Acer has unveiled its latest flagship Laptopthe Swift Edge that competes with the LG Gram 16 in a niche category best defined as ultrabook with big screen. The SFA16-41, as it’s also known as, is just 13mm thin, has a 16-inch screen and weighs 1.17kg, about 30g lighter compared to its LG rival; that’s thanks to the magnesium alloy chassis.
It is also one of the first, if not the first mainstream laptop to be powered by the new AMD Ryzen PRO 6000 processors along with Plutona new security feature implemented by Microsoft.
The Swift Edge is available with 16GB LPDDR5 RAM (albeit in one slot) and 1TB SSD, which is significantly more than what others offer (LG Gram 16 starts at 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD, for example).
The downside to this upgraded hardware configuration is a higher price tag: $1499.99 / €1499.99 / £1499.99. We have not yet received confirmation that it will be available in Australia.
Made for creatives
Although the screen is spectacular, it is not the first time that this screen has been seen on a laptop.
Before Acer, Lenovo, Gigabyte, Dell and Asus bundled a similar sized 16:10 OLED display with some of their notebooks, users were able to enjoy the real estate offered by a resolution of 3840 x 2400 (that’s 9.22 million pixels). Acer claims it supports 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 500 nits of peak brightness for what it calls “cinema-quality images” – and it just might be the perfect laptop for photoshop for some users.
What makes the device stand out is the presence of the Ryzen 6800U, a powerful 8-core, 16-thread processor based on AMD’s Zen 3+ technology and built using a 6nm process. The end result is a frugal CPU with a TPD comparable to the Core i7-1260P (used in the LG Gram 16) but with performance that rivals a more power-hungry processor like the Core i5-12500H (as used in the LG Gram 16). Honor MagicBook 14).
As of now, there are only two models offering it: the stunning 1Kg Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED and the surprisingly affordable Lenovo ThinkBook 13s Gen 4.
The rest of the specification covers the Radeon 680M graphics with an 8K-compatible HDMI 2.1 port, Wi-Fi 6e wireless network, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports, two Type-A ports and an audio jack , all powered by a fairly small 3-cell 54WHr battery, which Acer says will power the Swift Edge for up to 7.5 hours.
Compared to the LG Gram 16 you lose the battery capacity, the numeric keypad, the Thunderbolt 4 ports and the extra SSD slot. Is it worth it? Yes if you are looking for color fidelity and speed, no if you are looking for battery life and expandability.