes fussing with settings, or unplugging and replugging the dongle. All to the soundtrack of my wife’s sighs as she glanced at her phone. How long until one of the kids inevitably wakes up? Better to just turn the controller back on and get back to the game. I’ll fix it later. Yeah… “later.” The thing is, if I’d only plugged the darn thing in, all would’ve been solved. But it’s a wireless controller, so I’d never plugged it in. Why would I have? It works as is! And yet, if I had, I would’ve gotten a prompt to update its firmware and it would’ve saved me all sorts of hassle. Update your wireless controller on PC If you’re like me and you’ve never updated your wireless controller’s firmware, hopefully you’re now convinced that you should. Below are the quick steps I took for my wireless Xbox controller, but the process shouldn’t be too different if you have another kind. First, you’ll need to download the Xbox Accessories app. I’m going to have to send you to the Microsoft Store for it, but bear with me. Click the Download button and get it installed. (PlayStation wireless controllers have their own firmware update app, and third-party controllers by companies like 8BitDo have their own as well.) Jon Martindale / Foundry Once the app is installed and ready, grab a USB-C cable and plug your controller into an available port on your PC. Launch the Xbox Accessories app and you should see your controller displayed on the main window, though if you have multiple controllers or other Xbox accessories connected, you might have to cycle through them. When you’ve found your controller, select the little three-dot menu, followed by the firmware update button. Make sure the USB cable is plugged in and no kids or pets are around to run past and yoink the cable out. When you’re ready, hit Continue to begin the update. Wait for it to complete. When prompted, unplug the controller. From there, you should have a fully updated wireless controller that’s ready to game without any spouse-frustrating disconnects. I can’t promise that a firmware update will fix every problem your controller might face, but it fixed mine. And just in time for me and my wife to take a crack at Split Fiction! Further reading: Our no-BS guide to buying PC gaming controllers Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Good CPU performance for the price Excellent display Fairly light for a 16-incher Cons Unimpressive keyboard with a cramped numpad Sacrifices battery life Bland design Unsatisfying speakers Our Verdict The Acer Swift Go 16 packs an excellent display and solid CPU for the price, giving it a value edge. But its boring, sometimes unpleasant design, uneven performance lead, and shorter battery life from the high-power CPU make it harder to recommend overall. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Acer is no stranger to releasing tons of slightly different versions of what seems like almost the same system. That’s where the Acer Swift Go 16 fits next to the Acer Swift 16 AI. They’ve got the same display specs, both come in aluminum, weigh nearly the same amount, and are almost equally priced. That price? Fairly affordable. At $1,149, it’s impressive the Acer Swift Go 16 packs in 32GB of memory and a high-power Intel Core Ultra 9 285H where most of its contemporaries are opting for lower-power chips. Unfortunately, the Acer Swift Go 16 doesn’t actually end up a lot more capable for everyday computing, but it does end up with a much shorter battery life. If you’re just after a great display and decent speed, it may be a reasonable pick for the frugal shopper, but there are better all-around options out there. Acer Swift Go 16: Specs and features Model number: SFG16-73-92RC CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285H Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X-7467 Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140T Display: 16-inch 2880×1800 OLED, Glossy Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD – Micron 2500 Webcam: 1440p + IR Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C with Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 2x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x microSD card reader, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows Hello fingerprint, facial recognition Battery capacity: 75 watt-hours Dimensions: 14.03 x 9.88 x 0.66 inches Weight: 3.3 pounds (measured) MSRP: $1,149 as-tested ($1,149 base) At the time of writing, the Acer Swift Go 16 was available only in the above configuration with a price of $1,149. This model appears to only be for sale at Micro Center, though, and the retailer has it listed for $1,199. Acer Swift Go 16: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp The Acer Swift Go 16 almost, almost, doesn’t look like all of Acer’s other productivity laptops. It goes for a darker gray color scheme than the many Acer models I’ve tested in the past. It appears Acer is shifting its design ethos. This model looks nearly identical to the Acer Swift 16 AI, and I saw a similar push into darker designs in the Acer Aspire Go 15 earlier this year as well. In a few places, the laptop has glossy metal accents. The lid has some little style lines etched in, and it calls to memory the designs Asus does on the lids of its ZenBooks (for example), except that Acer’s is rather boring.  