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Acer Swift 3 gets the AMD APU treatment, adding power to the bargain machine

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Acer Swift 3
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
The Acer Swift 3 is a solid budget notebook that we’ve lauded for its combination of performance and price. With its recent injection of Intel’s eighth-generation quad-core CPUs, it’s an even better value. But Acer isn’t leaving well enough alone: it’s also introducing models utilizing AMD’s newest Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) based on the newest Ryzen CPUs and Vega GPUs.

As reported by Liliputing, Acer is introducing two new Swift 3 models, one with the Ryzen 5 5200U APU that retails for $750 and one with the Ryzen 7 2700U APU that comes in at $950. So far, Acer hasn’t released availability information on either system, but given that HP is also releasing a system using the new APU soon, the Envy x360 15, we’re likely to see the new models sometime in the next few months.

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As we reported in our review, the Swift 3 is a solidly built notebook that mixes in some strong performance. It sports a display that is lacking in contrast and brightness but nevertheless offers strong real-world performance. The keyboard is well done, with comfortable travel, and the touchpad is serviceable. Perhaps best of all, Acer has sourced PCIe solid-state drives (SSDs) for the machine, a nice touch at such budget prices. The Swift 3’s biggest weaknesses revolve around poorer battery life than we’d like to see, which the new APU-based systems might help address, and a design aesthetic that’s a bit boring and understated.

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The addition of AMD’s newest APUs promises to provide some serious competition to Intel for systems without higher-end discrete GPUs. According to AMD, the new Vega-powered chips compete well even against the combination of Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M discrete graphics and Intel Core i7-7500U CPUs. Of course, that means that while they may not match Intel’s eighth-generation processors, the new APUs are going to perform significantly better in the graphics department than Intel’s integrated GPUs.

Competition is a good thing that typically results in some real advantages to buyers, and we’ll be looking forward to seeing how these new Acer Swift 3 notebooks perform in the real world. If they’re as good as promised, then they may very well define a new level of value.

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