Acer at CES: All New Swift 7 Laptop With 92 Percent Screen-to-body Ratio
by Brett Howse on January 6, 2019 2:45 PM EST
At CES today, Acer has announced their latest Ultrabook in the Acer Swift 7. Acer has fully embraced the thin-bezel design ethos with the Swift 7 as well, with 2.57 mm bezels surrounding the 14-inch display, shrinking the device and offering an impressive 92% screen to body ratio. The Acer Swift 7 also offers the modern connectivity you’d expect in a modern Ultrabook.
Acer offers a 1920x1080 IPS display, which features 300 nits of brightness and 100% sRGB coverage. For added durability, the display has a Corning Gorilla Glass 6 covering, going hand-in-hand with the added durability of an all-metal design, featuring magnesium-lithium and magnesium-aluminum alloys on the rest of the chassis. Acer claims these alloys are two to four times stronger than standard aluminum alloys, but 20-35% lighter. This keeps the laptop at a very svelte 9.95 mm (0.39-inches) thick and just 890 grams (1.96 lbs). The Gorilla Glass also is used as the trackpad covering as well, which should offer a nice experience.
To power the latest Acer Swift 7, the design team has chosen the Intel Core i7-8500Y, which is a 1.5 GHz base frequency, but a strong 4.2 GHz boost frequency, all in a 7-Watt TDP for fanless operation. The Y series should offer decent performance, especially in light workloads. Acer offers up to 16 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, which is a limit of the CPU, and up to 512 GB of PCIe storage.
Acer is claiming up to 10 hours of battery life as well, but with a fairly pedestrian 1920x1080 display, and a Y series CPU, that likely means the amount of battery capacity they were able to fit into this very thin chassis is not as high as other devices which would of course be thicker and heavier. For those who are on the go, the lighter overall design may be of more benefit than longer battery life.
Acer hasn’t short-changed their customers on connectivity either. The Acer Swift 7 offers two USB Type-C ports with 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3, which also adds in power delivery and DisplayPort 1.2, and Acer offers Intel Wireless AC with Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0.
Other features of the Swift 7 is a push-to-open webcam, which makes sense since there would be no room for a webcam on a thin-bezel device like this, which won’t be optimal for video calls, but does offer the added benefit of privacy when closed. The Swift 7 also features Windows Hello login via a fingerprint reader.
The Acer Swift 7 will be available in May, starting at $1699 USD.
Source: Acer
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pixelstuff - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
I'm seeing a flaw in their design logic. They've assumed that the lack of bezels is more important than having a monitor sit further away from the keyboard, and being able to include a larger touchpad and a webcam fixed above the monitor. Alternatively they've also assumed that a 16:9 display is more appealing than a 3:2 display.If this were a $600 computer, they might have something, but for $1,700 I would expect better usability.
Dizoja86 - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
This was my first thought as well. I was skeptical about the larger bottom bezel when purchasing my HP Spectre x360 13, but even with this bezel I notice that my hands can sometimes get in the way of the screen depending what position I'm in. I can see that being a huge problem with smaller bezels, and I'd prefer to keep bezels of the size my x360 has, and I find that including the bezels behind the same piece of glass really does still result in an attractive laptop design.With all that said, I can see those smaller bezels making sense for people who place maximum value on a small footprint.
stanleyipkiss - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
I agree about the price. Anything up to $900 and I'd buy it when it goes on sale.zodiacfml - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
It seems that they are aware of that, including a wider than average touchpad. One only sacrifices a small shift in camera angle for a webcam at the bottom besides, I don't know anyone have used a laptop cam for a long time.I was impressed till I saw the price though. Checking with Amazon today, ASUS has a Zenbook with small bezels at $1200. The one with a second display on the touchpad
tdydave - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
Overall nice article, but could you add the screen size? Is this a 13.3, 14, 15,...? Total footprint would be useful for those who are the most likely candidates to buy this baby.Brett Howse - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
Not sure how I missed that but updated the article to say it's a 14-inch laptop.PeachNCream - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
Too much cost is tied up in making design claims that come at a cost in functionality or are of no benefit to the person at the keyboard. I'm sure there is someone out there willing to pay more for looks, but Acer and other companies produce more practical designs that don't give up functionality just to have a thinner casing or a meaninglessly high percentage number attached to the screen to bezel ratio.fmcjw - Sunday, January 6, 2019 - link
Love the pg up/dn key placement for web browser navigation, since page scrolling is often messed up on many sites and require up/dn arrow adjustments. It's a tradition from TI Travelmate days and also seen in Thinkpad and Dynabook business machines. However, I also see Acer returning to their brain dead decision to eliminate physical F-keys. So yeah, this laptop is worth $500 to $600, just like their Aspire S7 series.nerd1 - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
They could increase the screen height (like matebook or surface laptops) .. instead they DECREASED the keyboard area and make everything cramped? But why? there are still enough empty space above the keyboard...mkozakewich - Tuesday, January 8, 2019 - link
If *that's* 2.58 mm, then the whole thing is maybe 5 inches across. The bezels look more like 8 mm.Or is that not even a photo of the product?