Well, now I’ve done it, I thought.
I carefully set my Acer Swift 1 down on the sink in the public bathroom, then tried to make a quick move to grab some toilet paper before anyone came in. And I still had my headphones around my neck and plugged into the unit.
Yep, it did a magnificent swan dive to the hard ceramic tile floor. The laptop landed on one corner, causing the aluminum case to be punched in (the upper case). The lower case was bent, and two of the screws tore their brass inserts out of the upper case plastic (the aluminum has an inner plastic frame where everything screws into).
The laptop continued to function normally despite the spill. No screen cracks. Good thing there’s no conventional hard drive in the unit.
Once I got home, I tried to reshape the upper case to something approximating what it had looked like before. In the process, I managed to make the aluminum so thin that the slightest impact would punch it in again, and it still wasn’t shaped right. One of the brass inserts was gone (I removed the screw normally, but when I opened the case, the whole plastic area around the insert was cracked and missing, and I still have no idea where that chunk went), and another had the insert still on the screw in the lower case.
I was able to get the lower case reshaped fairly well. It has some scuffs and isn’t exactly right in the contours, but it’s pretty decent.
I looked on eBay for a replacement upper case, and I found one that was billed as new, with the keyboard and touchpad, and for $50 shipped. I placed the order.
I received it yesterday, and I began the process of moving the entire laptop over into the new upper case. I had no manual to work from, so I’d be relying on Acer’s engineering to have made things sensible. I’d had the case open before and seen that the various components looked easy to replace, but until I actually tried it, I would not know for sure.
First up was to remove the battery. It has two hold-down tabs, each secured by two screws (four total). I measured each one’s OAL and diameter with my digital vernier caliper and recorded the results and the description where they go. I unplugged the battery cable from the motherboard, and the battery pack came right out. Easy peasy! No need to glue it in, even on a super slim model like this one.
I continued to do the “remove a screw, measure a screw, write it down, stick screw to a magnet” thing. Out came the SSD, the USB/SD card reader daughterboard, and after separating a bunch of ribbon cables and the LCD connector, the motherboard. After that, I separated the display panel/lid from the top case, and that freed the power cord connector (the hinge bracket was also its holddown).
Throughout the process, I was impressed by how logical and straightforward every step was. Motherboard out, screen out, power connector out, SSD out, card reader out, really simple.
I began by putting the power connector in the new case, then put the screen on. One by one, I put the new stuff on, while preventing my cat from knocking things on the floor or chewing on any of the apparently tasty-looking ribbon cables.
I was never worried that I’d be unable to get the unit apart. I was more concerned that I would miss a step or end up with extra screws at the end, or put the wrong screws into the wrong holes (overly long screws can lead to disaster). I’ve done “detail strips” on a number of laptops before, but this one was actually one of the easiest, even though it’s a “thin and light.”
On the bad side… once I had access to the damaged top case, I looked to see why I had not seen any Swift 1-113 (I saw some for the model 114, but it’s not compatible) top cases without keyboards on eBay, nor any keyboards without top cases. I peeled the copper foil EMI shield off, and I could see the keyboard deck plate, attached to the upper case with a ton of plastic pegs that get melted to form kind of a plastic rivet. I wanted to see how deep the rabbit hole went, so I cut the rivet heads off one by one with a razor blade, and I was able to separate the deck.
Underneath was the keyboard, still attached to the top case with more melted rivet-like things. I could now see how to remove it, and what I would have to do to replace it within a given top cover. I could have finished the job, but I think I will just leave it until I need it.
To recreate the melted rivets, I’d have to use ABS cement or some other adhesive, but it would be do-able. I think ABS cement (the kind that is used for plumbing) would work well for this. I have used the stuff many times fixing laptop cases and car parts… it’s pretty great stuff. Just have a window open, as it’s a bit acrid.
I criticized that Mac laptop that had those butterfly keys that were prone to failure for making it so hard to replace the keyboard. That keyboard was described as being riveted to the case top cover. I’d assumed that meant actual rivets, but is it possible they were more like my Acer? Are these melted things actually called rivets? I just call them that because they resemble the metal rivets.
The good news is that my Acer repair cost $50 including the keyboard, top cover, and new touchpad (which I did not need, but the only top cover I saw that didn’t have one was no cheaper, so why not just get the whole thing?), a far cry from the $700 or whatever it was that Apple wanted for the part. I seem to remember something also about the battery being glued in.
Now it’s back in the shape it should be in, with everything working nicely. I don’t like that the keyboard was obviously meant to be replaced as a single unit with the top case, but when the whole thing is $50 (with $12 of that being for shipping), it’s not so bad. Naturally, the official Acer price would be more, but I have never failed to get original, brand new keyboards and used, good other pieces parts for laptops from eBay. The top cover I received was indeed new… I can tell by the lack of shininess in the middle of the touchpad and on the keys that it was not used. It’s an advantage to buy models that are produced in large numbers, as there will be plenty of parts available.
If this keyboard were to fail, to the point that replacement of the top cover (again) would be warranted, I would certainly attempt a swap of the other keyboard in first, and I strongly suspect it would work fine with the ABS cement.
I had in the past considered Acer a second-tier PC maker, but the fit and finish (excepting one thing… the exceptionally sharp edge on the bottom cover!) and the logical layout have me thinking it’s better than I gave it credit for.
By contrast, my Dell G3 had all four GPU holddown screws missing from the factory, the battery is in much worse shape than the Swift’s despite being almost unused (and I’ve used the Swift’s a lot), and one of the fans started making weird noises when the unit was just over a year old. The Swift doesn’t even have a fan, but what it does have looks good by comparison to my Dell (which is still a great PC, despite its since-corrected flaws).
The Swift’s Insyde UEFI firmware, though, is awful. Buggy, feature poor, and the password protection features are useless when it “helpfully” gives anyone trying to crack it the keys to the store if they try and fail three times.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
