Acer has announced its new Swift 14 AI laptop overnight. The new laptop “ushers in a new AI era with brand new experiences,” which is exactly the kind of nothing phrasing I’d expect to see from makers capitalising on the AI gold rush.
This announcement coincides with Microsoft Build 2024 and its Copilot+ launch.
Topline specs
The topline specs on Acer Swift 14 AI laptop: It’s a 14.5-incher, powered by your choice of two Snapdragon X processors (the Elite X1E-78-100 with 12 cores up to 3.4 GHz, or the Plus X1P-64-100 with 10 cores up to 3.4 GHz). It can be customised with memory up to 32 GB of dual-channel SDDR5 RAM and storage to up to 1 TB of Gen4 NVMe. In integrated Qualcomm Adreno GPU and Hexagon NPU (neural processing unit, used for the device’s AI applications) round out the internals, but no specific model numbers are given in the press release. Acer says exact specs will arrive closer to when the unit goes on sale in July, so keep an eye out for those.
The screen is, as noted, a 14.5″ inch IPS display boasting a max 2560×1600 resolution in a 16:10 aspect ratio, and 120 Hz refresh. Though not a touchscreen by default, you can request one as an option on your order.
Finally there’s a 75 Wh 3-cell Li-ion battery, with fast charging. Acer says you can get battery life of up to 18 hours of web browsing and 26 hours of video playback. We’re not sure how video playback draws less juice than basic browsing, and we look forward to testing that once we get our hands on a unit for review.
All of this is wrapped up in a thin aluminium frame that weighs 1.36 kg.
The AI stuff
The bulk of Acer’s AI platform is built on Microsoft’s Copilot AI already being rolled out for Windows 11. It’s referred to as Copilot+ because Acer has built a few new AI applications themselves, and also because everything in 2024 has to have a ‘+’ attached to it as a hopeful synonym for ‘value’. First, there’s Recall, an app that can help users “easily find anything they have seen on their PC by simply describing clues they remember. With an explorable timeline, users can easily scroll across time to get back to apps, documents, or messages they previously used.” That sounds like an overly complicated History tab if you ask me, but ok.
Live Captions does exactly what it sounds like, adding automatic captioning and English translations on any live or pre-recorded video from a library of 44 languages. We’ve already seen attempts at this struggle with accents and regional dialects. I’m interested to see how Acer’s approach pays off.
There’s an AI chatbot and image generator, because of course there is. It’s called Cocreator, even though it isn’t really making anything, just throwing existing data into a blender and spitting out a result. Auto Super Resolution for gaming sounds like the Nvidia DLSS we have at home. Windows Studio Effects apparently makes your video calls look better, something Google Meets has done for years.
Based on nothing but the press materials, the Acer Swift 14 AI sounds like an ideal laptop for the deeply lazy and uncreative office worker. I’m sure they’ll sell a heap of them.
The Acer Swift 14 AI will be available in Australia starting in late July. Pricing will start at $2,199.
A previous version of this article listed the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop’s weight as 1.68 kg, and a battery life of 16 hours, based on information from Acer’s press release. That press release has since been updated with the correct weight of 1.36 kg and a longer battery life. The article has been updated to reflect these changes.