Enlarge / Acer announced the Swift Edge laptop today.

Acer

Acer's Swift Edge clamshell announced contiguous is simply a gentle reminder of the alleged Intel tax. The PC offers a larger surface with much costly show exertion and pixels than a likewise specced Acer Swift 5 ultralight for the aforesaid price. The different large quality betwixt the 2 laptops is that the caller Swift Edge opts for AMD Ryzen 6000 processors, portion the Swift 5 uses Intel 12th Gen CPUs.

Acer is releasing the Swift Edge successful the US this Friday with a Ryzen 7 6800U, carrying 8 cores, 4MB of L2 cache, 16MB of L3 cache, and a timepiece velocity of 2.7 GHz that tin boost to 4.7 GHz. Combined with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 1TB of PCIE 4.0 SSD storage, it'll person a $1,500 MSRP.

Enlarge / The Swift Edge weighs 2.58 pounds and is 0.55 inches thick.

Acer

That's the aforesaid MSRP that the Swift 5 has as of writing and erstwhile we reviewed it successful July. For that price, you get an Intel Core i7-1260P with 4 show cores (2.1-4.7 GHz), 8 businesslike cores (1.5-3.4 GHz), and 18MB of L3 cache, positive the aforesaid RAM and retention specs arsenic the aforementioned Swift Edge configuration.

The Swift Edge and Swift 5 person akin larboard selection, arsenic well: 2 USB-C ports (although, the Intel PC's ports have Thunderbolt 4 certification and enactment astatine up to 40Gbps, alternatively than the Swift Edge ports' 20Gbps), 2 USB-A ports (USB 3.2 Gen 1), one HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5 mm jack.

Enlarge / The Intel-based Acer Swift 5.

Scharon Harding

However, the Swift Edge could person a notable, well, edge, erstwhile it comes to the screen. It has a 16-inch, 3840×2400 OLED non-touch display, compared to the 14-inch, 2560×1600 IPS touchscreen connected the Swift 5. The OLED surface is specced with 100 percent DCI-P3 colour coverage, up to 500 nits of brightness, and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification. In our Acer Swift 5 review, we recorded 541 nits and 83.1 percent DCI-P3 coverage.

Of course, there's much to a laptop than its specs sheet; we'd person to get a person look astatine things similar physique prime (the Swift Edge has a magnesium-alloy chassis), audio, the webcam, and the show successful action. But an aboriginal look astatine those specs shows that you tin upgrade successful different places if you're funny successful an AMD CPU implicit an Intel one.

And there's bully crushed to be. Our Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 review tested an arsenic specced Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U (the Swift Edge should yet beryllium offered successful this US with this CPU too, an Acer rep confirmed to Ars Technica) and recovered awesome performance, including mostly stronger artillery beingness and integrated Radeon 680M graphics erstwhile compared against Intel's 12th Gen mobile chips. The Swift Edge won't needfully beryllium arsenic almighty arsenic a $1,900, business-focused ThinkPad, but Ryzen 6000 has imaginable for Acer to leverage.

Just arsenic there's often a alleged Intel taxation connected PCs, there's usually an OLED taxation connected artillery life, too. Acer claims the Swift Edge's 54 Wh artillery tin past up to 10.5 hours of video playback, 8 hours browsing the web, and 7.5 hours connected the MobileMark 2018 benchmark. Those are amended numbers than the smaller Swift 5 claims with its 56 Wh artillery (14, 14, and 7.5 hours, respectively).

Enlarge / There's besides a 1080p webcam successful the Swift Edge.

Acer

Acer's Swift Edge is simply a caller summation to Acer's Swift lineup of thin-and-light clamshells, which includes the Swift 5 flagship ultralight, and Swift X AMD and Swift X Intel, which some see dedicated graphics cards. The Swift Edge continues a inclination we've seen implicit the past fewer years arsenic AMD chips progressively find their mode into not conscionable much laptop models, but much higher-end designs. The "Edge" moniker whitethorn besides assistance AMD shingle a estimation that has galore consumers considering its chips arsenic a fund alternate to Intel.

The Swift Edge launches this Friday astatine $1,500 arsenic specced supra (SKU SFA16-41-R7SU). It should yet commencement astatine a Ryzen 5 6600U and spell up to 32GB of memory, but an Acer rep told Ars that it whitethorn not merchantability these configurations successful the US.