All that gray is aluminum at least. This gives the laptop something of a premium feel, even if its size and thinner design make it a little flexy. Even then, there’s something a little thoughtless about the shape. At some points it’s curvy, and at others it has sharp angles. The display has one of those lift-up hinges that creates extra airflow underneath the laptop when it’s on a table, but this creates an uncomfortable pressure point when it’s on a lap. The hinge opens smoothly and easily, wiggling for just a second when it’s moved to new positions. It can also fold flat, for whatever that’s worth. The display isn’t a touchscreen, though.  Acer has made the Acer Swift Go 16 fairly thin, with it maxing out at 0.66 inches at its thickest point before factoring in the rubber feet that hold it steady on tables. And it weighs in at just 3.3 pounds — not bad for a 16-incher. That slimness and weight is enough to forgive the light flex of the keyboard deck.  A slim grille on the underside of the Acer Swift Go 16 is responsible for air intake, meanwhile a grille above the keyboard is where the laptop exhausts its heat, though less than half of the grille is actually exhausting anything. The rest is hunky punk filled with heat-fin-shaped plastic. That exhaust runs directly into the slim bezel below the display and will be guided upward by the display. While this isn’t a high-wattage machine, it’s still worrying to know hot exhaust is blowing almost directly onto the display.  Above the display, a small extra bit of bezel houses the webcam and a physical camera shutter. This little extra lip helps with opening the laptop, though it does make me prone to touching the webcam’s cover.  Despite the large size of the Acer Swift Go 16, Acer has fitted its speakers on the bottom of the system at either side. The positioning can make it very easy to snuff the speakers when using the laptop on your lap. Acer Swift Go 16: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp The keyboard is classically Acer. It features the same domed contour I’ve long held disdain for but have tested so many times that I’ve almost become comfortable on. I found myself typing comfortably at around 110 words-per-minute with decent accuracy in Monkeytype. I’d love to type a bit faster, but that tends to only come with truly exceptional keyboards. The fact this somewhat awkward keyboard can keep up is a plus. The keys aren’t even terribly well stabilized, feeling nicely poppy in the middle but mushy if I tap toward the edges. The backlight also isn’t terribly well executed, offering uneven illumination to the primary and secondary legends on each key.  Acer’s trackpad is a curious one. On the one hand, it’s a sizable trackpad with a smooth Gorilla Glass surface that feels great to use for all things mousing around. Its physical click feels a little loose and cheap, but not awful. The trackpad isn’t just a trackpad though. When certain apps are playing media, it will light up special zones for media control, including fast forward, rewinds, play/pause, volume, fullscreen. These work well and add a bit of style to the laptop. The downside is that to enjoy this feature, you have to accept a small “Swift” logo being permanently illuminated at the bottom of the trackpad and constantly wasting a bit of battery. This can be turned off by reducing the trackpad illumination, but that also renders the playback controls invisible. Good work, Acer. Awkwardly, even when they’re not illuminated, these controls can still work, and there won’t be a clear indication about when they will. Acer Swift Go 16: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp The Acer Swift Go 16 has a largely excellent display. It combines the best aspects of OLED — infinite contrast and fast pixel response — with a wonderfully wide color gamut, covering 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color space. The panel can get plenty bright, hitting 408 nits in my measurements (and HDR scenes should have room for even brighter details), helping it get past the reflectivity of its glossy screen somewhat. It also has a high degree of accuracy with a dE Max of 2.15. Its 2880×1800 resolution is satisfyingly sharp at this size, and it runs at 120Hz for smooth motion. Curiously, it appears to run exclusively at 120Hz, with Windows not presenting 60Hz as an option or automatically switching when on battery power. The display supports Adaptive Sync down to a 48Hz refresh rate, but it’s hard to tell if it’s doing this often as the display generally looks very smooth.  