Acer’s new Swift 3 and Swift 5 notebooks both feature 14 inch displays, support for up to a Core i7 Kaby Lake processor, up to 8GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of solid state storage.
But the Swift 5 is thinner, lighter, offers longer battery life, and it’s also… more expensive.
The 3 pound Acer Swift 5 notebook should be available in North America in November for $749 and up, while the 3.3 pound Swift 3 launches in October for $499 and up.
Those aren’t the only differences between the two laptops. The Swift 3 is available with a range of options:
- Core i3, Core i5, or Core i7 Skylake or Broadwell
- 1366 x 768 pixel display or 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display
- 4GB or 8GB of RAM
The Swift 5, meanwhile, is only available with the 1080p IPS display and only available with Kaby Lake processors.
Acer says the Swift 5, which measures less than 0.6 inches thick, should get up to 13 hours of battery life, while the 0.7 inch Swift 10 gets up to 12 hours of run time (or 10 hours, when configured with the full HD display).
Overall, the Swift 5 is positioned as a more premium device. Not only is it thinner and lighter, but it also has slimmer bezels around the screen: Acer says the Swift 5 is the size of a typical 13.3 inch notebook, even though it has a 14 inch displa.
Both notebooks feature 802.11ac WiFi and USB Type-C ports. The Swift 3 does have one feature the more expensive mode does not, though: a fingerprint scanner above the palm rest.
