Acer Swift 3 Preview – Project Athena and 3:2 screen or Ryzen 4000

At CES, attention is often focused on expensive top models with impressive specifications and new techniques. At Acer, the ConceptD 7 Ezel steals the show, a mobile workstation with a striking hinge and powerful hardware. That device impresses, but at Acer we also found a relatively simple and affordable laptop with very interesting features: the Swift 3.

Acer has been making versions of the Swift 3 for years, and they generally offer excellent value for money. They are fairly compact and light laptops with fairly smooth hardware that is placed in an aluminum housing. Various configurations have been in our Laptop Best Buy Guides in recent years, because of the price-quality ratio.

Intel version with 3:2 screen

Acer’s Swift 3 laptops were interesting, but they didn’t have any really unique features. This year is different, because Acer comes with a Swift 3 that is equipped with a 13.5″ screen with a 3:2 ratio. We see such a screen ratio more often, but usually with more expensive laptops. Microsoft uses it for example in its Surface Laptop and Huawei in its Matebook 13 .

A 3:2 screen gives a lot of extra space in height and it is good news that this is now available in a lower price range. Last year, Acer already made a number of Chromebooks with a 3:2 screen and now also a Windows laptop. The 13.5″ screen of the Swift 3 has a resolution of 2256×1504 pixels, just like the screen of the Surface Laptop 13. According to Acer, the panel can display the full sRGB color space. The 3:2 screen only ends up in versions with Intel processors. There will also be a variant with a 14″ screen with 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels.

Not only the screen stands out, the Intel variant of the Swift 3 is certified for Project Athena. That’s the name Intel gives to a list of requirements for thin and light laptops. It states, for example, that the battery life must be at least nine hours. Furthermore, an Athena laptop must contain Thunderbolt 3 and WiFi 6 and be able to wake up from sleep within a few seconds.

The Swift 3 therefore meets all those characteristics. With a starting price of 799 euros, this seems to be the cheapest Project Athena laptop. Laptops that meet the Project Athena requirements usually fall into higher price ranges. However, we must note that it is not clear which configuration Acer will deliver for that 799 euros. The manufacturer only mentions the price of the cheapest model and the specifications of the most expensive version.

Swift 3 with AMD Ryzen 4000U and 16:9 screen

Acer is also one of the manufacturers that has announced a laptop with Ryzen 4000U processors. This is also a Swift 3 variant. The AMD version does not get a 3:2 screen, but is equipped with a 14 “panel with a 16:9 ratio and a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. The version with Ryzen processors weighs 1.2 kg and is 16.55 mm thick, so that is almost the same as the Intel version.The starting price starts at 699 euros.

Exact configurations are not yet known, but Acer reports that it contains a maximum of a Ryzen 7 4700U processor. That is an octacore made at 7nm with a tdp of 15W and a maximum clock speed of 4.1GHz. The chip also has an integrated Vega GPU with 7 compute units clocked at 1600MHz. There is no option for an extra GPU.

The Ryzen 4000U series also includes quad and hexacores. The mentioned starting price probably does not apply to the model with the octacore. More details about the configurations and corresponding prices will be announced later. We will probably have to wait a few more months for that, because the AMD version will be for sale in the Benelux from April, according to Acer.

The AMD version of the Swift 3 does not have thunderbolt, but it does have a USB-C connection. It is a port with support for USB 3.1 gen2 speed and displayport alt mode. It is also possible to charge the laptop via USB-C. According to Acer, both the Intel and AMD versions will support Windows Hello login through a fingerprint scanner. Both versions are also equipped with lpddr4x memory and an NVME SSD.

Acer ConceptD 7 Donkey

We already mentioned that Acer’s most notable announcement was the ConceptD 7 Ezel. Of course we also took a closer look at that device. It is a completely new design in the ConceptD series that Acer introduced last year. As far as we are concerned, that is a good step forward, because the first models in that series were largely based on existing designs. For example, the ConceptD 9 appeared earlier with a hinge that was in fact a modified version of a gaming laptop that Acer took to CES last year, the Predator Triton 900 .

Acer’s new Ezel laptop feels quite compact and light. The double hinge construction with which you can put the screen in all kinds of positions also seems sturdy. The construction makes it possible to use the device as a regular laptop, as a tablet or as a kind of drawing table. The effect is actually quite simple. Acer uses two hinges, one to open the laptop, as it were, and a second to put the screen in other positions. If you use the ConceptD 7 Ezel as a ‘normal’ laptop, the screen remains attached to the lower hinged part with magnets. As a result, everything is firmly put together.

Acer puts tenth generation Intel Core H processors, which have not yet been formally announced, in the device. There will also be a Pro version with Intel Xeon CPUs. In both cases it concerns 45W processors. The gpu is an Nvidia RTX or Quadro card and there is up to 32GB of DDR4 in the system. The screen consists of a 15.6″ panel with a 4k resolution that can display the full Adobe RGB color space. Acer says it also calibrates the screen. The ConceptD 7 Ezel will not appeal to such a large audience as the Swift 3. Partly because of the price, because the Ezel costs a minimum of 2500 euros and a Pro version with Xeon CPU and Quadro GPU must be paid at least 3000 euros.