- Last time I picked a new laptop, I made a big mistake.
I accidentally chose one with such an unforgivable flaw
in the keyboard, that my constant typos
while I was making notes during Monday morning meeting
on the projector, became
a running joke throughout the company.
I actually ended up swapping it out for
a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, a notebook that I didn't really
have my eye on until Dell sponsored a video about it.
Now, I ended up not following up with why I chose it
because, I was worried that people were going
to say oh, well he only stuck with this one because
it was sponsored but, that wasn't the case.
I just tried it out because of a sponsored video
and really liked it.
Well, today LG is trying their hand at that same magic.
They sponsored this video checking out not one, not two.
Not three, but four versions
of their 2020 gram featuring Intel 10th Gen processors,
to see if I can be convinced to finally come back
to the gram, two long years after I left them
for not having Thunderbolt 3.
See how that goes for them.
(upbeat music)
Let's begin with the one that I am very unlikely
to settle on, but that could be very interesting
to you guys.
The gram 17.
Now this Poppy's claim to fame, is that it's got
the same super, super light build quality as the rest
of the gram family.
But, a gigantic display.
We go ahead and power it on unfortunately
they don't include Windows Hello facial recognition
with these but, they do have fingerprint sensors built
into the power buttons of all four of the models
that I'm looking at.
- Hi there, I'm Cortana and I'm here to help.
No, no, no, no, no, no there we go.
I see the 17 inch as you're still very portable I mean,
it's still only about three pounds
but, extremely capable work machine.
So it has a 1065G7 Core i7 processor, that will turbo up
to 3.9 gigahertz.
And of course, it's all about the massive display
which not only is bigger than the other grams,
but it's higher resolution as well.
So it's 2560 by 1600 which at this size, I think is just
an absolutely perfect middle ground 'cause 4k,
is kinda overkill and unnecessary and just adds extra strain
to the GPU and it's going to hurt your battery life.
Whereas 1080 at this size, does start to get
a little bit chunky.
What I really wanna know, is how they've done with respects
to the keyboard here.
One of the compromises you end up with with
the gram series, is that they make them lighter sort of
at the expense of the feel of the units.
They tend to have more flex than some other notebooks
and when you push down on the keyboard, there is
a little bit more give than you might expect from
a machine that's heavier.
But, it's one of those things
where you can't really eat your cake and have
it too you've gotta, what do you care about.
Something that's as light as possible in your backpack
or something that, you can pound on like this
when you're typing, right.
This flex extends to the trackpad
but, what I can't fault is the tracking.
They're using the windows precision drivers and overall even
on this large screen it feels accurate and precise.
Which are different things by the way.
I/O is pretty similar across the board LG crammed
a couple of USB Type-A's over on the right along
with a headphone microphone combo jack
and microSD card reader.
And then over on
the left hand side oh yes, yet another USB Type-A.
An HDMI and a thunderbolt 3 port along with
a barrel type charger.
Now it's something I want to try out, as part
of this experience 'cause I'm a big fan
of USB Type-C charging is whether they just don't include
a Type-C charger or whether
it doesn't support Type-C charging.
Good luck everybody, this is either gonna charge
the laptop or fry the laptop.
Well, okay so it does support Type-C charging,
that's a strange thing to not include them 'cause, Type-C
is freaking amazing.
You can carry around one charger, use it for your laptop.
Your phone, your Nintendo Switch whatever else you want.
I absolutely love it.
It changed my life while I was traveling.
Not that (chuckles) I travel anymore.
So we're looking at these more from like a
at home context.
Bottom line, the 17 is probably not the device for me,
it's more like the device for my wife.
I don't need the full number pad and I don't really need all
of this screen real estate for what I'm normally doing
on the go, whereas if I used Excel a lot
or did a lot of accounting
or that kind of, serious work as opposed to writing
which is what I typically do then, this would
be absolutely incredible.
Still got that gram lightness.
Let's move on for more like the contender though.
The core specs of the 15 are basically the same as the 17
this time around.
So this particular loadout has a one terabyte SSD, 16 gigs
of 3200 megahertz DDR for memory.
Just like the gram 17 we just looked at and, this
is pretty great, an 80 watt hour battery
that's rated for 17 hours of life.
Dang-it, Windows update.
One area where the 15 falls short compared to the 17
is, like comfort.
So, it does still have full keyboard and full number pad
but I would say this number pad, is more
for data entry in a pinch.
Whereas on the 17, it's nice and spread out and comfortable.
You've got that gigantic tall display.
This one goes for a more conventional 16
by nine aspect ratio.
So it's 1920 by 1080 resolution, meaning
that you're not gonna have quite as many rows in Excel
and actually it makes a big difference
if you wanna do something like video editing on the go.
Because having a little bit
of extra room gives you, one more track
in your video editor.
But, that doesn't matter that much for me because
this one feels more like my speed.
And I wouldn't mind seeing this trackpad increased
in size a little bit, but overall
it's both comfortable and quiet.
I've always liked LGs keyboard part of it is that I'm used
to it from daily driving a gram for well over a year
a while back.
But something LG has gotta watch out for is that,
they haven't really changed their keyboard much
and it's still good, but their competitors
have been playing catch up.
So I think that's something that I'd like to see them focus
on for the next wave.
Ooh, they sent over the 14 in a white finish.
That's actually really nice looking. (chuckles)
This is the machine for the road warriors
or just, anyone who doesn't like charging devices.
