Spotted originally by Digitaltrends.com, the Acer Swift 3 (SF314-42) which was originally announced back in January, and it actually comes in several different SKUs. There is a choice between an eight-core Ryzen 4700U, a six-core Ryzen 5 4500U, or the quad-core Ryzen 3 4300U. It also comes with up to 1TB of SSD storage and up to 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory in dual-channel.
Measuring 323.4x218.9x17.9 mm, the Swift 3 weighs just 1.2kg, which is not a big surprise since it uses aluminum and magnesium alloy for the chassis, and it features a 14-inch FHD (1920x1080) resolution IPS screen.
While Digitaltrends.com is citing the $629 price tag, it just might be the starting price for the Swift 3 series and could be for the SKU with the Ryzen 3 4300U, as the price just doesn't match with what we are seeing in retail.
According to a quick search, the Acer Swift 3 SKU (SF314-42-R4XJ) with an eight-core Ryzen 7 4700U, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD, and 8GB of soldered RAM, is currently listed at €999 at Alternate.de, which is a big retailer in Germany. Alternate.de also has a few other SKUs of the same laptop, including the one the six-core Ryzen 5 4500U, listed at €599 (but with a 256GB SSD).
Intel has the upper hand in the laptop market
While laptops with AMD Ryzen 4000 series chips might sound interesting on the paper, Intel still has a lot to offer and always won the numbers battle.
Currently, there are a total of 38 laptops based on AMD Ryzen 4000 series in the European retail market, and only a handful are not based on the H-series chips meant for gaming laptops, ones that start at about €1099 and go as high as €2000. Surprisingly, most of these gaming laptops in Europe are Asus' TUF Gaming A-series laptop SKUs or Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 SKUs.
The least expensive Ryzen 4000 series is Acer's Aspire 5 A515-44-R1DM, a 15.6-inch 1920x1080 resolution laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 4500U (6x 2.30GHz), 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB PCIe SSD, and Linux OS, selling for €499. There is also a single Asus VivoBook S15 SKU, the aforementioned Acer Swift 3 and Aspire 5 SKUs, and a single Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 SKU.
To be fair, Intel does not have a lot of eight-core 10th gen Core (Comet Lake) laptop SKUs either, as there is only the Core i9-10980HK, a gaming-oriented 8-core/16-thread chip working at 2.4GHz base and 5.3GHz maximum Turbo, as well as the Core i7-10875H, also an 8-core/16-thread chip working at 2.3GHz base and 5.1GHz Turbo clock. Both of these chips have a 45W TDP and have Intel Hyper-Threading, while AMD Ryzen 4700U has an 8-core/8-thread configuration.
Also, Intel's laptop SKUs in that range are much more expensive but to be completely honest, we are looking at Gigabyte Aero 15 and Aero 17 lineup SKUs with 4K OLED or HDR screens, Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 laptops and more, as well as dedicated graphics cards.
But when you take a look at SKUs with all Intel 10th gen Core chips, you get over 900 different SKUs, which shows that Intel is obviously winning the numbers battle.
The cheapest Intel 10th gen Core laptop in Europe is currently Acer Extensa 15, with dual-core Core i3-10110U, priced at €349, but for the same price as Acer Swift 3 with six-core Ryzen 5 4500U, listed at €599, you can get, for example, Lenovo Ideapad S340 with Core i5-1035G1 (4-core/8-thread chip clocked at 1.0GHz base and 3.6GHz Turbo), 8GB of RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD, and even Nvidia Geforce MX230 mobile GPU with 2GB GDDR5 memory.
There are even a total of 28 different SKUs of Acer Swift 3 laptop with Intel 10th gen Core CPUs, and although mostly quad-core designs, these start at €599, and in some cases even come with Nvidia MX250 mobile GPU (at €829).
AMD's Ryzen 4000 series CPUs look great, and reviews praise these chips in laptops like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, where the flagship Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-core/16-thread CPU is, no surprise, paired up with Geforce RTX 2060 Max-Q or Geforce GTX 16-series GPUs. AMD has definitely done a good job but an average buyer will go for Intel and it will be easier to pick out Intel-based laptop from the shop floor as there are simply not enough AMD Ryzen 4000-series SKUs.
