Acer Swift 3 Comes in AMD Ryzen 4000 and Intel Project Athena Flavors
Pick your side.
Acer is updating its thin-and-light Swift 3 laptop lineup here at CES 2020, and it’s coming in varieties powered both by Intel’s Project Athena standards and AMD’s newly announced Ryzen 4000-series APUs.
Acer Swift 3 Specs
| Acer Swift 3 (AMD) | Acer Swift 3 (Intel) | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Up to AMD Ryzen 7 4700U | Up to 10th Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 |
| Graphics | Integrated Radeon Vega 7 | Latest Nvidia grpahics |
| Display | 14 inches, 1920 x 1080, IPS | 13.5 inches, 2256 x 1504, 3:2 aspect ratio |
| RAM | Up to 16GB LPDDR4x | Up to 16GB LPDDR4x |
| Storage | Up to 512GB PCIe SSD | Up to 1TB PCIe SSD |
| Battery | Up to 10 hours | 56Wh |
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) | Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) |
| Starting Price | $599 | $699 |
The AMD model will start at $599 when it launches in May. It will go up to an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U CPU and a 14-inch display annd offer up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of PCIe SSD storage. It weighs 2.6 pounds and is 0.6 inches thick in a metal chassis with “ultra-narrow” bezels.
The version with Intel processors will start at $699 and launch in March. That will go up to an Intel Core i7-1065G7 and offer the latest Nvidia graphics. the vendor said. Acer is claiming 17 hours of battery life on this version, with fast charging to get four hours of use out of a 30 minute charge.
As far as displays go, the 13.5-inch, 3:2 option on the Intel version seemed nicer to me on first impression. It was brighter than the 16:9, 14-inch screen on the AMD model, which was matte and bland in comparison. Hopefully they're more similar when they reach production. But I'm also simply in favor of 3:2 displays to see more of my work in vertical space, so I'm glad to see that hitting more laptops.
Both models allow Windows Hello for signing in with a fingerprint and Wake on Voice to talk to Cortana even while the screen is off. The other commonality is that they both have the latest Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 6.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01