BERLIN, GERMANY -- Looks like Acer's gearing up for a fight. The company just announced an update to the Swift 5 which has a 10th Gen processor and Nvidia graphics. Available starting at $899 in November, it's clear it's gunning for svelte competitors like the Dell XPS 13.
Design
Slim, pretty and navy, the Swift 5 is most certainly a head turner. I'm a big fan of the golden highlights from the logo and hinge. It's susceptible to fingerprint smudges, so be sure to have a rag handy.
Made from aluminum, magnesium and lithium, the Swift 5 weighs in at a barely-there 2.2 pounds. It’s lighter than other 14-inchers on the market including the 2.6-pound Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 and the 2.5-pound LG Gram 14 2-in-1. It’s even lighter than the 2.7-pound Dell XPS 13.
Display
The Swift 5 has a full HD (1920 x 1080) non-touch panel that looks particularly bright and vibrant. A big part of me wants a 4K OLED model now that the panels are becoming increasingly popular. But as it stands, the Swift 5 looks like it can hang with the competition in terms of brightness and color reproduction.
MORE: Acer Laptops - Brand Review and Rating
Specs
The Swift 5 will be the latest laptop to sport one of Intel's new 10th Gen CPUs (Core i7-1065G7) which is a 10-nanometer chip dubbed Ice Lake. The laptop can be configured with up to 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe SSD.
The svelte beauty has an Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU with 4GB of VRAM. That means it can do some graphical heavy lifting if necessary.
Battery Life
Acer is estimating the Swift 5's battery life at 12 hours from a video playback test. The number drops to 10.5 hours on the MobileMark benchmark. The previous Swift 5 lasted 8 hours and 35 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test. I’m hoping the new iteration of the laptop can make it past 9 hours.
Swift 3
In addition to the Swift 5, Acer is also launching the Swift 3. Available in November starting at $699, the Swift 3 is made from aluminum and only weighs 2.6 pounds. The 14-inch laptop will feature an Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU, up to 16GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe SSD and a Nvidia GeForce MX130 GPU.
Bottom Line
Acer continues to turn heads with its incredibly svelte notebooks. But where the Swift 3 and 5 are hoping to impress is the performance. Armed with Intel 10th Gen processors and discrete graphics both systems have enough oomph to tackle tasks systems with integrated graphics falter on. However, the real test is going to be the battery life as the average consumer wants at the very least a system that can last over 8 hours.
