I think Acer’s featherweight Swift Air 16 could be the best power ultraportable yet

16in laptops don’t get much slimmer or lighter than Acer’s newly-revealed Swift Air 16. The size zero ultraportable has been carved out of magnesium-aluminium alloy so it can tip the scales at less than a kilogram, yet has still found room inside for one of AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs – meaning it won’t be short on performance.

The Copilot+ PC is launching in Europe in November from £899/€999 (no word on a US release yet), seriously undercutting the 15in Apple MacBook Air on price – and showing it a thing or two about weight loss in the process. Acer’s four metallic colour options aren’t too dissimilar from Apple’s, either.

Having now held the Swift Air 16 at Acer’s IFA showcase, I’m wondering if it might actually be too light; I’ve never used a laptop this big that felt so weightless. Pick the thing up and the screen wobbles a bit, possibly a side effect of the minimalist hinge design. I’m also not entirely sold on the keyboard; the keys are closely spaced together, on account of having to squeeze in a separate number pad, and white backlighting against silver key caps isn’t great for daylight visibility. Still, key travel was decent for such a slim chassis.

There’ll be two versions at launch: one with a 1920×1200, 60Hz IPS display and the other with a spanglier 2880×1800, 120Hz AMOLED panel. Seeing the latter in the pixels, it’s definitely the one I’d pick: black levels look suitably deep and colours have a great amount of punch. Viewing angles were ace, too.

Both have a work-ready 16:10 aspect ratio, paired to a set of stereo speakers ready to entertain when you clock off – though I can’t vouch for their effectiveness at this early stage. Just keep in mind the OLED model sneaks the total weight to 1.1kg, making the LCD model the pick for regular travellers.

Every Swift Air 16 has a gaggle of ports at the sides, including HDMI, a single USB 3.2 Type-A, two USB-Cs, and a 3.5mm port. That’s a generous selection for an ultraportable. As it’s a Copilot+ PC, the 2MP webcam is secure enough for Windows Hello facial recognition.

It’s the internals where things get interesting. Acer is offering a trio of AMD Ryzen AI 300 CPUs, each with their own integrated Radeon GPU – which should give it a leg up over rival ultraportables when it comes to gaming. I’m not saying this 1kg lightweight is going to throw down frame rates on par with desktop replacements – but I’ve seen the Ryzen AI 7 350 handle modern games in other machines using AMD’s FSR and frame generation. Creative types will appreciate that kind of graphical grunt, too.

That particular chip will appear in the top-tier version of the Swift Air 16, along with 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 50Whr battery that Acer reckons is good for up to 13 hours of use. Desktop use, I’m betting. There will be models offered with the more mid-range Ryzen AI 5 340 and Ryzen AI 5 330 chips and lesser amounts of memory and storage, but which territories will get them remains to be seen.

I’ll be interested to see if Acer can tighten that lid hinge a little in the few months between now and launch. Stand by for a full review once the laptop starts shipping.