Acer Announces new Swift brand of Ultrathin Notebooks with Kaby Lake SoCs

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.