Acer Swift 3, either with Core i7-1065G7 or Ryzen 7 4700U: The Laptop Market Just Blew Wide Open
by Dr. Ian Cutress on January 6, 2020 6:30 PM EST
Everyone wants a notebook that fulfills their needs, is super light, lasts forever, and only costs a dime. We’re not in fantasy land just quite yet, but Acer is trying with its new Swift 3 for 2020. There’s one kicker in these units though – there will be AMD and Intel variants, using the latest and greated from both – Intel’s 10nm Ice lake vs. AMD’s new 7nm APUs.
The new Acer Swift 3 ultraportable is a 14-inch unit weighing 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs) that has either up to an octo-core AMD Ryzen 7 4700U inside or up to an Intel Core i7-1065G7, 16 GB of LPDDR4X memory, and up to 512 GB of NVMe storage. Acer is going for a premium design feel here, with the lightweight chassis, narrow bezels (4.37mm), and support for features like Windows Hello and Wake on Voice supported. The full unit is 16.55mm / 0.65-inches thick.
AMD Variant
AMD Prices will start from $599 for the base configuration, and exact specifications will come closer to the launch in May. Intel will start from $699 and be available from March.
Intel Variant
If one thing is going to be clear at this year’s CES, it’s going to be that AMD and Intel are going to be hitting each other with design wins. Normally for design wins we talk about flagships, but I suspect we’ll see AMD in a lot of mid-price notebooks with good all-round specifications, which is going to be where Intel will feel the heat. Not to be outdone, Intel is expected to have a number of Ice Lake designs at CES as well – the Intel Acer Swift 3 has Athena certification for example, which might be where the extra base cost comes from, as it will likely have Thunderbolt 3, Wi-Fi 6, and an ultra-low power display. It would be interesting to square off Intel vs AMD here in a review later this year.
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Morawka - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
The 1080P IPS screens on the swift line are excellent. You're going to get pretty good gaming performance out of the Ryzen 7 model too.chrnochime - Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - link
You aren't going to get 4k for 599 or even 699. Keep dreaming.djayjp - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
No way you can see pixels on a 1440p 14" screen on a laptop.peevee - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link
Why the hell do you need 4k on 14" screen? So your graphics would be slower and your battery life would be shorter?UnawareLlama23 - Monday, January 6, 2020 - link
"16 GB of LPDDR4X memory" Sounds like single channel memory?Probably awful Graphics without dGPU.
brakdoo - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
That is probably 128 bit as they need at least two chips to get 16 GB for now (16 GB chips are rare and expansive). One LPDDR4X chip is 32 or 64 bit, but as the the price difference is next to none it is safe to assume that we are talking 128 bit at least for the 16 GB config.ET - Monday, January 6, 2020 - link
That's a pretty bad writeup. The Intel version is 13.5" and different resolution. There's significantly different battery life. PCWorld has all the details.Irata - Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - link
I was about to say „Thank you Acer“ for offering two identical chassis with either Intel or AMD but it appears they are taking great care to not make them equal, just look the same while gimping the AMD alternative (screen, battery, who knows what else).Sad, sounded good at first.
Findecanor - Monday, January 6, 2020 - link
Port fail. Does not use USB C for charging. Headphone jack on wrong sideAljon Pobar - Friday, January 10, 2020 - link
AMD option, $100 cheaper 😍