Acer’s lightweight Swift 3 and 5 laptops get Ice Lake processors

Acer comes with new versions of its Swift 3 and 5 laptops. Both models get Ice Lake processors, the first CPUs that Intel makes at 10nm. The 14″ laptops can also be supplied with an MX250 GPU.

The new Acer Swift 5 weighs 990 grams including that GPU. How much less the version without Nvidia video card weighs, Acer does not disclose. The 14″ version of the Swift 5 that came out last year weighed 935 grams without GPU. Acer uses a magnesium alloy for the housing, which makes the low weight possible.

Acer puts a maximum of one Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor in the Swift 5. That is a 10nm quad-core processor from the Ice Lake series with an Iris Plus GPU. The addition of an MX250 video card is optional. The new 14″ version of the Swift 5 is 15mm thick and has an IPS touchscreen with full HD resolution. The USB-C connection has Thunderbolt 3 support, and the laptop gets 802.11ax WiFi and a fingerprint reader.

The cheaper Acer Swift 3 also gets a Core i7-1065G processor at most. This 14″ laptop is 16mm thick and weighs 1.2kg. As with the Swift 5, an M250 GPU is optional. The Swift 3 also has Thunderbolt 3 support and Wi-Fi 6, or 802.11ax WiFi.

It is unknown whether Acer will stop Ice Lake processors in all Swift 3 and 5 versions. There may also be variants with 14nm processors of, for example, the Comet Lake generation. The starting prices of 899 euros for the Swift 5 and 599 euros for the Swift 3 seem to suggest that. The new Swift laptops will be released in September.