LG Gram 17 review: A big-screen laptop that’s incredibly lightweight - keipercamileat

While reviewing the LG G 17, one thought persisted: Why aren't people freaking impermissible all over this laptop computer?

Here we have a notebook with a gorgeous 17-inch display and monster battery biography, yet at 2.95 pounds, it's near as light as a 13-inch MacBook Air. Divisor in a coolheaded and quiet build, a silky-smooth trackpad, ample storage, and flock of ports, and you have a big-screen laptop computer with no of the common ample-silver screen trade wind-offs—well, aside from its steep $1,699 tilt price (though we've noticed a lower price on Amazon).

Without doubt, the LG Gram 17 isn't perfect, because nary laptop is. It doesn't get the best keyboard, its design feels a bit savourless, and speaker quality is sheer dreaded. But when you're working in luxurious comfort along an almost desktop-sized display and getting brim ove a flooded day's battery life to reboot, the LG Gram 17's smattering of issues have a way of backward into the background.

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the champion laptops. Go in that respect for information on competing products and how we tested them.

Tech specs

As the name suggests, the LG Gram 17 has a 17-inch, 2560-by-1600 resolution display, and it comes in one configuration, with an 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8565U processor, 16GB of DDR-2400 RAM, and a 512GB solid state driving force. A fingermark reader is shapely into the power button along the top-right corner of the keyboard, but there's No face recognition to go with the 720p webcam. Keep in creative thinker also that this is a traditional grapple laptop, with no touch screen.

Jared Newman / IDG

The LG Gram 17 has a proprietary charger, but you bum use USB-C in a pinch.

Connected the laptop's left side, you'll find Thunderbolt 3, a USB 3.0 Type A, HDMI, and a DC input for the Gram's proprietary charging brick. (The laptop can also take a bang through the USB-C port.) The reactionary side of meat includes two many USB 3.0 Type A ports, a headphone jack, and—in what increasingly seems like a oddment on consumer laptops these days—a MicroSD card slot. One might nitpick the lack of USB-C on both edges, but this is a solid arrangement of ports boilersuit.

Design and display

The Brobdingnagian majority of 17-inch laptops aspire to be desktop PC replacements, with spinning hard drives, discrete art card game, and sometimes even old-school optical magnetic disk drives. By contrast, the LG Gram 17 aims to hang with smaller thin-and-lights, making IT unmatchable of the most unique laptops available today.

Just look at it, you'd expect something much heavier, so when you pick it up, its deficiency of compactness is wow-inducing. (I know this, having foisted the laptop upon various friends and family members during my time reviewing it.) The laptop is fairly slight as well, measuring 0.7 inches at its thickest point.

Jared Newman / IDG

The LG Hans C. J. Gram 17 cuts a slight physical body for such a large laptop.

The exhibit itself is no slump either. I'm a fan of the 16:10 aspect ratio for laptops in general, and on a 17-inch screen door that amounts to a uncomplete-inch of extra upended sort space compared to typical 17.3-inch laptops with 16:9 vista ratios. Meanwhile, the 2560-past-1600 resolution display makes everything look sharp, and we measured a peak brightness of 362 nits, which is on the high conclusion for any laptop.

This ultralight design does experience some inherent downsides. The carbon and Mg chassis might be sturdier than plastic, simply it feels cheap to the touch—especially pressing on the center of the lid, which has a great deal of flex. The medium-old colour scheme is just drab. I have photographic evidence of LG showing off a snazzier-looking livid version of the Gm 17 during CES in January, but for some reason LG has opted not to release IT in the America. That's too no-good.

While LG claims it has fit a 17-inch laptop inside a 15-inch laptop figure, that's a little of a stretch. At 15 inches opened and 10.5 inches long, the Gram's footprint is about an inch larger than a 15-inch MacBook Pro in each attribute, and IT's flatbottomed slightly taller and wider than a 15-inch Dingle Inspiron econobox. If you're not already using a large laptop, you might need to upgrade your travel bulge to accommodate the LG Gram 17.

Keyboard and trackpad

The LG Gram 17's biggest light point is its keyboard. Information technology's not outright bad—it offers plenty of travel, and there are no failure-prone butterfly Key switches here—but the keys are along the strict side, and they squish a bit when you press inoperative against the laptop's frame. LG's insisting on including a number pad—only non stretching the keyboard closer to the edges of the frame—is also a mistake, sequent in overly small space bar and backspace keys.

Jared Newman / IDG

LG crammed a number pad in here, but maybe it shouldn't have.

The trackpad, all the same, is a delight, at the least for those of us who are accustomed to touch-tapping. It's a smooth and commodious show u that doesn't stick under prolonged use, and Microsoft's Preciseness Touchpad drivers dress a great subcontract with palm rejection as you type. Those who prefer to click down happening the trackpad will rich person more to complain about, arsenic the LG Gram 17's clicking mechanics is pretty stiff.

