LG gram Thin & Light Laptop - 16" IPS WQXGA (2560 x 1600) 11th Gen Intel Core i7 1165G7 CPU, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD, 22 Hour Battery, - 16Z90P-K.AAB6U1 -Black (2021)

I bought the new LG Gram 16” laptop for work use and have had it a few days, and so far I really love it. I shopped for a long time before deciding on the gram, and considered the Lenovo x1 carbon and the dell xps 13, as well as the new MacBook m1. My criteria was top performance for business use (email, excel, word, PowerPoint, etc), light and portable for travel, and a good display. The gram ticked all the boxes. The x1 carbon hasn’t released the 11th gen processor yet, and I really wanted an 11th gen i7 evo chip for instant start up. The dell looked great but ultimately I felt the screen was too small for me, and only the 13” has the 11th gen in xps so far. So having a 16” screen and being under 3lbs the gram was my choice. The styling is understated, and not at all flashy. At first you might think it’s plastic, but I believe it is magnesium and has a nice metal feel. Keyboard is responsive and I like the trackpad. I’m a big fan of lg displays, across TVs and monitors and this one is also great. Colors are rich although it is glossy and not matte. Start up times are the fastest I’ve ever experience. It’s only 3 or 4 seconds from being off, pushing the button to being logged in and ready to go. The finger print scanner is fantastic and accurate. This is the consumer version, as the lg business side still seems to be on 10th gen, so you’ll need to pay for the upgrade to 10 pro if you need to join a domain for work. Ports are also a big plus here, many laptops don’t have hdmi in this thin form factor. Overall very impressed with lg so far.

As someone who uses a dedicated desktop (custom built) for Software Development and a MacBook pro 16, I needed a good windows laptop to use on the go and when I go into the office. This laptop is amazing, trust me. I am insanely picky and this laptop checks every box. I got it renew from amazon for $768.99 and for that price you can't beat it. I will say for the full retail price it may not be worth it. The performance is great but not worth $1500. The laptop Is very light and the screen is amazing! The keyboard is one of the best I've used except for a slightly weird layout. The key travel is amazing. All I can say is this is well worth it. My model is the 16 inch black, i7 16gb 256gb. Also it has 2 m.2 slots so you can upgrade the storage. Ram in not upgradable but I doubt you'll need more than that. I mostly write and compile code and do some photoshop. I haven't video edited with it but I would be surprised if this machine can't hang. Just an FYI my $2500 MacBook pro 16inch 2019 and this almost get the same geekbench score and obviously my windows desktop destroys it but to be expected. Solid laptop and the battery life is insane as well. also the 16 inch has the form factor of a 15 inch laptop. If you are thinking about it do it. You won't be upset and if you are return it lol Good luck!

