Acer’s Lightest Swift Laptops Get Ice Lake

Acer’s super-light laptops, the Swift 3 and Swift 5, are being refreshed with even smaller designs and Intel’s Ice Lake processors. The company made the announcement here in Berlin at the IFA technology trade show. The Swift 3 and 5 will go on sale in November starting at $699.99 and $899.99, respectively. In Europe the laptops will launch in September for 899 euros and 599 euros, respectively.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Row 0 - Cell 0 Acer Swift 5Acer Swift 3
CPUUp to Intel Core i7-1065G7Up to Intel Core i7-1065G7
GPUNvidia GeForce MX250 / Intel Iris PlusIntel Iris Plus / Optional Nvidia GeForce MX250
RAMUp to 16GB LPDDRX RAMUp to 16GB LPDDRX RAM
Display14-inch FHD14-inch FHD
StorageUp to 512GB PCIe SSDUp to 512GB PCIe SSD
Starting Price$899.99$699.99

The Swift 5 has a fancier chassis made of magnesium-aluminum and magnesium-lithium alloys. The Swift 3 is just made of regular aluminum. The Swift 5 is just 15mm thick and 2.2 pounds small enough to still be surprisingly featherweight. The Swift 3 is 16mm thick and 2.6 pounds. Each have three-sided small bezels, giving the Swift 5 an 86.5% screen-to-body ratio while the Swift 3’s is 84%.

Acer claims that these are long-lasting, with up to 12.5 hours of battery life on either machine.

We saw the Swift 5 in a beautiful dark blue as well as white on stage, but the Swift 3 is poised to come in two colors: steel gray (which we saw) and “millennial pink.”

It’s interesting to see Ice Lake, which Intel has been pushing for its Gen11 integrated graphics, being paired with an Nvidia GeForce MX250. The MX250 is a more powerful chip, but one might expect the real draw of the Core i7-1065G7 to be the integrated Iris Plus graphics, and that’s what most OEMs are pushing.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

Andrew E. Freedman

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 Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.