Acer aims to take the MacBook Neo more directly with a new one. Swift Air 14a new 14-inch laptop that starts at $699. The laptop will use Intel’s low-cost Core Series 3 “Wildcat Lake” chips – either Core 5 or Core 7 models, both of which are six-core processors. It comes in green, pink, purple, and a gray blue with an all-aluminum chassis.While the Neo is often criticized for its limited 8GB of RAM, the Swift Air will start with the same amount and can be configured up to 16GB.
According to Acer’s specs, the Swift Air will weigh about the same as Apple’s Neo at 2.76 pounds / 1.25 kg, but will be slightly thicker (12.9mm at its thinnest point around the Neo’s 12.7mm). The Swift’s screen is only 1920 x 1200 resolution with 350 nits of brightness (lower resolution and dimmer than the Neo), but it supports a faster 120Hz refresh rate and Acer claims it will cover 100 percent of the sRGB color space. And if the Neo’s two USB-C ports aren’t enough for you, the Acer has two faster Thunderbolt 4 ports and even edges with USB-A 3.2 — not bad.
There is a big unknown chip. Intel’s Wildcat Lake is by far. Only appeared in some early standards.where it showed promise to compete with the MacBook Neo’s A18 Pro. If it’s as efficient as its big brother the Panther Lake, hopefully it can offer the best battery life in a laptop like the Swift Air — with a generous 70Wh (almost double the Neo’s 36.5Wh capacity). But that 8GB of starting RAM clearly gives me pause. It’s doable on macOS, but Windows 11 is a different beast. And after pitting the Lunar Lake-equipped Acer Aspire 14 AI against the MacBook Neo earlier this year, I wonder what corners Acer is cutting to get to $699. The Aspire had an MSRP of $1,050 and will drop down to $600 on sale, but aside from its chip and port selection, the Neo beats it.
The Swift Air is scheduled to launch in North America in August, though it should arrive in July for other regions and sometime in Q3 for Australia.
Acer has some other interesting laptops it is announcing ahead of Computex: Aspire 18 AI And Nitro 16. The former is an 18-inch everyday laptop that I imagine is perfect for those who just want a big screen for lounging around the house. It will come with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) chip options, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 2TB of storage (complete with a second M.2 SSD slot). But while this big laptop weighs 4.83 pounds / 2.19 kg (not bad for an 18-inch), its big screen’s resolution is only 1920 x 1200 — which doesn’t look very crisp when stretched to such a large panel. At least it has a fast 165Hz refresh and a decently bright 400 nits.
As for the Nitro 16, it’s one of the few gaming laptops out there that can be configured with a 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D. It’s one of AMD’s flagship laptop chips, and what it calls the “world’s fastest mobile gaming processor” thanks to its second-generation 3D V-cache – a lot of cache on the CPU for more graphically demanding games. While the Nitro 16 is stacked on the CPU side, it’s slightly underpowered by maxing out with “only” an RTX 5070 Ti GPU. This might help it maintain some degree of affordability, but we can’t say yet as pricing for both the Nitro 16 and Aspire 18 is still TBD. So it is difficult to say what kind of value they offer. What we do know is that the Aspire 18 should ship in August for North America and July for other regions. Nitro is expected to launch on August 16 for all regions.