Acer’s introductions at IFA 2018 – Light laptops and a trembling throne

Acer Aspire 7 with Kaby Lake G

Acer’s ultrabooks are called Swift, the convertibles are called Switch and the regular laptop series has been called Aspire for many years. The Aspires are generally not the most exciting laptops, but the Aspire 7 that Acer announced at IFA turns out to be an exception.

This is first of all because the housing is made of a lithium-magnesium alloy. That alloy is nothing new in itself, but its application on an Aspire 7 laptop is. The material is particularly light, which means that the laptop only weighs one and a half kilograms. For comparison: the current Aspire 7 weighs 2.35 kilograms. The weight savings are not only due to the use of the lighter material, but also because Acer has made the screen edges significantly narrower, so the laptop simply has less volume.

The use of lighter material does have a downside. The old Aspire 7 felt sturdier, because the housing around the keyboard was made of thicker and sturdier metal. The metal of the new Aspire 7 seems to be thinner and unfortunately springs along when typing. If you grab the screen at the top corners, it can also be twisted quite easily.

Another thing that makes the Aspire 7 special is its processor. Acer has chosen to equip the new model with a Kaby Lake G processor. That processor has four cores and has a built-in Intel UHD630 GPU and an AMD Vega GPU. In previous reviews of the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 and the HP Specter x360it turned out that, depending on the scenario, the Vega GPU can be compared to the performance of a GeForce GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti. The hardware must of course be sufficiently cooled for this and that is something we will certainly pay attention to during the final review. The fans of the two demonstration models on the Acer stand were blowing nicely. This does not have to be the case with the final model that will be available in the store; often the software and the bios are still being worked on until that moment.

Finally, we turned the Aspire 7 over and unfortunately we did not find a separate hatch to upgrade the hardware. Acer is not the first manufacturer to make upgrading more difficult, but because the previous Aspire 7 still had the hatch, we had the silent hope of encountering easily expandable memory or storage again.

Swift 5

In Acer’s ultrabook series, called Swift, we could also see a ‘new’ model at IFA, the Swift 5. The laptop is not completely new, because Acer already showed it in the spring during a major introduction in New York . Then there was only a mock-up copy on display that couldn’t even handle it.

The Swift 5 can now handle and appears to be equipped with an Intel Whiskey Lake processor, something that Acer could not tell this spring, because Intel had not yet officially introduced the processor at that time. That is now the case and Acer has also announced that it will deliver the Swift 5 with the Core i5-8265U and Core i7-8565U processor. For the connections, Acer partly benefits from the usb 3.1 gen2 support from the PCh of the Whiskey Lake processor. The USB-C connection has support for a maximum transfer speed of 10Gbit/s, but the two ‘regular’ USB connections do a maximum of 5Gbit/s.

The most striking thing about the Swift 5, just like the Aspire 7, is the weight. The screen has a diagonal of 15.6″, so you would expect the Swift 5 to put some weight in the scale, but the laptop turns out to be remarkably light. With a weight of 990 grams, that is only slightly more than an Apple MacBook or an Asus Zenbook 3, both of which have a 12″ screen. The Swift 5 SF515, as the 15″ model will be called, resembles the SF514 that we reviewed earlier this year . It weighed 935 grams and had a 14″ screen. The Swift 5 seems sturdier than the Aspire 7. The screen can be slightly twisted, but the rest of the housing feels firmer. Perhaps because it is also thinner.

That thin housing has the disadvantage that there is also little space left for the keyboard. The touch of the keys is in itself clear, but it lacks travel. Not everyone thinks that’s a problem and in the case of the Swift 5, it’s the price you pay for a 15.6″ laptop weighing less than a kilogram.

Swift 7 and Triton 900

During the press conference, Acer announced a number of other laptops, which we unfortunately did not find on the manufacturer’s stand. The first of the two is the new Swift 7, of which we were allowed to hold a mock-up model, but which we were not allowed to show because the laptop is not yet finished.

The Swift 7 is Acer’s thinnest laptop. The previous edition of the Swift 7 was already less than a centimeter thick, but Acer has reduced the housing a bit. They did this by making the screen edges narrower, especially those at the bottom of the screen, which was still quite wide in the previous version. Making the bottom edge thinner does cause a number of problems. For starters, the webcam was there; it will therefore be moved to a place above the keyboard. There will be a kind of cover behind which the camera is hidden, similar to the webcam in the Huawei Matebook X Pro .

Because the whole laptop is getting smaller, there is also less room for the keyboard. Therefore, the top row of keys with the function keys has been merged with the numeric keys. The touchpad has also been adjusted, because it did not ‘click’ with the current Swift 7, so you could only tap it. The new Swift 7 will be able to click again. The laptop will run on a processor of the recently introduced Amber Lake generation by Intel. Around the CES fair, which takes place in January 2019, Acer promises to announce more about the new Swift 7.