Hey, how's it going Dave2D here, so in late 2015 I did a review of the 14 inch LG
Gram. It was a thin and light ultrabook
But it had a few too many compromises for me to just openly recommend it to everyone. This is the 15 inch version
It's been updated for 2017 it uses their magnesium carbon nanotube material again a super Lightweight metal alloy
But they've done a respectable job with the build on the 15-inch. The top deck doesn't have much flex for how light the device is
The bottom panel also is much better than I expected
The hinge is well made and it's actually one hand openable despite being so thin, it's pretty cool
The screen and top panel still have more flex than I'd like but unless you're really rough on this device
You'll be fine. If you're worried
then just get a sleeve. Now the reason why they go with this magnesium alloy is so that they can make this laptop
Extremely light. It's 2.4 pounds, so that's just barely over a kilogram
And it starts at $1200 depending on specs so by comparison when you take an equally spec'ed XPS 13
That's 2.7 pounds for a 13.3 inch screen the LG
Gram is 2.4 pounds with a 15.6 inch screen
It has a lighter weight with a significantly bigger screen, and when you hold it. It's awesome
It's incredibly light and easy to carry around
It doesn't feel like an indestructible tank, but if you're trying to get to this weight
There's not much more you can do.
The port selection is pretty good for a device like this
There's a Micro SD slot, Audio jack, a bunch of USB-A Ports HDMI and one USB-C Port
It doesn't support Thunderbolt 3, but they've included an ethernet dongle
If you want to get inside
It's actually quite difficult to open up. You have to remove some rubber feet
Some hinge covers, and then pry the bottom panel off it can be done though inside
you'll see a single slot of DDR4 RAM, my unit has 16 gigs
The Storage uses a sata interface the speeds are actually very fast for Sata3, but it's still limited its
No nVme
The battery down here has been upgraded to 60 Whrs, a massive improvement over 35 Whrs of the older Model
And this battery was one of the biggest complaints about the previous generation
And LG listened, and they made it significantly better so right now on this model
I'm able to comfortably get eight hours of regular use, with the screen at 250 Nits
And this is just like regular work if you want to watch movies or if you want to lower the screen brightness
You'll get longer battery life especially with the KabyLake chip
But the important thing is that you can go through a full day of use without bringing your charger around
Open the screen you can see that the bezels are really thin
It rivals the thin bezels of the XPS line from Dell
not as thin
But close. The display is a 1080p IPS panel, glossy finish
And it's a touchscreen
It gets reasonably bright. Bright enough for any kind of indoor work
The viewing angles and the color gamut are also, not bad
The Webcam is located on the bottom hinge because of the bezels, so you have that upward camera angle again.
The keyboard is back with this year that's another big thing that LG address the main keyboard area is pretty comfortable to use the keys only
Have 1.1 millimeters of travel. Not a lot, but they feel responsive enough, and it's roomy
There's a number pad on the right, but the keys there feel cramped to me. I don't ever use those keys
So I'm not the best judge of them
But if you need a number pad for work
This has one of them. The trackpad is ok, for the most part tracking is accurate and the click mechanism feels good
It uses Elan drivers
I wish it was using Windows precision drivers
But these ones aren't bad. In terms of performance this unit is running a KabyLake i7 with the HD 620
It's a very snappy system when doing work, browsing the web or watching videos.
Gaming performance isn't amazing, this isn't a device for pro-gamers
But the HD 620 can get playable frame rates in lighter games on low settings. If you want to edit videos
I'd stick with 1080p footage. 4K is going to be choppy and definitely put your footage on an external drive
The thermals are respectable this time. It obviously gets warm when you push it hard
But nothing uncomfortable. The fans don't come on often and even when they do
They're still pretty quiet, and when I run heavier benchmarks on this thing there is CPU
Throttling with not bad considering the form factor and when I run the stress test from 3Dmark it passes
Which is really weird to see on an ultra-light laptop. The speakers are good. They don't sound amazing in terms of audio quality
I mean, they are small ultrabook speaker(s)
But they're clear enough and they position them in a way to actually fire outwards toward the sides so that the stereo effect is really
Pronounced on the system, so that's the 15-inch Gram, and I kind of find it weird that more companies
Don't make devices like this. I mean you can find 13-inch thin and light ultrabooks everywhere
There's like an army of them to choose from. If you're looking for something with a bigger screen
this is one of very few. With the gram
You're getting a magnesium alloy casing with decent build quality for its weight. The 15 inch touchscreen is above average
The brightness, color accuracy and the viewing angles are all pretty good, but it's not perfect
The keyboard is comfortable to use and the backlighting is a very welcome addition this year.
The trackpad is nice to use, there's nothing
I dislike about it. The KabyLake CPU and HD
620 are great performers for light to moderate tasks and are well-cooled.
The ram and the storage are replaceable if need be but it's not
Easy to get in there. And then powering this device is a 60 watt hour battery that will comfortably get you 8 hours of real
usage so the 2017 LG Gram. Much improved. Significantly better battery life
That's the big one for me. The KabyLake upgrade is nice. The backlit keyboard is nice
I mean some people are just gonna love those things but for me the extended battery life is just..that brings his laptop
From a cool kind of niche product to something that I would
openly recommend for anyone who's looking for something that's thin and light
with a big screen. That's the end of this video
Hope you guys enjoyed it, thumbs if you liked, subs if you loved it, see you guys next time
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