My LG Gram 17 arrived yesterday, and this is my review of it after almost 24 hours with the laptop. These here are my initial impressions, and they may change after using it more frequently.
Overall, I have to say that I am very pleased with it and it exceeded my expectations so far. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a computer for productivity or office use: it has a large screen comfortable to use with many windows opened; a nice and comfortable keyboard to type at; and good performance and battery life. I would say it is just great for executives, academics, or writers. I would not dare to say it is good for photo or video editors as I am not one of them and I cannot attest if the performance or the color accuracy is on par.
To sum it up, this is quite much the laptop I would expect Apple to deliver as a large MacBook Air. Not all the details, obviously. But I would expect Apple to release a large and yet light MacBook Air with good quality overall. LG is quite ahead of Apple and of everyone else in offering large lightweight laptops for general use. People should not necessarily link large laptops to powerful components and dedicated video cards, which only drives up the prices of these devices and make them heavy and battery-hungry. More manufacturers should follow LG's lead and offer large laptops to the general audience, as many of them would benefit from a big screen without necessarily needing all the power of a gaming laptop or of a MacBook Pro.
SPECS. Intel Core i7-1165g7 28W (2.8 GHz, 4.7 GHz Turbo, 12 MB L3 cache), Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16 GB RAM LPDDR4 4266 MHz, 512 GB SSD NVMe, 17-inch IPS LCD screen with 2560x1600 resolution and DCI-P3 99%, Intel Wi-Fi 6, LAN 10/100 Mbit, Bluetooth 5.1, 2x USB 3.1 type C/Thunderbolt, HDMI, 1x USB 3.1 type A, card reader, headphone jack, 2x 2W speakers, 720p webcam, 80Wh battery, 1.35kg (2.98 lbs) weight.
The specs are fine, although rather normal. The large screen and lightweight, while retaining a large battery, are the key points here.
SIZE. It is big, very big, to accommodate the very large screen. You can definitely notice the size, especially as the chassis is black.
However, despite the display being considerably bigger, the chassis is only slightly larger than both my 15.4-inch MacBook Pro and my Dell XPS 15 because of the small bezels around the screen. So, while big, it is not ridiculously big, and I could accommodate it inside my backpack.
Note that I am comparing it to a 2013 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, not the current model. That model had larger bezels than the Touch Bar version, which has larger bezels than the M-series Apple has just released. The latest version (which I have not seen yet in the wild) is probably considerably smaller due to its smaller bezels. However, as for size, I do not think a 17-inch laptop can be much smaller than the LG Gram 17; the bezels are already thin and, although they can be further reduced, I do not think any gains would be considerable here.
WEIGHT. It is very light considering its size. Anyone who would lift the LG Gram 17 would notice it. It is about the same weight, only a tad lighter than my 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with TouchBar (at 1.37kg/3.02 lbs). When lifting them with both hands, the LG Gram 17 feels even lighter, probably because the weight is spread over a larger area. The MacBook is easier to lift with one hand, though, probably due to its compact size.
The LG Gram 17 is noticeable lighter than the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display (at 2.02kg/4.46 lbs) and the Dell XPS 9550 (at 1.78kg/3.9 lbs).
It is not as light, though, as the LG Gram 14. The LG Gram 14 weighs slightly less than 1kg (2.2 lbs), and everyone that lifts it think it is a toy and not a real laptop. The LG Gram 17 is 35% heavier, but it is also a much bigger laptop. The LG Gram 14 looks like the LG Gram 17's offspring. The power supply of the LG Gram 17 is about the same size and weight as the LG Gram 14 (perhaps only a tad heavier, but very close), which is a good thing.
BUILD. The quality of parts of the LG Gram 17 surprised me. I suppose it is made of magnesium alloy. It quite feels like plastic, although of good quality. It is black and beautiful, although I have to say that dust is very noticeable. It looks and feels far more premium than my 14-inch LG Gram 14z980 to the point they both seem to belong in different categories. LG claims that they both are very resistant, but I have not tested them (and I will not).
The MacBooks, with their aluminum chassis, look and feel even more premium. Although the feel of the LG Gram 17 is great, aluminum is a whole other level. However, it is not too far off as the LG Gram 14 was. Plus, aluminum make those Macs even heavier. And there is one last point: aluminum in the Macs is cold and harder to the touch. The LG Gram 17 is warmer and softer, which may feel more comfortable sometimes.
