If screen bezels are your enemy, the Acer Swift 7 is your new best friend, featuring a high-resolution touchscreen with an impressive 92-percent screen-to-body ratio. Improving upon the previous generation Acer Swift 7, the latest iteration continues to offer Intel Core i7 processors and a 14-inch display in an incredibly thin and portable package. This year, Acer has doubled-down on the machine’s styling, while also paying attention to issues we had with the first generation.
The Acer Swift 7’s display is the main attraction — a vibrant 1920 x 1080 touchscreen with IPS technology and Corning Gorilla Glass 6. The screen itself features a 100% sRGB/72% NTSC color gamut and a brightness of 300 nits. The screen border has been reduced dramatically, producing a machine with an impressive 92-percent screen-to-body ratio — that’s an astoundingly small 8 percent bezel. The Swift 7 is a beautiful machine overall, but the display sealed the deal for becoming a CES 2019 Innovation Award honoree.
The previous generation came in at an incredibly thin 8.98mm, and while the new generation clocks in a bit thicker at 9.95mm, it remains one of the thinnest notebooks on the market. Thinness isn’t everything though, as Acer reduced the width and depth of the machine to an impressive 12.51 x 7.53 inches. You won’t need to worry about this machine being too thin for a decent trackpad, as on the previous unit, as Acer has addressed its previous non-clickable trackpad with a new Gorilla Glass trackpad that features an integrated click button with a responsive physical click.
A thin notebook wouldn’t mean much if it was dense and heavy to carry, which is why the Swift 7 features a frame composed of both magnesium-lithium and magnesium-alloys. Acer notes that the materials are “two to four times stronger than standard aluminum alloys at the same thickness, yet are up to 20 to 35 percent lighter.” The result is a laptop that weighs in at under two pounds.
Under the hood of the Acer 7 are Intel’s Core i7-8500Y series processors, up to 512GB of PCIe SSD storage, and up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM. Users who need to stay connected can utilize the machine’s two USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 3, Bluetooth 5.0, or the integrated Intel Wireless-AC card, featuring Wi-Fi 5 capable speeds.
The Acer Swift 7 will be available in North America in May, starting at $1,699 for the base model. Internationally, the Swift 7 will touchdown in EMEA and China in April. Users particular about their machine’s color scheme can pick up a Swift 7 in either starfield black or moonstone white.
