The Acer Swift Air 16 weighs just 2.18 pounds, but there are serious concerns about its battery life.
See also: End of an era: The latest 11-inch MacBook Air is officially obsolete
While the Swift Air's AMD Ryzen AI 300-series chip options will be more than capable for everyday productivity tasks, we've seen firsthand that Apple's M4 chip outperforms them in performance, while maintaining better battery life. The entry-level configuration of the Acer Swift Air will come with the Ryzen AI 5 330 chip, while the top-of-the-line version uses the Ryzen AI 7 350.We tested the latter chip in the latest Framework Laptop 13, and it's very capable, even for light gaming.
However, the parts of the Acer Swift Air 16 that are more controversial are its HDMI specs and battery size. It has a decent selection of ports with two USB-C, one USB-A 3.2, and a 3.5mm audio jack, but the video output port is HDMI 1.4. That’s pretty outdated for 2025, when almost any laptop over $1,000 is expected to support an external display at 4K/60Hz or higher. HDMI 1.4 can only do 4K at a subpar 24 or 30Hz.
See also: Apple releases new MacBook Air with M4 chip
The Swift's native IPS display has a respectable 1920 x 1200 resolution at 60Hz, and the optional OLED offers a 2880 x 1800 resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate. However, the laptop's battery is only 50Wh . That's less capacity than the 13-inch MacBook Air and much smaller than the 75Wh battery in the Acer Swift 14 AI .
The 14-inch Swift sibling has excellent battery life for a machine that uses AMD's most power‑hungry chips and the large battery was a significant reason for this. Acer's promotional materials claim battery life up to 27 hours in video playback testing for the Swift 14 AI. The estimated battery life of the Swift Air 16 in similar video playback tests? Just 13 hours — less than half.
See also: MacBook Air: Comes with 16GB RAM at no extra charge
Having already highlighted several problems with the Acer Swift Air 16 before its journey even began. But we still remain interested in seeing it reach the US markets and elsewhere. Despite the concerns, it is an interesting machine. However, the name of your laptop “Air” will inevitably cause comparisons.