I have to say that I prefer the build of the LG Gram 17 over the one in the Dell XPS 9550. The Dell XPS 9550, with a mix of magnesium alloy (I think) and metal, looks like it has too many loose parts. The LG Gram 17 feels more tightly built. I may be biased to say so, as my Dell XPS 9550 had problems since the beginning, and the chassis has broken and cracked by itself, at which point it stopped working. But it never felt too solid anyway.
DISPLAY SIZE. This is the very first thing anyone would notice on the LG Gram 17. The display is huge at 17 inches. It is also tall because of the 16:10 screen ratio. It is noticeable larger than the displays in any of my previous laptops. It has a 21.86% larger area than my 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display; it is also 24.91% larger than my 15.6-inch Dell XPS 9550. So, the 17-inch screen is big, although not ridiculously bigger than the 15-inch screens of my previous laptops.
I have to say it is very comfortable to use a display this size. This is what a desktop replacement feels like. It is not cramped at all. I am happy I chose this instead of the LG Gram 16.
SCREEN RESOLUTION. The screen has a 2560x1600, which is handy. Display size is not alone to provide comfort to work. One has to have real estate, and this is what resolution provides. I am very picky about screen resolution and I would not have bought it if it were Full HD. Definitely it is a big deal for me.
Text looks small when using it at 100% scaling, and I can see the individual pixels, so it may not be considered quite "retina". The display has a 177.58 ppi pixel density, which I think is quite good. Just for the sake of comparison, I calculated the pixel density of all my current laptops:
LG Gram 17: 17-inch at 2560x1600, 177.58 ppi
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: 13.3-inch at 2560x1600, 226.98 ppi
MacBook Pro with Retina Display: 15.4-inch at 2880x1800, 220.53 ppi
LG Gram 14: 14-inch at 1920x1080, 157.35 ppi
Dell XPS 9550: 15.6-inch at 3840x2160, 282.42 ppi
The Dell XPS 9550 is 4K. It is a very nice display, but the resolution is overkill, as it consumes a huge amount of battery life and I cannot perceive the benefits of such a high resolution. The Macs are probably the sweet spot here, as they have fine screen resolutions that hide individual pixels from sight (hence a "Retina" display). The LG Gram 14 is OK, but individual pixels are still too visible. The LG Gram 17 has a nice balance. I am using it at 125% scaling and pixels are hardly visible, which I think it is perfectly fine (and finer than I originally thought it would be, so it surprised me positively). Although I would prefer the resolution to be a bit higher (such as the one in the Macs), I acknowledge that it would consume more battery life and I think it is already good the way it is.
BRIGHTNESS. I saw lots of complaints about brightness in this model. However, I found the screen to be very bright and vivid. I put it side by side with my 13.3-inch MacBook Pro which has 500 nits of display brightness, and it fared very well. I have not tested this model in the streets, though. It will certainly not be anywhere near the new MacBook Pro models.
GLARE. There is a lot of glare, and in this respect, it is similar to the LG Gram 14. The Macs have far less glare and are much more comfortable to look at when there is a source of light behind. The LG Gram 17 sometimes looks like a mirror.
COLORS. Colors are absolutely amazing in the LG Gram 17. They are so vivid. I put the LG Gram 17, the LG Gram 14, and the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with TouchBar side by side to compare this. I used EIZO Monitor Test for this one. The colors in the LG Gram 17 look so much more vivid and bright than in the two other laptops to the point it surprised me. I thought the Mac would win this easily, as it has 100% DCI-P3 and the reds and greens are so vivid. But the LG Gram 17 puts the Mac to shame, as even reds and greens were far more vivid and bright. I was not expecting this result, but the LG Gram 17 totally blew me away in terms of color reproduction. I do not expect it to be better than the new MacBook Pro, which I am yet to see, but it has surprised me.
Please note that I have not tested color accuracy, nor have I the means to. But colors just popped out of the screen of the LG Gram 17 in a way that they did not in the two other laptops (which, to be fair, looked very much the same, perhaps with some small advantage to the MacBook Pro).
PERFORMANCE. So far, it is very responsive, and I have not seen it turn on the fans. Windows feels much faster and more responsive than the LG Gram 14. Please note that I do not use it for intensive tasks, but mostly for web browsing and office applications. I never expected it to be a performance monster. However, it has not stuttered or shown any problems or delays in handling these applications. The SSD is noticeably faster than the one in the LG Gram 14, and it shows.
