LG Gram 17 review

The Gram 17 has a grand 17-inch display, but weighs only three pounds, light enough to carry around with one hand. It is a well-built laptop computer with a sturdy chassis, and despite its large size, it is still portable due to its lightweight design.

The LG Gram 17 is a thin and light Windows laptop with an 11th generation Intel CPU. It’s a well-built laptop that aims to provide a premium user experience, even at the cost of slightly lower performance than other laptops with a similar setup. It’s incredibly light, although you’ll still need a large enough bag to carry it around, as it’s a 17-inch device. Battery life is great as it lasts for 13 hours of light productivity or over 9 hours of video playback, so you don’t have to worry about bringing your charger.

The display is sharp and offers plenty of room for multitasking, the keyboard is good for typing and does not cause fatigue, and the touchpad is large and responsive. The video quality of the webcam is very good even though it is at 720p, and the wide selection of ports includes one HDMI port and two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support.

Its Intel i5-1155G7 CPU and integrated graphics can handle simple tasks like Web browsing, text formatting and spreadsheets; however, they are not ideal for heavy, sustained workloads such as video editing or AAA gaming as they experience a noticeable slowdown under load. Our LG gram 17 has an Intel Core i5-1155G7 CPU, integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, 8GB of memory and 512GB of storage.

Design

Gram 17 is defined by two key characteristics. The first is weight, or lack of it. Measuring 0.7 x 14.9 x 10.2 inches (HWD), it’s about the same size as the Dell XPS 17 (9720), but is 2.3 pounds lighter. In fact, it’s light enough to sneak under the 3-pound limit to be considered an ultraportable laptop, an impressive achievement considering the fact that most laptops in this category have much smaller screens.

Much of that lightweight appeal is due to the magnesium alloy frame, which manages to not only shave ounces, but also withstand some abuse, enough to meet MIL-STD-810 durability tests for shock, vibration, temperature and more. It’s not that hard to make it a rugged laptop, but the Gram 17 can handle life on the road and the jet black finish will keep it ready for work in all situations. The other distinguishing feature is the 17-inch display.

With a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, it is a better than Full HD display with a decent brightness of 350 nits and great clarity thanks to the IPS panel technology. Such a large screen offers plenty of visual space for everything from web browsing and media streaming to photo editing and detailed work with documents and spreadsheets.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is splendid, with greater depth and feedback from the chiclet keys than most other thin laptops, making typing for long periods very pleasant and allowing you to get used to it quickly, although it is a bit noisier to use as a result. The keys are backlit and there is also a numeric keypad, which is important for managing spreadsheets or entering large ranges of numbers.

The touchpad is large, smooth, and frictionless; the only real problem is that its size means that switching from the bottom right corner to the bottom left corner for left and right mouse clicks is not particularly easy, although you get used to it. The edges of the laptop are also quite sharp, so you need to make sure your wrists don’t rest on them.

Display

LG Gram 17’s WQXGA IPS display would be similar in quality to LG’s premium TV panels. Fortunately, it is. While not a touchscreen, its 2560×1600-pixel display, which is twice the resolution of an FHD panel, displays videos and images with near-clinical clarity. Notably, there was an absence of the distortion we sometimes get when viewing images on some FHD panels. The panel’s 99% DCI-P3 gamut coverage also produced colors with a vibrancy that would hardly be found in an FHD display.

Brightness is its only weakness. LG offered a manufacturer reading of 300 nits, which isn’t great for a 2021 premium laptop. With just standard brightness and no matte display, glare can be an issue with outdoor viewing. You may want to stay indoors with the LG Gram 17. Some might think a full 17-inch display is overkill, but the Gram 17’s panel is the perfect size for productivity. The display, built with a 16:10 aspect ratio instead of a 16: 9 aspect ratio, reaches 1600 pixels instead of 1400 pixels in height.

Audio

The LG Gram 17 packs a pair of 1.5W stereo speakers that kick music from the bottom and back of the laptop at a pretty decent decibel level. When we cranked the volume up to max, we were struck by how loud the Gram is, but the distortion and tinny sound on the high end make it something you’ll only want to do in case there’s a neighbor you’d like to drive far.