Let's start with the negatives - there are not so many to get them out of the way. 1. LG has horrible service. If you get a lemon - only way to return it. Do not buy overseas as shipping back is hard or maybe impossible due to the battery. LG will only provide service in the country of sale, and you have to post it at your own cost plus in some countries they even ask for return postage to pay. This would be okay but quality control is not the best. I am fighting with amazon on how to return my first lg gram 16 that I bought in the US and now cannot send back from Taiwan. 2. The cooling is underpowered. Because it is so bad - even light tasks will have the notebook running quite hot on your lap in summer. At 25 degrees inside - it is not comfortable anymore. Depending on single core, multicore CPU only or CPU and GPU it can cool around 16w to 30w - no more. That is also why you should avoid the i7. The i7 is effectively slower as it has more cache and bigger GPU so runs hotter at the same speed. For multicore load the i5 will run 10% faster on average after 5 seconds or so. For single core the i5 is 10% slower, but it consumes only around 12w overall with 4200mhz single core and lowest screen brightness. The i7 at 4400-4500 because of thermal throttling will need 17-18w. Battery life accordingly on the i7 is 10-20% less! The i5 has great battery life for x86... If you open up the laptop to add another NVME disk, or exchange the one. You lose your warranty according to LG (doubt they can find out) - and the glued on rubber bumpers are a bit a pain. 3. It's missing another rubber bumper in the middle. Just add something so it will stop the flexing while typing or using the trackpack. This is the worst 5g LG saved. The second would be 50g more for better cooling. Neutral: The screen is great - but the calibration on the 16" so far is horrible. it is too cold and colors not accurate. The 17" model now seems to come factory calibrated. Maybe the 16" too in the future? Also the 16" has a 350 nits screen currently, while the lg Gram 17 now comes with a 400 nits factory calibrated screen - that seemingly is even more power efficient. But the 16" is no slouch either. It uses about 0.5w at lowest brightness to 3.5w at max brightness. The 17" even tough bigger in size seems to need even less power at 150 nits however! At full brightness the 17" needs a little bit more - but those 50 nits less on the 16 are really missing if you ever go outside. Also the screen is just way too glossy. It has no coating whatsoever. LG should go for a light semi-glossy coating to reduce the worst glare and reflections. High power usage for light work loads by the CPU. Intel and Microsoft really need to improve here a bit. Older CPU with Intel UHD 620/630 were much better in this regard. The LG control center resets the power mode cooling on each reboot or sleep/hibernate. That is annoying as I would like to permanently enable the fans spinning faster and only disable if I need longest battery life possible. Notebook Fan Control maybe could work - but I haven't found out how. The plus points: Low weight and stable enough for the weight. Lg activated C10 CPU state - this is really hurting other tiger lake and ice lake notebooks that have C8 as highest state. It saves about 0.5-1w. Low idle power. Just about 1.8w according to batteryviewinfo with lowest screen brightness. That's over 40 hours battery life when fully idle. Note it needs about 5 seconds not touch anything to drop down from about 3w to 1.8w. Low battery consumption on video. Tiger lake is great at this and the first CPU to support AV1. Macbook M1 buyers will notice this in 2-3 years and get way worse battery life then for any video stream. 15 hours with 80% screen brightness streaming Netflix 4k in Edge Canary with performance mode activated and full sound volume is possible. 20 hours at around 150 nits. 11-14 hours battery life time at 80% screen brightness for productivity work on the i5 model. That is however using Edge Canary with performance mode activated. Without performance mode its 10-12 hours. Using Chrome or Firefox a lot this drops to 8 hours. Decent CPU power if removing limits with Throttlestop. See my screenshot. You need to increase PP0 current limit otherwise after 30-60 seconds you get pretty bad throttling down to 10-15w. This also happens if you for example copy a lot of small files. Or other mid heavy workloads. Many tiger lake notebooks are suffering here right now - good it can be solved on the LG Gram. Great touchpad - the best for a Windows laptop so far that I have used. As good as on Macbooks. Great keyboard. However I hate the small enter key, and it should come without Numpad like Macbook Pro 16. This tiny numpad does nothing good. Pretty good speakers. Nearly at Dell XPS level. But again - you need to get rid of the crappy LG Dolby software and Install Equalizer APO - else it is too silent. Right now clearly the best portable notebook for office / productivity work. It's super compact for a 16" notebook (bezels are only 4.5mm left and right. 6mm at the top and around 9mm at the bottom. Great 80wh battery that is super light. Other notebooks have same weight battery only at 57wh. Let's hope it lives long or is not too expensive to exchange in 2-3 years. Great price in Spain or UK for such a quality notebook at sometimes around 1200€. At full price it is competitive. Really cheap in Korea... (can get it there for 800€ with i5, 8GB, 256GB NVME) Linux runs well. As you have two NVME slots easy to setup dualboot because you are going to have a lot of space even without buying an expensive 2TB NVME (well I would stay away from budget NVME - had already an ADATA 8200 Pro crashing on me after 6 months..) Its the best compromise for me right now. 2.5K screen is just right. 4k screen needs too much battery life with intel CPU. If you can wait a year, wait for the first Gram with Alder Lake. It will have 50% longer battery life, run cooler and maybe they then go for a 4k OLED screen. More efficient CPU and OLED screen and this would be unbeatable for productivity work. Go for the 17" instead of the 16" if you find the size is still okay in your backpack. It is better than the 16" but has slightly bigger bezels and well is just bigger in your backpack. But then 17" and just 150g heavier (My 16" only weighs 1150g. The 17Z90P inch reportedly 1.3 kg and not 1.35)

