Acer’s 16-inch Air Weighs Even Less Than A 13-inch Macbook Air

There are laptops retired location pinch powerfulness adapters heavier than this full 16-inch laptop.

Acer is announcing a caller Swift Air 16 astatine IFA 2025, and it’s an absolute featherweight of a 16-inch laptop. Weighing successful astatine 2.18 pounds / 0.99kg pinch an IPS show aliases 2.43 pounds / 1.1kg pinch its optional OLED, nan Swift Air is lighter than moreover a 13-inch MacBook Air. It besides packs much ports than nan MacBook, and will commencement astatine a little value of €999 erstwhile it launches successful November. (North American readiness and pricing is still TBD.)

It benignant of boggles my mind that nan Swift Air 16 fits this overmuch surface into specified a ray package, arsenic it’s moreover lighter than nan LG Gram — a laptop defined by its lightness. But nan reality checks commencement coming successful erstwhile you announcement immoderate of nan Swift’s specs, for illustration its thickness of 0.63 inches / 15.9mm (0.65 inches / 16.5mm for nan OLED version). By contrast, nan 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs are conscionable 0.44 inches and 0.45 inches, respectively.

Also, while nan Swift Air’s AMD Ryzen AI 300-series spot options will beryllium much than competent for mundane productivity tasks, I’ve seen firsthand that Apple’s M4 spot outperforms them while maintaining amended artillery life. The Swift Air’s starting config will travel pinch a Ryzen AI 5 330 chip, and nan top-end type uses nan Ryzen AI 7 350. I tested nan second spot successful nan latest Framework Laptop 13 and it’s very capable, moreover for a touch of ray gaming.

But nan parts of nan Swift Air 16 that springiness maine nan biggest region are its HDMI spec and artillery size. It’s sewage a decent larboard action pinch 2 USB-C, 1 USB-A 3.2, and a 3.5mm audio jack, but its video-out larboard is HDMI 1.4. That’s very outdated for 2025, erstwhile you expect conscionable astir immoderate $1,000-plus laptop to thrust an outer show astatine 4K / 60Hz aliases greater. HDMI 1.4 tin only do 4K astatine a sub-par 24 aliases 30Hz. 

And while nan Swift’s starting IPS show has a respectable 1920 x 1200 solution astatine 60Hz and nan optional OLED sports a 2880 x 1800 solution pinch 120Hz refresh, nan laptop’s artillery is only 50Wh. That’s a smaller capacity than nan 13-inch MacBook Air, and much smaller than nan 75Wh artillery successful nan Acer Swift 14 AI I tested earlier this year. That 14-inch Swift relative has awesome artillery life for a instrumentality sporting AMD’s much powerfulness quiet chips, and nan ample artillery was a large logic why. Acer’s own promotional materials complaint nan Swift 14 AI astatine “up to 27 hours artillery life” successful a video playback test. The Swift Air 16’s rated artillery life successful akin video playback tests? Just 13 hours — little than half. Ouch.

Oh, and did you announcement nan Swift Air’s gapless keyboard?

I’ve already poked plentifulness of holes successful nan hull of nan Swift Air 16 earlier it’s moreover taken its maiden voyage. But I’m still willing to spot it shove off, and I’m hoping it’ll onshore connected our shores present successful nan US. Despite my concerns, it’s an intriguing machine. And I’m each for a institution taking immoderate chances. But naming your laptop “Air” is going to tie nan inevitable comparisons.