Acer Announces new Swift brand of Ultrathin Notebooks with Kaby Lake SoCs
by Ian Cutress on August 31, 2016 4:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Notebooks
- Acer
- Trade Shows
- Swift
- IFA 2016
As we reported on the Kaby Lake launch last week as Intel’s newest generation of processors focusing on thin and light notebooks as well as convertables, tablets and mini-PCs, a number of Acer’s announcements today at IFA 2016 revolve around the new hardware. Today they are announcing a new line of ultrathin notebooks, called Swift. There will be four models, the Swift 1, Swift 3, Swift 5 and Swift 7, with the higher number representing the more premium product.
The Swift 7 is the flagship, designed to fit within a 1cm tall chassis (it comes at 9.98mm for good measure). In that z-height is a 1.1kg (2.48lbs) device sporting a 13.3-inch 1920x1080 IPS display, an all-aluminium unibody and a thin bezel. Acer is reporting up to nine hours of battery life with the Core i5-7300U, a 256GB SSD, and up to 8GB of memory (no mention if it is LPDDR3 or DDR4). Connectivity comes from a 2T2R 802.11ac with MU-MIMO, and the clamshell comes with two USB 3.1 Type-C ports (we’re not sure if Acer uses USB 3.1 Gen1 or Gen2 from the announcement, and they don’t specify). The Swift 7 will be available in October starting at $999.
The Swift 5 is more of an attack on the XPS 13, claiming to fit a 14-inch panel in a 13.3-inch frame with thin bezels. It comes in thicker than the Swift 7, at 14.58mm, but is proportionally less dense at 1.36 kg. With the extra size and weight, there’s a bigger battery and Acer is claiming up to 13 hours for this one. Similar to the Swift 7, the Swift 5 with have Kaby Lake, up to 8GB of memory, and a choice of 256GB or 512GB PCIe or SATA SSDs, depending on the region/vendor. The Swift 5 will also have a USB 3.1 Type-C, and options for a touch display and fingerprint reader. The Swift 5 will start at $749 from November.
The Swift 3 goes up the stack again, at 17.95mm and 1.5kg, but in a full 14-inch form factor this time using 720p or 1080p IPS displays, Skylake/Kaby Lake processors, up to 512GB/8GB and 2T2R 802.11ac with MU-MIMO. The key feature of the Swift 3 according to Acer is the optional backlit keyboard paired with the larger touchpad. Pricing starts at $499 from October.
Finally the Swift 1 is the budget offering, using a Pentium/Celeron with 32/64/128GB eMMC and a 14-inch 720p display. The design is premium-like, using a brushed-metal-like finish on the chassis but the idea is that a student can have 12 hours of battery life in a 1.6 kg device. The Swift 1 will start at $249 from November.
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Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Are 5400RPM HDDs finally dead?Manch - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Good God, lets hope so!!BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
They're still not dead yet. We're very, very close, but for mass storage where speed doesn't matter, they're still relevant...but only barely. That caveat covers a lot of use cases, but rightfully should exclude laptops.maglito - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Can you guys find out if the HDMI on these (specifically the swift5) has on board LSPCon to enable full HDMI 2.0 (2160p @60Hz).Thanks!
shortcircuit2020 - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link
I don't know anything about LSPCon, but I can say that this early batch of Kaby Lake mobile chips only have HDMI 1.4 support.A refresh is coming out in early 2017, when the other higher power Kaby Lake chips come out too, and it is supposed to support HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2, so best wait till after then.
Kakti - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link
I believe this is incorrect. The Kaby Lake chips coming out in January will support HDMI 2.0 via the new 270 chipset, not the CPU. AFAIK no Kaby Lake CPU's contain HDMI 2.0/HDCP2.2 support; it's the new chipset that does. These mobile Kaby Lake laptops do not contain the updated chipset.maglito - Friday, September 2, 2016 - link
But full bandwidth 18Gbps can be enabled on the DP1.2 display path with the use of an LSPCon converter to HDMI (either internal or external). Since these laptops have no displayport output the only possibility (a long shot) would be an internal LSPCon in front of that HDMI port (one can only hope). Otherwise, the other option is to wait for a Kabylake laptop like this with a displayport connector and use an external LSPCon (like the club3D adapter covered previously here on anandtech).wicketr - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Do they use standard USB-C for charging? Or custom charging cables? Also, what's the resolution on the Switft 5?evilspoons - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
You can clearly see in the photo galleries the Swift 1, 3, and 5 have barrel jacks (left, back on 1,3, right, back on 5). The Swift 7 has USB-C charging because it has no other ports in the images and it's really slim ("Macbook-ish") and also the same charge icon next to all the barrel jacks is next to the USB Type-C port in the images.andrewaggb - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Actually sounds like a decent product stack to me. Hopefully they review ok.