Acer's Swift 7 is the world's thinnest laptop, making yours look huge
Acer wants you to have plenty of room in your bag when you go on your next business trip. And to help with that, or just to lord it over its competitors, the company unveiled the world’s thinnest laptop at CES 2018.
Available in March for a wallet punishing $1,699, the 14-inch Swift 7 is an impressive piece of machinery. At just 0.35 inches thick, the notebook makes Apple’s (AAPL) own incredibly thin MacBook look like a tank at 0.52 inches thick.
I used the notebook for a brief time while checking out Acer’s booth at CES and what struck me the most about the Swift 7, beyond its ludicrously svelte design, was how comfortable it felt to type on its keyboard. Usually super-thin notebooks lose the kind of key depth that makes for a satisfying typing experience. But the Swift 7’s keystrokes felt about as comfortable as I could ask for.
That’s not to say it felt the same as my own MacBook Air’s keyboard, but it certainly offered more key travel than Apple’s MacBook.
Of course, cutting down on the size of the Swift 7 meant Acer couldn’t pack it with a traditional laptop processor. Instead, the system gets Intel’s (INTC) Core i-series Y processors. Formerly referred to as Core M, the Y chips can’t draw nearly as much power as the standard Core i-series U processors found in most laptops.
I know it sounds incredibly nitpicky, but it’s an important distinction to make for consumers who use their laptops for things like photo editing or other processor intensive programs. If you’re the kind of person who’s primarily looking to browse the web, stream videos through Netflix (NFLX) and the like or do lightweight photo editing, then the Swift’s processor will more than likely offer plenty of performance for your needs.
If you need a bit more oomph out of your laptop, though, you might need to look for a more powerful system.
Beyond its CPU, the Swift 7 gets 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The laptop’s display resolution tops out at 1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels, which is fine — I loved the way it looked — but not top-of-the-line.
Importantly, Acer has equipped the Swift 7 with a 4G LTE-capability, so you’re able to always stay connected whether on Wi-Fi or via your data connection. Acer says it will provide consumers with up to 1GB of free data to start you off, after which you’ll have to purchase your own data plan.
The Swift 7 sounds like a heck of a notebook and an incredible piece of tech. But we’ll have to wait until March to find out if it lives up to the big impression it made on us at CES.
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Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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