CES 2019 | The new Acer Swift 7 continues its pursuit of slimness, yet it is even more powerful than before

When Acer announced the Swift 7 at last year's CES, we were drawn towards the incredibly slim nature of the laptop and the kind of power it had for that profile. After a brief tease at IFA 2018, Acer has finally revealed the new Swift 7. The Swift 7 now comes with an even more slimmer and lighter chassis and a more powerful Intel 8th generation CPU. In our review, the 2018 Acer Swift 7 did very well for a laptop of its size but it did have some shortcomings, prominent of which were huge screen bezels and a limited port selection. It looks like Acer has taken some of the feedback to heart and has endowed the new Swift 7 with both power and aesthetics. 

The first striking change from last year's model is the new 92% screen-to-body ratio. The Swift 7 features a 14-inch FHD touchscreen IPS display with 100% sRGB (72% NTSC) coverage, 300 nits of brightness, and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 6. Acer has more or less retained the same 0.39-inch thickness and has managed to reduce the weight of the ultrabook to just 890 g thanks to a magnesium-lithium and magnesium-aluminum alloy construction. The surface has been given a micro-arc oxidation treatment to give the impression and feel of ceramic. Just above the display is a pop-up webcam that has a 55 degree viewing angle and HDR support. 

The new Swift 7 is powered by the 8th generation Intel 'Amber Lake-Y' Core i7-8500Y CPU and be configured with up to 16 GB of LPDDR3 RAM and up to 512 GB of PCIe SSD storage. Acer promises a 10-hour battery life that is well facilitated by the fanless 8500Y CPU. The new Swift 7 now offers two Thunderbolt 3 ports for expanded connectivity along with a combo audio jack. You also get 2x2 MU-MIMO Gigabit Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

Despite the slim profile, the Acer Swift 7 does manage to offer a well-spaced backlit chiclet keyboard with a 1.1 mm key travel and a precision Gorilla Glass touchpad. The power button is also a Windows Hello-compliant fingerprint reader. 

The new Acer Swift 7 will be available in 8 GB / 16 GB RAM and 256 GB / 512 GB storage variants with scheduled availability in North America from May at prices starting from US$1,699 and in EMEA and China from April at starting at €1,799 and ¥14,999 respectively. 

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