I'm in love with this laptop. I was looking for a very lightweight laptop that was at least 16" in size with higher than 1080p FHD resolution. I didn't want to spend too much and saw that there was a great deal on a "Good condition" one of these listed with a "small cosmetic imperfection on rear" note on it. I decided to take a chance and I am so glad I did. I cannot even find this imperfection. Even though this is a 2021 discontinued model, this is a GREAT laptop. It is so incredibly light, I can't believe it works as well as it does. 16GB of RAM and it has enough drive space for my needs. While the drive isn't as fast as today's drives, it still is running about 3500 MB/s sequential read and 2500 MB/s sequential write on my boot drive. It's not too bad. I will be typically using remote desktop to connect to my desktop computer from this laptop anyway. This came pre-loaded with an old version of Windows 10. I immediately downloaded and installed the latest Windows 11 Media Creation Tool and created a Win 11 USB drive to install on this laptop and had no issues installing and running Windows 11 on it. The laptop did not come pre-loaded with garbage either. I actually had to manually install a few LG utilities to check for the latest LG-specific drivers which worked fine and then I uninstalled the utility because I don't like OEM utilities running on my computers usually. This seriously is a great laptop if you are looking for something very lightweight with high resolution (although not 4K). The screen is bright and sharp. I give this laptop a huge 5 stars, especially if you can get it under $600 like I did.

I gave it two stars because specs and performance are both acceptable but that’s where the good ends for me. It’s wordy but here’s the scoop: This 16” 2021 Gram is the cheapest, “plasticky” feeling laptop I’ve ever held. The specs are good, performance is good but there is zero chance of this thing lasting through anything (regardless of that phony “military tested” hogwash they claim) and to make matters even worse, there is, likely a near ZERO chance of LG standing behind it because LG is as bad as it gets when it comes to support (based on 1st hand experience). It is probably called the Gram because it weighs close enough to a gram that they can legally name it that. It feels like a $149 Chromebook. Seriously, it does! If anyone says otherwise, they aren’t being too honest. It may actually BE better than a cheap Chromebook but it surely does NOT feel like it. It feels too light, too flimsy and too cheap, IMO. This is my 2nd Gram and on the first one, the screen strangely snapped like a thin dry twig (think toothpick) and a few years later I thought I’d try LG again and this feels even MORE like a product from Toys R Us than the first one I purchased from LG a couple years back. I sent this new, even flimsier version back like I should have done with the first one and proceeded to pay the extra few bucks for a beautiful, well built, solid aluminum and perfectly weighted Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 and this gem is a keeper! Complete different league of products….period! And not too much more $$ either! What the hell was I thinking? Screw me once, shame on you….etc……Summary: If you are a fan of ridiculously light electronics or you are a fan of well assembled Fisher Price toys, the LG Gram might be a perfect choice. If a solid, premium feeling device is desirable then my recommendation is a definite pass on LG’s Gram! It just feels wrong and over priced! Especially after holding and using a Surface Laptop 4 (which also has a touch screen). The Surface Laptop 4 works, looks AND feels 100% premium and frankly, aside from decent looks and of course performance, how a laptop “feels” is important to me. That is the straight forward scoop folks….from a 30 year computer (IT) professional. P.S. So I don’t seem like a MS fanboy, there ARE other premium feeling laptops, ASUS Zenbook, HP Spectre, some Dell models and a limited few others like MacBooks but MAC OS sucks BUT their hardware is quite premium and, really sets the bar for hardware but MS hit it out of the park here! I’m just comparing with the Surface Laptop 4 because I have one and can fairly compare it with the hapless Gram.