In fact, while the Gram’s speakers are clear enough, they’re not ideal for enjoying your music. Bass is practically non-existent and when you turn the volume high enough the laptop sounds less like an entertainment device and more like a set of metallic speakers trapped inside a matte black plastic box. When we put on LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali”, the vocals were clear enough, but the drum hits sounded like a buzzer sounding.

Graphics

With integrated Iris Xe graphics, demanding graphics tasks, such as playing Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, were less outstanding. The Gram is only capable of maintaining 24 frames per second, which is below our 30fps threshold. A gaming machine, this is not. Running the same game, the Galaxy Book Pro achieved a better 27 fps using the same Intel Iris Xe graphics.

In the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark, the Gram 17 achieved a score of 4,733, which is slightly better than the premium laptop average of 4,728. The Galaxy Book Pro achieved a noticeably higher score of 5,575 using a similar processor and integrated graphics.

Performance

The addition of the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 chipset is the biggest update to the LG Gram 2021 and a worthy one. The processor has simplified the work of tasks such as navigation and Microsoft Office applications. Our benchmarks confirm its suitability for those light tasks, but not CPU-intensive tasks. To be honest, this is understandable considering its weight constraints; heavier laptops generally have cooling benefits that equate to a performance advantage when things get hot.

For our comparisons we avoided the cutting edge power category of productivity laptops which includes laptops like the recently reviewed Acer Swift X and Dell XPS 17. These systems have components like discrete graphics cards that put them in a league of their own. Instead, we have chosen laptops with Intel i5 and i7 CPUs with integrated graphics which are mostly unsuitable as dual-purpose productivity / gaming systems.

Battery life

LG claims that the 80 Wh lithium-ion battery in the LG Gram 17 can last up to 19.5 hours on a single charge. Of course, “up to” is a relative term. But using the laptop for an entire work week, we found that the battery life was definitely sufficient for a mixed workday of word processing, video conferencing, web browsing and listening to Spotify. In addition, the battery indicator indicated that, at the end of our work shift, there were between 1.5 and 3.5 hours left in the tank.

One of the most common uses of battery-powered laptops is to watch movies and TV shows during long trips. We therefore ran an HD movie downloaded from Netflix several times, with audio in the headphones, to see how long the LG Gram 17 would last. Ultrabook at a similar price. The result surprised us so much that we ran the same test two more times, to make sure we didn’t miss, getting similar results.

Heat

The Gram 17 stayed within the comfort threshold of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. After running full-screen HD video for 15 minutes, we measured key points on the laptop, starting with the touchpad, which reached a temperature of 82 degrees. Meanwhile, the keyboard and bottom reached temperatures of 93 and 94 degrees, respectively.

Configuration Options

The LG Gram 17 is available in a configuration that costs $ 1,799. This configuration sports an Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and integrated Intel Xe graphics. The 17-inch display has a WQXGA resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels with a 16:10 aspect ratio. For connectivity, the Gram 17 has 802.11ax WiFi and Bluetooth 5.1. It is also available in two colors: black and gray.

Final Words

The LG Gram 17 is great for school use. It is a well-built laptop with a sturdy chassis, and despite its large size, it is still portable because of its lightweight design. Its compact charger fits easily into most bags, but you probably won’t need it because the battery lasts for 13 hours of light productivity.

George Southwell
George Southwell
George Southwell is a seasoned content editor at Bollyinside, renowned for his expertise in simplifying complex tech topics. Specializing in "Tips and Tricks" articles, he excels in breaking down iPhone, Android, hardware, and software insights. George's insatiable curiosity fuels his hobby of testing the latest tech updates, keeping him on the cutting edge.

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The LG Gram 17 almost compromises on key features to weigh less than 3 pounds, excelling in battery life and display quality and offering adequate power for its intended light use, a commendable feat for a 17-inch laptop.LG Gram 17 review