BERLIN — We already knew Acer was planning to produce an unbelievably light, 2.2-pound laptop. Now we know just how much the 15-inch Acer Swift 5 is going to cost when it debuts next year.
Acer used the IFA trade show here in Berlin to announce pricing and availability for the Swift 5 (SF515-51T). Look for the notebook to make its North American debut next January at a starting price of $1,099.
We had already gotten a glimpse of this particular Swift 5 back in May when Acer previewed the 15.6-inch system. When we first saw Acer's new device, we were impressed by how light it felt when we picked it up, a feat Acer pulled off by using magnesium-lithium alloys on the notebook's top and bottom cover. Those materials also ensure the laptop won't bend or twist, and a palm-rest, made from a magnesium-aluminum alloy, gives the Swift 5 a steady base for its keyboard and trackpad.
Some of the features Acer showed off here in Berlin match what we saw earlier in our hands-on, including the 1920x1080 IPS touchscreen with narrow 5.87-mm bezels.
But Acer revealed some new details, including the fact that the Swift 5 will feature the latest 8th-Gen Core processors unveiled by Intel this week — either a Core i7-8565U or a Core i5-8265U CPU. That means integrated Gigabit Wi-Fi for faster connections as well as longer battery life — up to 10 hours, according to Acer.
Acer plans to augment the new Intel Core chips with up to 16GB of DDR4 memory.
As for ports, the new notebook features a USB 3.1 Type-C Gen-2 port, a pair of USB 3.1 Type-A ports and an HDMI port.
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The Swift 5 isn't the only Acer laptop that's coming to America. Acer also announced an updated Swift 3 with a 14-inch display that is heading to the U.S. in November with a starting price of $799.99.
This is a pretty light laptop, too, at 3.08 pounds, and its 14-inch full HD display is surrounded by 6.1mm-thin bezels. Like the Swift 5, the Swift 3 gets the latest 8th Gen Intel Core CPUs — either the Core i7-8565U, Core i5-8265U or Core i3-8145U — with up to 8GB of memory and up to 512GB of SSD storage.
You'll have the option of adding discrete Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics to the Swift 3, if you plan on performing a lot of processor intensive tasks. You can expect up to 12 hours of battery life with this, Acer says.
Acer introduced a few other variations on its Swift notebooks at IFA — a 14-inch Swift 5 and a 13-inch Swift 3 that includes integrated LTE as an option, but those devices are headed to other markets, at least for now.