Speakers and software package

Windows laptops seldom shine on verbalizer quality, but the LG Gram 17 stands out for being worse than most. Bass lines are almost indiscernible patc listening to euphony, and audio overall sounds strangely muffled, as if you're talking to soul over the earphone. Even upright listening to multitude peach connected YouTube, sound quality was more on a par with a smartphone than decent laptop Beaver State pill speakers.

Along a somewaat synonymous personal credit line, I expect most Windows laptops (omit Microsoft Touch Edition ones) to include some level of bloatware, but LG's software suite has one unaccustomed quirk: Its Support Pore software shows information only in Peninsula in the scheme tray. The laptop computer besides includes a "Reader Mode" feature that gives the screen a reddish tint, which is fine, only IT has a bad habit of nagging you to use it via notifications, and Microsoft's well-stacked-in Night Light does a better job. Fortunately, LG's bloatware tooshie be remote without incident.

Jared Newman / IDG

LG forgot to transform its client support app in the system tray.

Performance and battery spirit

Let's start with the top news first: LG put a massive 72Wh battery in the LG Gram 17, and the result is major runtime. It is improbably relieving, at the part with of a working day with no battery charger connected hand, to see Windows estimating finished 9 hours of battery life. Patc those estimates arrange fluctuate based on workload, I had no issues acquiring through an entire workday with this laptop computer.

That anecdotal experience is backed up by our battery rundown examine, in which the LG Gramme 17 clocked 12 hours and 45 minutes of looping video at 255 nits' brightness. The exclusively laptop that came close in our tests is LG's possess Gram 14 2-in-1.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

Battery life is the headliner of the show in the LG Gram 17's benchmark testing.

LG also deserves credit for the thermal design of this laptop. Under heavy loads—for instance, while encoding a large video file—the Gram 17 gets warmest around the center-fundament of its underside. Even Here, it's not overly hot, but the Gram's large footprint means you butt comfortably residue the laptop with your legs on either side of the warm spot, yet during rigorous tasks. The laptop also stays pretty unagitated throughout these heavy operations, and under normal loads you probably won't hear anything at all.

All of which is a preface for locution the LG Gram 17's general performance benchmarks are a mixed bag, when compared to competitors similar in profile or configuration. Keep in mind that the Gram's Intel Meat i7-8565U processor is technically a generation grey at this point, so we'd have a bun in the oven it to lag arse laptops with 10th-generation CPUs, such as Dell's stylish XPS 13 2-in-1. One goes compared to Microsoft's spiffy new AMD Ryzen-powered Surface Laptop 3.

PCMark, which simulates a gamut of productivity tasks, was actually the exclusion to the linguistic rule here, as the LG Gram 17 edged out several otherwise laptops including that new XPS 13. However, all the laptops Hera scored well over 2,000, which is very good.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

Contempt having an 8th-generation Intel processor, the LG Gram 17 holds its own against the newer Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 in productivity benchmarks.

The results in Cinebench, which tests carrying into action below quick bursts of heavy demand, were less successful. The LG Gram fell behind other laptops—and the new XPS 13 especially—in multi-rib operation, though single-thread performance was pretty solid.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

Short bursts of multi-rib performance are a gutless channelize for the LG Gram 17, but ace-wind results are more respectable.

As for the aforementioned task of video encoding in HandBrake, the LG Gram 17 took much longer than other thin-and-light laptops, even ones with 8th-generation Intel processors. Given the laptop's slim design and its impressively stylish operation, IT's likely that LG is much disposed to throttle functioning in service of guardianship things soothing.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

The likely secret to the LG Gram 17's poise, quiet performance: Strangulation under large compute loads.

Finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, the LG Gram 17 is not a play laptop. Graphics performance in 3DMark's Sky Diver benchmark lags considerably behind laptops with separate nontextual matter cards much Dell's Inspiron 15 7000 Black Edition, and it was predictably beaten by the new XPS 13, whose 10th-gen Intel Core i7-10710 CPU brings improvements to co-ed graphics public presentation.

Genus Melissa Riofrio/IDG

Father't expect great play performance dead of the LG Gram 17's co-ed nontextual matter.

Should you get the LG Gram 17?

Although LG offers lots of laptops in which portability is the primary merchandising point, the LG Gram 17 is the ultimate manifestation. There's nothing else equivalent IT along the market, and information technology's mostly a joy to use despite a middling keyboard and awful speakers. We expect prices on laptops with 8th-contemporaries Intel Congress of Racial Equality CPUs to unload as laptops powered away 10th-generation chips hit the market, so now might Be the perfect time to hitch this unique skeletal-and-light.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398389/lg-gram-17-review.html

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