The Acer Swift 5 was one of the most desirable thin-and-light laptops in its day. It was not hard to see why that was the case. It was pretty, it was light, it was compact, and for what its worth, it is powerful. It is not what you want to call a budget option for the masses though, it was more of a premium workhorse you can bring around anywhere you want to work at.
It is 2023 though, and the Swift 5 platform, while still relevant and powerful, is outdated. We need a new Swift, a modern Swift. For some reason, we need two different swifts too.
Welcome to the successor to the Swift 5, the Swift 14. To be fair, the Swift 14 is not necessarily a new thing, they launched it in their previous Next@Acer conference late last year. Gone is the single number moniker of old. The new Swift 14 is an indication to what you are technically getting out of the Swift. Is it confusing? Yes. Is it a welcome change? Well, yes. But is it necessary? We do not think so. No matter, the Swift 14 is here.
Acer Swift 14
The Acer Swift 14 builds on whatever that made the Swift 5 a desirable laptop in the first place. It is a great-looking piece of slab with sharp aggressive lines that somehow just appeals. To be fair, it still looks very much like a Swift 5, just that you won’t find the number 5 anywhere on the laptop. You get new colours though, Steam Blue and Green.
What matters though is what you get inside the new laptop. The 12th Generation Intel Core processor is retired and replaced with a slew of options from the latest 13th Generation Intel Core processors. There is no discrete GPU, as with the traditional Swift 5. You still get the proven Intel Iris XE graphics within the new laptop though. You also get up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM to ensure that you get the best out of the processors. To keep everything running smoothly and snappily, you have up to 1TB of SSD storage.
There is also a new cooling system to keep the powerful processor running at its optimum clock speeds. They call it the TwinAir dual fan system with D6 copper heat pipes to increase airflow for better cooling.
As with the old Swift 5, the Swift 14 features a touch sensitive display with an Antimicrobial coating on a protective glass. Underneath the protective Glass is a 14-inch IPS display boasting 2,560 by 1,600 pixels for your viewing pleasure. You can look at your screen at up to 10 hours at a time without attaching yourself to a wall socket. With WiFi 6E as well, you can keep yourself untethered for a very long time.
Considering all that, it is impressive that the Swift 5 only weighs 1.2kg. It is a rigid body too, since the Swift 5 is made entirely out of CNC machined aluminium. It is also still as compact as before whilst still offering full sized ports on the laptops.
Acer Swift Go 14
Stemming out from the Swift 5 lineage is another Swift product. Welcome to the Swift Go 14, the new Swift for the young and active generation. It offers the same good looks as the Swift 5 with minor design differences.
It is just 14.9mm thick at its thickest point. It also only weighs 1.25kg, just a little heavier than the Swift 14. It offers more battery life with the weight though at up to 13 hours on a single.
You still get a 14-inch IPS display offering Full HD in resolution. The Windows 11 Home that you see on the display is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U (up to) processor. No discrete GPU business here still, but the integrated graphics from AMD should prove potent for light-hearted games. You also get up to 16GB LPDDR4X RAM and up to 512GB in SSD storage to keep things lightning fast even when multitasking. It also offers a good selection of modern ports like USB Type-C and HDMI 2.1.
Price and Availability
Acer’s Swift 14 and Swift Go 14 will be available by the end of April 2023 from Acer’s own eStore and official stores on Shopee and Lazada. The new Swifts will be priced from MYR 4,299 and 3,199 respectively. More on the Acer Swift laptops can be found on their website.