Acer’s new MacBook Air rival is nearly a pound lighter than Apple’s laptop

Acer is announcing a new laptop poised to rival the MacBook Air’s thinness and lightness — and in the process, it cops another laptop’s name. The Acer Swift Blade 14 (not to be confused with the Razer Blade 14) is a productivity machine weighing just 1.76 pounds / 799g and measuring as little as 0.51 inches / 12.95mm thin. That’s around 1.7mm thicker than Apple’s svelte 13-inch MacBook Air, but Acer’s Blade is nearly a pound lighter. Its featherweight stature is partly due to Acer using carbon fiber in the laptop’s top lid and bottom plate. Inside the Swift Blade will be a range of Intel Wildcat Lake processors, from the lowly five-core Core 3 304 that I tested in the Chuwi UniBook to the six-core Intel Core 7 350. And regardless of which exact chip is inside, the Acer will come with 12GB of RAM. So it’s not likely that the Acer will go toe-to-toe with the MacBook Air’s M5 chip in terms of raw performance, but it could make a compelling case for someone who prefers their laptop to be about as light as they come. [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/Acer-Swift-Blade-14-SFB14-53CF-open-closed-angles.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/Acer-Swift-Blade-14-SFB14-53CF-closed-lid-colors.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/Acer-Swift-Blade-14-SFB14-53CF-front-back.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] The Swift Blade will come with a basic 1920 x 1200 / 60Hz IPS LCD screen with just 300 nits of brightness, but there will be a couple of OLED options as well (up to 2880 x 1800 / 90Hz and 400 nits). The OLED versions make the chassis ever-so-slightly thicker. And the laptop will have three USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports (one of which will be data-only) and a 3.5mm audio jack. Acer isn’t sharing pricing for any configurations of the Swift Blade 14 until closer to its December launch. It’s the same story for the other Swift laptop Acer is announcing today: the Swift Air 16. This is a larger version of the Swift Air 14 announced at Computex. Despite being named Air, the Swift Air 14 was aimed squarely at the MacBook Neo — especially with its price of $699. While we don’t know yet what the Swift Air 16 will cost, we know it’ll offer similar Intel Wildcat Lake chips, Thunderbolt 4 ports, options for OLED screens, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of NVMe storage. It’s not as light as the Swift Blade 14, but at 0.53 inches / 13.5mm thick and 3.31 pounds / 1.5kg, the Swift Air 16 sounds pretty light and thin for a 16-inch. It’s due to arrive in North America in Q1 2027 and other regions this December. [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/Acer-Swift-Air-16-SFA16-I31T-open-closed-colors.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/Acer-Swift-Air-16-SFA16-I31T-front-back-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all]