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Acer wants to participate MacBook Neo very direct and new Swift Air 14a new 14-inch laptop that starts at $699. The laptop will use cheap Intel chips Core Series 3 “Wildcat Lake” chips – Core 5 or Core 7 models, both of which are six processors. It comes in green, pink, purple, and blue gray with an aluminum chassis. Although the Neo is often criticized for its low 8GB of RAM, the Swift Air will start with the same amount and go up to 16GB.
According to Acer specifications, the Swift Air will be the same weight as Apple’s Neo at 2.76 pounds / 1.25kg, but will be slightly larger (12.9mm at its thinnest point to the Neo’s approximately 12.7mm). The Swift’s screen is 1920 x 1200 resolution with 350 nits of brightness (lower res and dimmer than the Neo), but it supports a 120Hz refresh rate and Acer says it will cover 100 percent of the sRGB space. And if the Neo’s two USB-C ports aren’t enough for you, Acer has limited it with two faster Thunderbolt 4 ports and USB-A 3.2 – not bad.
The main feature is the chip. Intel’s Wildcat Lake is here they only appeared in early benchmarkswhere it showed promise in competing with the A18 Pro for the MacBook Neo. If it performs as well as its big brother Panther Lake, then it could offer better battery life in a laptop like the Swift Air – which has a generous 70Wh (almost double the Neo’s 36.5Wh). But the 8GB starting RAM obviously gives me pause. It works on macOS, but Windows 11 is a different beast. And after pitting the Lunar Lake-ready Acer Aspire 14 AI against the MacBook Neo earlier this year, I wonder what corners Acer might be cutting to get to $699. That Aspire had an MSRP of $1,050 and drops to $600 on sale, but aside from the chip and its port selection the Neo introduced it.
The Swift Air is set to launch in North America in August, though it should arrive in July in other regions and sometime in Q3 in Australia.
Acer has a couple of interesting laptops to announce ahead of Computex: the Aspire 18 AI and Nitro 16. The first is a large 18-inch everyday laptop that I think is perfect for people who just want a big screen for walking 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 small M.2 SSD slot). But even though this large laptop weighs 4.83 pounds / 2.19kg (not bad for an 18-incher), its large screen has a resolution of 1920 x 1200 – which doesn’t sound too good when stretched to such a large panel. At least it has a refresh rate of 165Hz and a brightness of 400 nits.
As for the Nitro 16, it’s one of the few gaming laptops out there that can be upgraded to a 16-core. AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D. This is one of AMD’s best-known laptop features, and what it calls the “world’s fastest gaming processor” thanks to its second 3D V-cache – saving more cache on the CPU for the most demanding games. While the Nitro 16 is placed on the CPU side, it is made a little more modest by releasing “only” the RTX 5070 Ti GPU. This may help them afford it, but we can’t say yet because the prices are still TBD for both the Nitro 16 and the Aspire 18. So it’s hard to say what price they offer. What we do know is that the Aspire 18 should ship in August to North America and other regions in July. Nitro 16 is expected to launch in August in all regions.
