The new Acer Swift Go 14 has just been announced at CES 2024, and beyond the obvious improvements with a CPU upgrade to Meteor Lake, plenty of AI smarts and a gorgeous OLED display, the touchpad holds a secret weapon for those who love to binge watch.
While Acer is going a little weird with the cheapest ever glasses-free 3D laptop, it’s good to see its core lineup get a respectable spec bump. But let’s talk about this interesting trick the company has up its sleeve.
Let’s Go
Of course, it’s both the $749 Swift Go 14 and $799 Go 16 that have received this tasty spec bump, so let’s go into them both. Inside, you’ll find the latest Intel Core Ultra CPUs — the AI-ready Meteor Lake chipsets that look to turbo boost the likes of Windows Copilot.
Alongside this, you’ll find that both of these models have been future-proofed with Wi-Fi 7, which will be super helpful for when the transition from 6E (finally) happens. Bringing the experience all together is an OLED display with 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, alongside a QHD webcam with plenty of AI smarts for a sharp picture and a nice depth effect.
As for battery life, Acer is promising a hefty 12.5 hours for the 16-inch and 10.5 for the 14. Without properly testing this laptop for ourselves, these would be good numbers if the company backs up its claims.
On paper, this is quite a reserved spec bump to the Go 14 and 16, but the secret weapon lies in that there touchpad on the 14-inch model, which seems to have been purpose-built by someone on the Acer team with a big addiction to tumbling down the YouTube wormhole.
You see, it features a multi-control lighting touchpad — placing media controls directly onto the deck that become visible when the laptop automatically detects you’re watching/listening to content.
X gon’ give it to ya
I can’t leave this without mentioning the premium Acer Swift X 14, which was announced alongside the Go. For $1,399, you’re getting a seriously strong powerhouse for a prosumer workload (though you’ll be saying goodbye to the touchpad media controls if that’s a dealbreaker for you).
However, I’m not sure you’ll miss it when you take a look at the other specs — a Calman-verified 2.8K panel for ultimate color accuracy, up to a beasty RTX 4070 GPU with all the studio drivers for creative workers and DLSS 3.5 for huge in-game frame rate boosts, and a respectable port array for all your creative needs.
Oddly, the X 14 comes with Wi-Fi 6E rather than Wi-Fi 7. Why didn’t Acer just upgrade all three laptops? Why is it that the significantly cheaper models are more prepared for future data speeds than the more expensive sibling?
Either way, these form quite the strong laptop lineup from Acer to take the fight to what Asus is set to announce over the next couple of days.
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