Acer’s first laptops with AMD Ryzen 4000 U-series processors are on the way, with the new Acer Swift 3 (SF314-42) thin and light 14-inch laptop set to ship in April for $630, followed by a 15.6 inch Acer Aspire 5 (A515-44) coming in June for $520 and up.

The new Swift 3 laptop weighs 2.6 pounds, measures 0.63 inches thick, and has an aluminum chassis and aluminum-magnesium alloy lid.

But it’s what’s under the hood that really sets it apart from the company’s earlier laptops.

AMD unveiled its Ryzen 4000 series chips during CES in January, promising significant CPU performance improvements paired with the company’s Radeon Vega graphics architecture to compete with Intel’s 10th-gen “Ice Lake” processors, likely at a lower cost… and with up to 2X the CPU cores and threads, which could offer significantly better performance at some tasks.

The new Acer Aspire Swift 3 supports up to an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U processor, which is a 15-watt, 8-core (and 8-thread) processor with a base CPU speed of 2 GHz, support for boost speeds up to 4.1 GHz, and 7-core Radeon Vega graphics.

AMD is also promising its new chip will deliver longer battery life than the company’s earlier chips thanks to improvements in energy efficiency. While I always take manufacturer battery life claims with a grain of salt, Acer says the Swift 3 will run for up to 11.5 hours on a charge — and it also supports fast charging, so plugging the notebook in for about 30 minutes should provide up to 4 hours of additional run time.

The new Acer Swift 5 notebook, meanwhile, is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U 6-core (and 6-thread) processor with 6-core Radeon Vega graphics. Acer says this model has an aluminum lid (and what looks like a plastic body), a full HD IPS display, and support for up to 24GB of RAM and dual storage support (up to a 1TB PCIe SSD and up to a 2TB HDD).

 

 

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6 replies on “Acer unveils Swift 3 and Aspire 5 laptops with Ryzen 4000U series processors for $520 and up”

  1. I’m more or less clueless about AMD CPU nomenclature. I’m more or less aware of Intel’s naming scheme. Do you know of a simple resource, an explainer which can help me pair which AMD offering goes against the corresponding Intel ones?

    I’m most interested in the fanless line of CPUs. for example which AMD processors go against Intel’s Y-series? As for AMD’s answer to Intel Gemini Lake, I’ve only found one: A4-9120C. And it’s a pretty weak one. Only two cores and it’s much slower than Gemini. Are you aware of AMD’s plans in this sphere?

    1. They’re not particularly competitive in that space at the moment, but the latest U and H series chips roughly correspond with the 8th and 10th-gen equivalents and based on third-party reviews I’ve seen recently, AMD seems to have largely bridged the performance/efficiency gap that it had been struggling with for years.

      1. So if I understand correctly, H-series in AMD terminology is ~ 8th generation i3-i7 (but not Celeron and Pentium) in Intel terminology, while U-series in AMD is ~ 10th generation i3-i7 (or i9, whatever, but not Celeron and Pentium) in Intel, is this what you mean? Not quite intuitive but I get it. If that’s what you mean. Thanks, Brad!

        1. Nope. Both companies have U Series, 15 watt chips now, and both have H Series 45 watt chips. AMD’s ryzen 3/5/7 4000U series is meant to compete with Intel’s 8th or 10th-gen Core i3/i5/i7 U chips, etc ..

      2. Largely bridged the gap is an understatement. They are completely trashing the current intel lineup in all areas, both power efficiency and performance. Intel needs 10nm now more than ever.

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