The Acer Swift Go 16 is a whole lot of meh wrapped around a big and beautiful display. There are some oddities to the display, though. For one thing, that 120Hz refresh rate appears to be locked, with no dropping to 60 or even 90Hz to help conserve battery when unplugged.  By default, it also has some unfortunate dimming behavior, adjusting the brightness of the whole screen based on the content on display, but its adjustments aren’t immediate and can be distracting, sometimes appearing like faint flickering. Sometimes it would just turn off (maybe because it’s dark and the camera thought I left), and then wouldn’t come back on despite my clicking the trackpad and typing on the keyboard. The speakers sound a bit boxed in, making for unpleasant listening, almost especially when listening to people speaking. This ruins a lot of the content you might watch on a productivity machine. Acer Swift Go 16: Webcam, microphone, biometrics IDG / Mark Knapp The 1440p webcam on the Acer Swift Go 16 could be better. It’s not that it’s bad. In fact, it offers an impressively natural exposure and color. But the camera’s cover being built right into the lip of the display, where you’re likely to open it, will get it covered in finger oils and result in a smeared look to the visuals that will be hard to avoid.  The mics are a bit weak, too. My voice sounded rather low through them compared to the mics on two HP laptops I tested at the same time. The mics did at least offer solid noise suppression, eliminating the sound of a fan running just a foot away from the laptop and the sound of my hands clapping while I spoke.  The Acer Swift Go 16 supports both facial recognition through its webcam and fingerprint scanning with a sensor integrated into the power button at the top right corner of the keyboard. Both have proven quick and reliable in my testing. Acer also integrates some extra capabilities with presence sensing, which can automatically lock the laptop if you walk away or wake it if you return.  Acer Swift Go 16: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp The Acer Swift Go 16 has decent connectivity, though it could certainly have done more with its size. It offers two Thunderbolt 4 ports for high-speed connections and charging the laptop. Unfortunately, these are both on the same side of the system. You’ll get a 5Gbps USB-A port on either side. The left side includes an HDMI 2.1 port while the right side offers a 3.5mm jack and microSD card reader. That may seem like plenty, but this is a big, 16-inch laptop, and there’s room for more. The right side even has a big empty space where an additional port could have gone.  Wireless connectivity is strong. The system includes a Wi-Fi 7 chip for fast networking that should be up-to-speed for years to come. It also gets support for Bluetooth LE audio — another future-facing technology that ought to improve audio quality for supported headsets and earbuds. While I didn’t have a device ready to take advantage of it, as it has been slowly rolling out to Bluetooth headphones and buds, Bluetooth connectivity to my current earbuds worked without issue.  Acer Swift Go 16: Software Few laptops do things with their pre-installed software that I feel is worth calling out. But Acer’s pre-installed Acer Jumpstart app is hard to ignore. It is basically an app advertising engine. In just three days, it popped up notifications suggesting Dragon’s Fortune Slots, Adobe software, and ExpressVPN (with that last one at least mentioning that the PC includes the service, albeit a 30-day trial). Without any meaningful additions to the experience, it’s annoying to see. Thankfully, because it doesn’t add anything meaningful, it’s also easy to freely remove without losing any capabilities on the machine.  Acer Swift Go 16: Performance The Acer Swift Go 16 is equipped to be a powerful ultrabook, relying on a high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 285H laptop CPU that boasts a total of 16 cores, not to mention that Intel’s recent CPUs have been offering excellent single-core performance. This setup is a marked difference from the Acer Swift 16 AI, which relied on a lower-power Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, comes with half the memory, and managed to cost $50 more than the Acer Swift Go 16. The Acer Swift Go 16 also managed to slip under the price radar for the $1,659 HP Omnibook X Flip 16, $1,649 Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro, $1,199 Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 16ILL10 while featuring a higher-tier CPU than the whole lot, though it does lack a touchscreen — something all three include. While the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H can help in heavy computing workloads, it’s not enough to put the Acer Swift Go 16 far ahead of the pack in everyday office computing, which PCMark 10 evaluates. It performs admirably, with strong results across the board, but it’s somewhat held back by its storage. It has the lowest scores in the App Startup portion of the test in spite of its PCIe 4.0 SSD.  