It's only 2.2 pounds so that's one kilogram.
It's 14 inches and even though it's only got
a 72 watt hour battery compared to the 80 watt hour
in the 15 inch, because of the smaller screen
and the power sipping Core i5 processor, it's actually rated
for 18 and a half rather than 17 hours of battery life.
It's still got USB three, full sized HDMI
and Thunderbolt 3.
This was what ultimately caused me to abandon my grand back
in the day was that the model I liked the size I wanted
to use, didn't have Thunderbolt 3 while
the other ones did.
That's gone they've all got Thunderbolt 3 now,
but we do lose one of the USB Type-A's over
on the other side.
In terms of keyboard flex, I would say somehow
this one actually isn't as good as the 15.
It seems like the 15 is the one that kinda got
the most attention with respect to balancing weight
and sort of, construction ruggedness.
But, if you want the absolute lightest
this is the gram for you.
Bringing us finally to the one
that I am actually considering.
Since I left the gram, they introduced the gram 2-in-1.
As you can see I already had this one open
because, I actually logged it into my Microsoft account
and started getting some of my app set up
on it and everything.
Because the truth is, I have grown quite accustomed
to being able to switch my laptop
into tablet mode over the years.
I actually started out with an ancient Dell XPS 12 2-in-1.
And it's the kinda thing that you don't use all the time.
In fact, I use it maybe 2% of the time.
But when I wanna use it, it is pretty freaking handy.
Now that's curious I wonder if it allows you
to use your, it does you can use fingerprint logs
from the back of the device.
So just like the other ones, you've got a full size keyboard
with no cardinal sins committed,
it's even got separated up and down arrow keys which is
a pretty big deal to me.
It's got Thunderbolt, it's got the fingerprint reader
and in terms of I/O, this is really, really nice.
This is one of the big things
that's bothered me about my XPS 13 2-in-1.
Right there, that full size HDMI.
In my job, I actually conduct a lot of meetings
and being able to plug into HDMI to the projector
and present when I'm talking to people, is
a pretty big deal without pulling a dongle out of my bag.
The one change on the right hand side compared to the 14
is that the lock button is better now,
or actually oh, wait what.
Is that a second?
Oh, interesting so this lock button gets disabled
when you're not in tablet mode.
Yes, I would like to switch to tablet mode.
This is quad-core CPU.
So I'm not getting an upgrade to six core there.
It's the same spec that we saw on the 15 and 17.
I'm setting up my gaming graphics card for gamers
and I actually realized there's a stylus pen in the box.
So this is a wakened stylus pen
with over 4000 pressure levels.
Uses what looks like a quadruple-A battery.
Got a couple of extra tips included there.
Let's go ahead and put it together.
This is the kinda thing I really
don't see myself using very much, wow!
(mumbles)
There's a little bit more flex than I would probably like
in the screen.
But, I think it's the kinda thing where, oh shoot I just hit
the power button.
I would be unlikely to notice if I was actually holding
the device in my hand like this.
I wanted to try handwriting. (chuckles)
Oh now way it got that, (chuckles) that's terrible.
Let's find out if LG has considered where to store
the stylus when not in use.
Unfortunately, it looks like they have not.
I mean it's not the kind of thing I would use anyway, I plan
to just leave it in the box but--
- [Brandon] You'll also lose it immediately.
- Yeah, I think it's something that all laptop makers
should consider, if you're gonna include a stylus
there should be somewhere to put it.
Gonna beat up some bots.
That's a little unfortunate from a gaming perspective.
It gets quite toasty on the left side of the keyboard here.
This is a perfect example of how even
an Ultrabook these days with the right accessories,
can totally be used for gaming.
Now I'd like to see everything.
You know phones, gaming machines, Ultrabooks.
I'd like to see everything moved to high refresh rate,
at least to 120 hertz.
So maybe that's something they can work on
for the next generation.
Oh, shoot I just got killed by a bot.
But, (chuckles) at least the performances there.
We're troubling up from 3 to 3.3, 3.5 gigahertz, not bad
for the CPU, definitely enough for
a decent gaming experience.
But as I mentioned before the 60 hertz refresh rate
of the panel, is gonna hold you back as far
as that goes.
At least it's an LG laptop, so it uses an LG IPS display.
So the image quality is really good if you're not after
those super high refresh rates.
For me though, ultimately this is a very, very I
would say tertiary use case for a device like
this for me.
So, it's gonna come down to the keyboard.
I'm for a side by side.
Fingerprint, unlock, super close.
XPS is probably a touch brighter actually, now
that I know that I look at it.
Keyboard flex, worse on the gram.
But the gram's got the bigger screen
and it manages to be lighter in spite of it I mean,
it's gram that's kind of their whole jam.
And one of the really big annoyances for me with
the XPS has been the I/O.
Not having an HDMI port, has actually bothered me more
than the lack of USB Type-A.
But the gram has both.
I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna switch to the gram
for a while and I'm gonna see if the XPS beckons me back.
'Cause, it does have its drawbacks.
But, it also has its advantages.
And it really is, pretty light considering the size.
So thanks to LG for sending over all these notebooks,
for sponsoring this video.
Thanks to you guys for watching.
If you guys are looking for another video to watch,
maybe actually check out the other video I did
when I chose my new laptop.
I didn't ultimately end up sticking with that one, but
it did include a lot of my thoughts and a lot of the things
that I look for, when selecting a device.