If screen bezels are your enemy, the Acer Swift 7 is your new best friend, featuring a high-resolution touchscreen with an impressive 92-percent screen-to-body ratio. Improving upon the previous generation Acer Swift 7, the latest iteration continues to offer Intel Core i7 processors and a 14-inch display in an incredibly thin and portable package. This year, Acer has doubled-down on the machine’s styling, while also paying attention to issues we had with the first generation.
The Acer Swift 7’s display is the main attraction — a vibrant 1920 x 1080 touchscreen with IPS technology and Corning Gorilla Glass 6. The screen itself features a 100% sRGB/72% NTSC color gamut and a brightness of 300 nits. The screen border has been reduced dramatically, producing a machine with an impressive 92-percent screen-to-body ratio — that’s an astoundingly small 8 percent bezel. The Swift 7 is a beautiful machine overall, but the display sealed the deal for becoming a CES 2019 Innovation Award honoree.
The previous generation came in at an incredibly thin 8.98mm, and while the new generation clocks in a bit thicker at 9.95mm, it remains one of the thinnest notebooks on the market. Thinness isn’t everything though, as Acer reduced the width and depth of the machine to an impressive 12.51 x 7.53 inches. You won’t need to worry about this machine being too thin for a decent trackpad, as on the previous unit, as Acer has addressed its previous non-clickable trackpad with a new Gorilla Glass trackpad that features an integrated click button with a responsive physical click.
A thin notebook wouldn’t mean much if it was dense and heavy to carry, which is why the Swift 7 features a frame composed of both magnesium-lithium and magnesium-alloys. Acer notes that the materials are “two to four times stronger than standard aluminum alloys at the same thickness, yet are up to 20 to 35 percent lighter.” The result is a laptop that weighs in at under two pounds.
Under the hood of the Acer 7 are Intel’s Core i7-8500Y series processors, up to 512GB of PCIe SSD storage, and up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM. Users who need to stay connected can utilize the machine’s two USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 3, Bluetooth 5.0, or the integrated Intel Wireless-AC card, featuring Wi-Fi 5 capable speeds.
The Acer Swift 7 will be available in North America in May, starting at $1,699 for the base model. Internationally, the Swift 7 will touchdown in EMEA and China in April. Users particular about their machine’s color scheme can pick up a Swift 7 in either starfield black or moonstone white.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.