Acer Swift 5 Hands-on: 'World's Lightest' 15-inch Laptop Makes Me Giddy
NEW YORK - It's less than 2.2 pounds. That’s how ridiculously light the new Acer Swift 5 is. I just went hands-on with this 15-inch notebook at Acer’s New York City press event, and I can’t believe the company pulled this off.
To be clear, the device on display was not a working model, but Acer says it is the final weight. It's amazingly light for a system with a 15.6-inch display. I barely felt its heft as I held it with one hand.
The LG Gram 15 weighs 2.16 pounds, so we'll have to see just how light the final version of the Swift 5 is to see which laptop truly is the lightest in the land.
The Swift 5 features a full HD IPS touchscreen with narrow bezels that measure just 5.87 mm. Acer says this gives the notebook a screen to body ratio of 87.6 percent. Even better, the webcam is positioned above the screen, unlike the XPS 13, so others won’t have to look up your nose.
How did Acer make this thing so light? The Swift 5 is made of magnesium-lithium alloys for the top and bottom cover, and it uses magnesuim-aluminum alloys on the palm rest. This area also makes room for a fingerprint reader.
In terms of power, you’re looking at 8th-gen Intel Core processors, up to 1TB of SSD storage and up to 16GB of RAM. And you won’t be hurting for ports, as there are two USB 3.1 ports, a USB Type-C port, and HDMI port and SD Card reader.
We don’t know the pricing and availability yet for the Swift 5, but I can tell you this. I want it now.
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