Acer has just announced its new Swift Edge laptop. According to the company, this device is the world’s lightest 16-inch OLED laptop. Like the HP Elite Dragonfly G3 and Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Chromebook, the Swift Edge aims to facilitate hybrid work and entertainment. Starting at $1,499, this laptop features a 4K display and an AMD Ryzen 6000 series CPU. It might have a shot at landing on our best laptops page, based on its specs.
Measuring 14.04 x 9.54 x 0.51/0.55 inches and weighing 2.58 lbs, the Acer Swift Edge is slightly larger and lighter than the 2.7-pound MacBook Air M2. It's remarkable that Acer's managed to cram a 16-inch OLED display into a laptop lighter than a MacBook Air, ensuring the Swift Edge should be plenty light enough to comfortably carry around – which is important for a hybrid work laptop. The Swift Edge also sports a sleek and simple design housed in a slim magnesium-aluminum chassis.
The 16-inch (16:10) 4K OLED WQUXGA (3840 x 2400) display with a 60Hz refresh rate is one of the Swift Edge's main selling points. Acer says the display delivers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, 500 nits of peak brightness and a 0.2ms response time. It also sports narrow bezels with a 92% screen-to-body ratio, according to the company. The 16-inch 4K OLED display should deliver solid picture quality when watching content from Netflix, YouTube TV and other streaming services. Battery-wise, Acer says the laptop can last anywhere between 7.5 and 10 hours.
The Swift Edge is powered by either an AMD Ryzen Pro 6000 series or Ryzen 6000 series processor, depending on the configuration. It also includes up to 32GB of RAM and either 512GB or 1TB of SSD storage. The laptop features a Full HD (1920 x 1080) webcam that’s capable of supporting 1080HD video at 60 frames per second. Port-wise, expect two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 port and a headphone jack.
Regarding security, the laptop’s processors integrate Microsoft Pluton, which is a security processor that’s meant to beef up security for Windows 11 PCs with additional protection for sensitive assets like credentials and encryption keys. The laptop also has biometric authentication and a Noble Wedge Lock slot. The latter, like a Kensington lock, helps you physically protect the laptop by means of a cable.
The first Acer Swift Edge (model SFA16-41) is now available at Costco for a starting price of $1,499. You can also pick it up directly from the Acer website, where you can use one of our Acer promo codes to help bring the price down a little. This particular configuration packs an AMD Ryzen 7 68000U CPU (with Microsoft Pluton and AMD Radeon graphics), 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. It should launch in other regions sometime during October.
Outlook
The Acer Swift Edge is billed as “the world’s lightest 16-inch OLED laptop." It's a bold claim, but in our experience it's hard to think of any OLED-equipped laptop that's lighter. Certainly 16-inch OLED laptops like the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED Slim Laptop and ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 weigh well over 2.58 pounds. Even Apple's ultra-light MacBook Air and MacBook Air M2 weigh a bit more (2.8 and 2.7 pounds, respectively), and none of Apple's MacBooks sport a 16-inch OLED screen.
So if you've been craving an ultra-light laptop with a big, beautiful screen, Acer's new Swift Edge looks like it could be a great choice. While you might not get as much life out of a full battery charge as you would on a MacBook Air M2 (which, thanks to the power of Apple silicon, lasts over 14 hours in our testing), the fact that the Swift Edge is a 16-incher (bigger laptops usually mean bigger batteries) with power-sipping AMD chips means you should be able to carry this bad boy all day without hunting for an outlet.
All that said, the Acer Swift Edge looks like it could be a solid choice for busy folks who do a lot of traveling. Of course, we're looking forward to testing one of these laptops for ourselves to see how it stacks up against the competition. Stay tuned!
