LG Gram 17” Review: The Lightest 17”, ‘nuff Said

Written by Soon Kai Hong

Today, we’re taking a look at the lightest 17-inch laptop by far, the LG Gram 17″.

So the Gram, it’s been around for a while and this product is mainly geared towards portability and light productivity. There are also many different options that you can choose from. All the way from a 13.3-inch, to the 17-inch. As you would expect, it’s really light. This 17-inch Gram weighs just over 1.3 kilograms, and you can easily carry it with one hand.

LG managed to achieve such a feat through the use of magnesium alloy, which pretty much makes up the entirety of the laptop. But even though it’s so light, it has also been certified Military Standard 810G, so you can rest easy, knowing that it can take quite a beating. Not that you should do that to your laptop, but it’ll most likely survive.

Next, the display. It’s a great display, no qualms about it whatsoever, and that’s pretty much to be expected, especially since it’s LG.

You get a 17.3-inch, Quad HD, IPS display, that is capable of 360 nits brightness and covers 100% sRGB. Nice and vibrant colors, great viewing angles, you’ll definitely enjoy watching content on this display.

My only gripe about it, however, is that it’s glossy. I’ll much prefer a matte finish but to each their own. Up top, you still get a webcam, where it should be, while still retaining the relatively thin bezels all around.

Moving down, we have the keyboard and trackpad. You get a full-sized backlit keyboard, complete with a numpad and the power button is recessed to prevent accidental touches while also serving as a fingerprint reader.

Overall, I’ve had a good typing experience with it. Key travel is all right, while the feedback was nice and tactile. The only issue I had was with the backspace key, which is far too small. I couldn’t reach it at times, especially when I’m typing fast. Other than that, it’s good, and I’m pretty sure most users will like it.

The trackpad is decently sized and runs Precision Drivers, so it’s accurate and supports all the gestures which Microsoft offers. The clicks themselves are not the best, but it’s all right.

In terms of I/O, you get a couple of USB 3.1 ports, a headphone/mic combo jack, and a MicroSD Card Reader on the right, while on the left, you have your power jack, another USB 3.1, HDMI 2.0, and a Type-C port which supports Thunderbolt 3.

It’s a healthy amount of I/O ports, though I would’ve preferred a full-size SD Card Reader. It’s still great though, especially if you want to hook up an external GPU since you can do so via Thunderbolt 3.

So speaking about that, we now move on to performance. Our unit is equipped with an Intel Core i7-8565U, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD.

Like I’ve mentioned in the start, the LG Gram series is geared towards portability and light productivity, and the i7-8565U will handle just that. There’s no issues, handling day-to-day tasks like documents or simply browsing, and the 512GB NVMe SSD is nice and fast, able to handle transfers and manage your documents easily.

8GB of RAM is enough but not ideal, especially in 2019. You can still open up quite a few Chrome tabs, no issues with that, but if you’re getting into slightly more demanding applications such as Photoshop or Lightroom, you might want to look at an upgrade.

The 8GB of RAM onboard comes soldered on and there’s space for one empty RAM slot, so you’ll be able to get up to 16GB of RAM.

Lastly, we come down to battery life and this is perhaps the best feature of the LG Gram.

On the better battery setting, with the screen at 50% brightness, I was able to get over 11 hours of use, while constantly typing on various documents, browsing the web, and watching the occasional YouTube video. LG does claim up to 19 and a half hours of battery life on the 17-inch Gram, which you can definitely get much closer to should you run on the best battery setting and go easy on the screen brightness and WiFi.

Needless to say though, battery life is amazing and you can last a day outside, should you forget to bring the AC adapter.

So all in all, the LG Gram 17-inch is a great laptop, and my experience with it was a positive one. But that’s not to say that I’m thoroughly satisfied with it.

The one thing I felt a little bit mixed was the build quality of the laptop. Yes it’s durable, passed Military Standards and all that and it’s definitely light.

But using the laptop and touching the material, it doesn’t feel premium at all, especially not for the price, which is a pretty hefty S$2,800.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this is a 17-inch laptop. It may be light, but it’ll still take up more physical space than current 15.6-inch laptops. Personally, I would look at the 15.6-inch Gram or the 14-inch Gram as a daily driver, especially for portability, but to each their own.

To sum up, I think that the LG Gram 17-inch is a great laptop. You get, obviously, a great 17-inch display, a great typing experience, decent performance, all in a thin and light chassis with ample ports to spare.

If you’re looking for a 17-inch laptop that’s insanely light and you don’t mind forking out a little bit more, take a look at this.

More information and purchase options for the LG Gram can be found on LG’s website.