Computex 2019 at Taipei witnessed the launch of the Acer Swift 5 14 (2019), the first Project Athena notebook.
Project Athena is a laptop designing initiative taken up by Intel where it would be collaborating with numerous laptop manufacturers to build futuristic laptop models. They aim at building laptops which offer high speed, prompt responsiveness, long battery life of up to 9 hours of real-time battery, and prompt resumption from standby.
The Acer Swift 5 14 (2019) is supposedly the lightest laptop that comes with a dedicated graphics card.
Table of Contents
Dimensions
The laptop comes with a compact design in terms of width and thickness, and weighs less than 1kg.
Design
The laptop model will feature a magnesium-lithium alloy and magnesium-aluminium frame in the palm rest and wrist areas.
The Model also features a backlit keyboard, precision touchpad, and a Windows Hello fingerprint reader.
Display
The Acer Swift 5 14 (2019) has a 14.1-inch IPS Full HD panel screen with a resolution 1920×1080.
Configuration
The laptop model runs on the Intel Ice Lake 10nm Core processor, with a PCIe NVMe storage of 16GB RAM and 512GB.
The laptop models would utilize either the Intel UHD Gen11 component or the Nvidia GeForce MX250 for graphics.
Connectivity
The laptop supports Gig + WiFi 6 (802.11ax) wireless connectivity.
Interface
The laptop includes a USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1 port which has the capability of data transmission of up to 5 Gbps, and is equipped with display output and power supply.
It also supports Thunderbolt 3 which has an interface same as USB-C.
These include two USB 3.0 (one of which supports shutdown charging), and an HDMI audio and video output port.
Availability
The Acer Swift 5 14 (2019) models are expected to be available in the markets this fall, after mass production of the Intel Ice Lake 10nm processors have been done.
Moreover, other vendors are also likely to manufacture Project Athena notebooks, with the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 variant, HP Envy 13 Wood, and Lenovo Yoga S940 expected to release later this year.
