It’s a beautiful thing, but that chip’s still not a patch on a Snapdragon.
LIKE SHIPS DROPPING
out of warp in front of you (excuse our
Star Trek
metaphors this month), Snapdragon really has taken the advantage when it comes to the great laptop wars currently unfolding. Yes, if you want a top-tier gaming notebook, your only choice is to go with Intel or AMD for that battle (and to be honest, Intel is still holding that market well at the moment). Yet for products that lean more on the side of creativity, productivity, and just getting stuff done, it’s hard to suggest anything else over those Arm-based processors right now.
Take this Acer Swift Go 14. It’s fantastically tempting: $720 straight out of the gate, with 16GB of LPDDR5X @ 6,400MT/s (unfortunately soldered, so not upgradable), along with a crisp 2,880 x 1,800 OLED screen, and the impressive Intel Core Ultra 5 125H under its belt. It’s a wee beauty. Build quality is solid and dependable, especially at this price, the aluminum chassis feels plush, and although the edges are a little rougher than we’d like, there are products out there two to three times the price of this thing that feel less premium than it does, that’s for sure.