I ran some benchmarks:
Geekbench 5 single-core: 1359
Geekbench 5 multi-core: 5070
Geekbench 5 Open CL: 18575
This is quite good. I was expecting this level of performance of the CPU (or perhaps a little higher, but it is OK), which is far better than my LG Gram 14 (around 850 in single-core and 2700-2900 in multi-core, but much lower lately for some reason). I never expected it to reach the heights of the M1 Macs, and I was also expecting it to perform on the low-end of 11th gen Core i7 processors (in order to keep battery life high and allow for less fans). The single-core performance exceeds that of my Core i7-9700K, which is a power-hungry desktop processor.
However, I was blown away by the Open CL score, as I was not expecting this from an integrated graphics card: my LG Gram 14 was around 4500 and the Dell XPS 9550 (with a dedicated video card) was in the range of 12000. The RTX 2070 on my desktop is still miles ahead, though, no comparison at all with this one, as it is about 5x faster.
Overall, this is not the beast to run applications that are very intensive on resources. It will never replace one of the brand-new MacBook Pros which are much better in terms of performance. However, this one here is perfectly fine, fast, and snappy, for any general tasks. Performance-wise, this is what I need from a laptop. And given its surprising GPU power, I can even run some games.
KEYBOARD. I was expecting the keyboard to be similar to the one in the LG Gram 14. The LG Gram 14 has a keyboard which is fine, and I ended up getting used to it. The 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with a TouchBar has a keyboard with very little travel, but which I like due to the clickness and sound. The 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display has a nice keyboard, but I always felt the keys had less travel than my previous ancient white 2008 MacBook (which was very satisfying to type on). The Dell XPS 9550 has an OK keyboard and, while many reviewers praise it, I never thought it was anything amazing.
I am positively surprised by the keyboard in the LG Gram 17. The keys are larger than the ones in the Gram 14, and I suppose as large as the ones in the butterfly keyboard of the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro (so, also larger than the ones in the Dell XPS 9550 and in the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display). It also has a better travel and more tactile feel. Overall, this keyboard feels better than the ones in the LG Gram 14, the MacBook Pro (both the TouchBar and the Retina Display), and the Dell XPS 9550. It is probably as satisfying to type at as in my old white MacBook (or even more, I would dare to say). Yes, the keys are very good indeed.
Some of the keys are not full-size, which is typical for a laptop. It has a Numpad, which honestly makes no difference for me. The position of the keys is similar to my LG Gram 14 (with some awkward choices in terms of layout), but some are positioned differently, which requires some getting used to. But overall a nice experience.
TRACKPAD. The trackpad is large, very large, and I think it has the same size as the one in my 13.3-inch MacBook Pro (although it does not look like it due to the size of the laptop). The trackpad is good and precise and nice to the touch. It is nicer to the touch than the smaller plasticky trackpad of the LG Gram 14 and more precise than the one in the Dell XPS 9550. It is indeed more comparable to the trackpad in the MacBook Pro (which, of course, is still unrivaled because of the tight integration between hardware and software; but the LG is not far behind either).
SOUND. It is supposed to be one of the negatives here due to the 2W speakers. I tested it side-by-side with the LG Gram 14 and the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with TouchBar. Honestly, they all sounded fine. Perhaps the MacBook Pro sounds a little better, but I also live in an apartment, and I cannot test the sound to the limit. I also do not have the best ear to accurately test sound. For watching YouTube videos and listening to music at a reasonably low volume, it is just OK. It will not be anywhere near the new MacBook Pros with Spatial Audio and a great cinematic experience.
WEBCAM. The 720p webcam is, of course, poor. It seems to capture light better than the LG Gram 14 or the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro, but only slightly. It is still in the same ballpark, with a tiny improvement perhaps.
BATTERY. It seems to be OK. LG claims it will last 19.5 hours. I have used it for some 4 hours at peak brightness and high performance and it has consumed 55% of the battery. I think it should be fine and it should last for at least a day of work if used adequately. However, I do not think I will get somewhere close to what LG is claiming, unless I am very economical in battery usage.
SOFTWARE. It came with Windows 10, with the option to upgrade it to Windows 11 right out of the box. I chose to update, and I am happy that I did. Windows 11 runs perfectly fine on the laptop.
