Acer's first Snapdragon X laptop brings too many dedicated keys

We’ve waited a while for the first laptops powered by the Snapdragon X Elite processor to arrive on the market, and Acer is part of the first wave of manufacturers to offer one. The company has just announced the Acer Swift 14 AI, its first Snapdragon X laptop and its first so-called Copilot Plus PC.

The Swift 14 AI is powered by your choice of Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-78-100) or Snapdragon X Plus processor (X1P-64-100). The former brings a 12-core CPU consisting of eight performance cores and four efficiency cores, while the latter offers a 10-core CPU consisting of six performance cores and four efficiency cores.

It’s also worth noting that Acer isn’t using the most powerful X Elite chipset on the market. The X1E-78-100 variant seen here drops the CPU clock speed by 400MHz and the GPU clock speed by 250MHz compared to the top-end version. Nevertheless, this still looks like a hefty upgrade over Qualcomm’s previous Windows chips thanks to the use of custom Oryon CPU cores for the first time.

These chipsets also bring an NPU with up to 45 TOPS of on-device processing power, enabling the brand-new Copilot Plus PC moniker. Copilot Plus PCs deliver a variety of on-device AI features, including Recall (running a text/visual search for anything you saw on your screen), image generation/editing, and live captions.

Arm-based chipsets like the Snapdragon X Elite and Plus also tend to be more efficient than x64 chips from Intel and AMD. To that end, Acer says the Swift 14 AI can offer up to 16 hours of battery life from its 75Whr battery.

What about the rest of the Swift 14 AI?

Acer’s new laptop also brings up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, up to 1TB of NVMe storage, and a 14.5-inch IPS display (2,560 x 1,600, 120Hz) with a touchscreen option. The manufacturer didn’t reveal minimum RAM/storage figures, but Copilot Plus branding requires 16GB and 256GB respectively. The company is also offering a 1440p webcam with a privacy shutter.

The Swift 14 AI also brings a rather curious “activity indicator” on the trackpad that lights up when Microsoft’s Copilot or the device itself is activated. Speaking of the Copilot AI suite, the laptop also comes with a dedicated Copilot key. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a dedicated key that takes users to the AcerSense device management options and AI features. We really hope Acer and Microsoft let users remap these keys.

Other notable features include a 3.5mm port, Bluetooth 5.4, two USB-C ports (supporting DisplayPort and charging), two full-sized USB-A ports (USB 3.2 Gen 1), and Wi-Fi 7. The company also originally claimed that the device had an HDMI port, but it’s now told us that it lacks this feature. Instead, US consumers will get a USB-C to HDMI dongle in the box.

Acer says the Swift 14 AI will be available in July in the US, starting at $1,099. Expect availability in EMEA markets from June, starting at €1,499 (~$1,630).