Is This the Macbook Neo Killer?! Computex 2026

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]This right here is the ASUS Swift Air 14 or what my Acer rep called their answer to a certain laptop from a certain fruit company. Obviously, the PC industry kind of panicked when the MacBook Air released and seeing how well it's been selling, I guess they had a right to and this is basically the main answer to it.

[00:00:20]So, does it win out? Well, in all the main specs, well, kind of yeah.

[00:00:24]Obviously, when it comes to performance, it's not really apples to apples, pun intended, because it is using an Intel CPU up to an Intel 7, but also unlike the MacBook Air, this one comes with up to 16 GB of LPDDR5X memory. It's not something we should be celebrating in the year 2026, but that's the standards Apple set for us. Now, granted, they said that in Europe and North American markets, they'll be mostly focusing on the 8 gig just to bring the price down and make it as competitive as possible, especially given the current pricing conditions when it comes to memory. I guess it kind of makes sense. Now, in terms of other things example, the display, well, it is slightly bigger at 14 in and has a higher refresh rate at up to 120 Hz. However, it is slightly lower resolution at 1200p. So, that's one compromise being made here. Other than that, the laptop itself is an all-metal chassis because again, that's something people apparently care about or at least what Apple fans try to make you care about. I never, ever look at a laptop and thought, "I'm going to buy it because it has a metal chassis." For me, it completely does not matter if it's metal or plastic as long as it doesn't fall off. So, I don't know how much of the cost it adds, but again, it's there to really compete with the MacBook Air.

[00:01:36]However, in terms of IO, well, here you're going to have two Thunderbolt 4 on one side and then on the other side, you're going to have a combo audio jack as well as a Type-A port. So, it's definitely not that much better than what the Air offers, but again, this is supposed to be a rather budget design.

[00:01:51]It is also slightly lighter. It is 1.19 kg compared to 1.23 of the Neo. They've also really gone into repairability here. Not only is the internal design much more cleanly designed to encourage repairability, but also it only uses just four basic chassis screws to make the process of actually disassembling it a lot easier.

[00:02:13]Now, for the most important part, the pricing. It is going to be $700 for the 8 gig model, so the same as the highest spec 512 GB SSD version of the Neo. And here, for the storage, you get the exact same amount, 512 gigs, but here it is, thankfully, expandable up to 1 TB. So, you can just increase that if you need to. It's going to come in your basic boring colors, as well as a couple of more snazzy ones as well. And they're going to come both with and without a pattern. They're basically still kind of experimenting, seeing which markets are going to like which colors and which kind of areas of the world going to prefer having that kind of pattern versus which ones want to have a regular clean back. So, I want to hear which one of these you prefer. So, do you think this is the perfect answer to the MacBook Neo? Well, let me know down in the comments below. Huge thanks to Gavin Burns, Justin Rage, Lefraniac, Shroken, Mason Allcroft, and Mason McGruder.