IDG / Mark Knapp Where raw performance is concerned, the Acer Swift Go 16 has the advantage. Our Handbrake encoding test tasks each system with a 32GB video file that it needs to shrink down to a lower resolution. This one tends to hit systems hard, making their CPU work for a long enough time to see how well it handles thermals. Here, the Acer Swift Go 16 had a big lead, beating the next closest system by over six minutes, and beating most by over 10 minutes. It was still not as fast as some gaming system with more advanced cooling can muster, but it still shows the advantage of more cores and a higher-power processor.  IDG / Mark Knapp Naturally, we see that advantage carry over to Cinebench, which again stresses the CPU. The single-core performance of all of the systems is very close, though the Acer Swift Go 16 tended to be at the front of the pack or very near it. And where multi-core performance is concerned, the Acer Swift Go 16 easily stays ahead. Only the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro offers a surprising challenge — not only coming a bit closer to the Acer Swift Go 16 than some of the other systems, but also doing so without any more cores than the others. It’s likely Samsung’s cooling is making the difference. On the flip side, Acer’s cooling is also likely coming into play, as the longer and hotter run of Cinebench R24 see’s its performance lead narrow compared to the shorter (and therefore less heat-inducing) tests of earlier Cinebench versions. IDG / Mark Knapp When it comes to 3D graphics, all of these systems are using integrated graphics solutions from Intel. Most get Intel Arc 140V while the Acer Swift Go 16 is alone in featuring Intel Arc 140T. Unfortunately for Acer, it has no benefit. The Acer Swift Go 16 actually had the lowest scores in 3DMark’s Time Spy Graphics subtest and was largely buoyed by its leading CPU performance, though that was only enough to keep it neck-in-neck with the competition here. And again, we saw the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro step out ahead with about 10 percent more performance than the Acer Swift Go 16. None of these systems are offering very exceptional graphics performance, though.  Acer Swift Go 16: Battery life While I’d generally expect a system that offers high performance to lose a little ground where efficiency is concerned, I didn’t expect Acer to perform as badly as it did here. The Acer Swift Go 16 simply couldn’t keep up with the competition in our battery test. IDG / Mark Knapp It barely eked past 10 hours in our 4K video playback test, which sees the system set to Airplane Mode and the display set between 250 and 260 nits. That might have been good a few years ago, but thin-and-light PCs have come a long way in the past couple years, and the Acer Swift Go 16 simply hasn’t kept up. All of its competitors here offered over 17 hours in our test, and Samsung topped 23 hours, more than doubling the Acer Swift Go 16’s longevity. In real-world use, it can predictably struggle to reach 8 hours of runtime without some coddling, like a lower brightness level.  Acer Swift Go 16: Conclusion The Acer Swift Go 16 is a whole lot of meh wrapped around a big and beautiful display. There’s no knocking the sharp, 16-inch OLED panel with its gorgeous contrast, rich color, and smooth refresh rate. But the rest of the system just lets it down. The build of the laptop is uninspired and not exceptionally good. It’s competitively light but not leading the pack in a meaningful way. The keyboard and trackpad make for a just fine user experience, but could definitely be better (though Acer seems allergic to adjusting its keycaps). And the speakers don’t do much to complement the display.  The Acer Swift Go 16 steps up where CPU performance is concerned, but it’s thermals don’t let it keep as wide a margin as it ought to have against even some lower-power systems. And the high-power CPU comes with a big hit to battery life, seeing the Acer Swift Go 16 barely crack 10 hours in our test. If you’re not too worried about being away from power outlets for long and want to prioritize the display and CPU performance, the Acer Swift Go 16 is at least competitive on price. But otherwise the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro proves a worthy alternative, and the earlier Acer Swift 16 AI proves a more competent on-the-go machine for its much longer battery life. Read...

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