The first Ryzen AI 400 laptop I tested is built for focus, not fireworks

I’m just going to say it: 2026 is the most exciting year for productivity laptops ever.

I’ve been covering the chip market dating back to the winter of 1994. Celeron? I was there. Intel’s first integrated GPU, the i740? I said it stunk — and Intel blacklisted me for it. When Transmeta came, and went, I was the guy who quietly snuck a peek at the first performance estimates.

Now it’s 2026, and look at what you have to choose from in laptops! For years, it was Intel and AMD only. Now, you can buy laptops with two chips from Intel (Panther Lake and now Wildcat Lake), AMD’s Ryzen AI 400, the Snapdragon X1 and X2 in their myriad configurations, plus Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon C — and the sexy newcomer, Nvidia’s RTX Spark.

All this has kept me busy. I’ve been able to review Intel’s Panther Lake pretty thoroughly, and discovered that it’s only great under certain conditions. Without proper cooling, Panther turns into a kitten. Qualcomm pushed all its chips into the pot with the Snapdragon X2 Elite, going all in on performance and sacrificing some battery life in exchange.

For this inaugural newsletter, I wanted to give you a first look at AMD’s new Ryzen AI 400 chip, before it hits PCWorld’s pages. AMD anoounced the Ryzen AI 400 series in January without a lot of fanfare; it pushed the CPU and GPU frequency higher, but that’s all. If you wanted to buy the best overall productivity laptop, the previous Ryzen AI 300 was a good bet. Ryzen AI 400 notebooks are out now, but they haven’t received too much attention.

Acer sent me a 16-inch Swift Go 16 AI for review and testing, and I’ve begun to run to run a number of tests on it. I’m not going to overload with you with charts and graphs. Instead, here are the most interesting bits I’ve found so far:

The actual numbers and battery scores will have to wait for our review, but it looks like I’ve been handed a midrange laptop with Intel “Meteor Lake” performance.

I do two key things to start my day: shower, and take a walk. A landmark Stanford study found walking — anywhere, really — has extremely positive outcomes for creativity and problem solving. I used to walk at night, but I found that walking during the morning better set the stage for a productive day.

Why do I include a shower, then? Hygiene, of course! But both scenarios remove me from any distractions. Sometimes inspiration does hit like the proverbial bolt of lightning, but I find I’m better served by letting ideas percolate. My job is to connect trends and discover good ideas for stories and articles, and the mental freedom to let the pieces fall into place gives me a better perspective. Anyone can react, but being proactive is what sets productive people apart.

Thanks for tuning in to the first edition of Smart Mode, PCWorld’s newsletter devoted to helping you make the most of your life, smartly. Sign up and have it sent to your inbox every Tuesday!