Our View
This is one of the best laptops for content creators. It supports Thunderbolt 3 but its not good for a gaming setup.In Favour |
Against |
| Very light weight | Thermal throttling with external GPU |
| Thunderbolt 3 with 4 lanes of PCIe support | USB-C charger not included |
| Good trackpad | Weak speakers |
| Good fingerprint senson location | Average screen brightness |
| MIL standard 810g certification | Difficult internal access |
| Best Pricing | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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$1,839 | |
|
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$1,999 | |
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$1,999 | |
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$1,999 | |
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$1,839 | |
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$1,839 | |
LG gram is a device that gets updated pretty frequently. The last update was in December of 2017. This particular update has been one of the more substantial ones. Actually changed quite a bit of the hardware.
This one is a 15 inch laptop and is one of the most unique laptops that LG makes because they are sticking the U processor into a large screen chassis which is really useful for a lot of people. People that want a bigger screen without paying for really expensive processors. This is a really good choice for them.
Design and specifications
The chassis is pretty much the exact same chassis from the previous generations but it now has the new MIL standard 810g certification and it look like a serious business but I just don't think that particular specification is very stringent. There's a lot of products out there that can get that certification because it's not that hard.I don't wanna say that this isn't a well built laptop. It is, considering its weight but keep in mind that its main advantage is that it's really light weight laptop. It feels impossibly light, especially for something with the 15 inch screen but they have to use weaker materials to reach that weight.
To get into this laptop is very difficult. Its the removal of 8 screws but you got to remove a bunch of rubber feet that don't easily go back on because it's using double-sided tape. There's just a lot of stuff you have to do to get into this laptop. It's possible but you have to be careful, not to break any of the tabs.
The speakers are upgraded but they sound pretty much exactly the same as the previous generation. A little bit louder but the sound quality is still not good. There's plenty of room for bigger and better speakers but we're are stuck with some pretty weak speakers
The keyboard also hasn't changed. Its not a great keyboard. Its decent but its not the best keyboard out there for an ultraBook. Its got good spacing, backlighting and a good layout but the key mechanism is a little bit softer.
This laptop uses a barrel plug to charge this thing up and they include a barrel plug AC adapter but I feel like at this price point they should include a USB-C charger because it does support USB-C charging.
The last thing that hasn't changed from the previous generation is the screen. Its a 1080p touch panel, decent color accuracy. Its peak brightness is 290 nits. I wish it was brighter. Its not that as dim but in 2018 we''re just seeing a lot more Ultrabooks coming out with brighter and better screens. This one still good but there are better displays at this price point.
The trackpad has changed from the previous generation. It always had a decent feeling surface with a good mechanism but it now uses windows precision drivers so the tracking and the gestures are just more accurate.
The webcam has been moved. It's always been on the bottom, right along the hinge. Now it's on the top of the panel. The image quality is not amazing but it's a respectable webcam for people that need it.
A nice little refresh they did was to change location of the fingerprint sensor. Its now on the power button not on the top of the trackpad anymore.
The biggest change from the previous generation is the inclusion of a Thunderbolt 3 port So now this laptop has Thunderbolt 3 support.
This laptop now has a 72 watt hour battery which is pretty large for an Ultrabook and it lasts for almost 9 hours on a single charge. That's with the screen at 250 nits. If you wandering that why is the battery life isn't longer considering how big the battery is? Its simply because it's a bigger screen. 15 inch screen needs more juice to run. LG claims of 16.5 hours of the website uses pretty unrealistic benchmark so take that number with a grain of salt.
This is the device that uses an eighth generation U processor and if you're doing regular stuff that you would earn Ultrabook, its great. Its got great multi-core performance. Its a good laptop.
Specification Table
| Display | 15.6 inches FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS LCD |
| Processor | 8th Gen. Intel® Core™ i7-8550U 1.80GHz/4.00GHz |
| RAM | 16GB DDR4 2400MHz - 8 GB x 2 |
| Hard Drive | 1TB (512GB x 2) M.2 SSD (Solid State Drive) |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel UHD Graphics 620 |
| Wireless Type | 802.11 A/C (2X2), Bluetooth 4.1 and LAN 10/100 or Gigabit |
| Item Weight | 2.41 lbs (1095g) |
| Product Dimensions | 14.1 x 9.0"x 0.7 inches |
| Battery | 72Wh (Up to 16.5 hrs) |
| Ports | HDMI (Standard)
USB 3.0 Type-C Thunderbolt 3
Micro-SD
3 x USB 3.0
Headphone Out
RJ45 Ethernet
DC-In |
| Price | $1,600-$2,000 |
Main issue
The problem comes when you want to play games on this thing. The default card isn't very good. Its a UHD 620 which isn't great for playing games.
But because thing thing has a Thunderbolt 3 port, when you connects an external GPU to this thing. The performance is disappointing.
So this is the problem. This laptop was not designed for the CPU to run at full tilt for extended periods of time. When you plugin an external GPU to this thing, you hope for some boost in performance but you'll got some serious throttling to the point where it'll just unusable as a gaming setup.
The reason is the single fan. It's fine for an Ultrabook for Ultrabook things but it's not if you're going to be using the Thunderbolt 3 port.
If you look at other devices like the Razer Blade Stealth that has 2 fans, XPS 13 that has 2 fans, even the HP ENVY which doesn't have great thermals, has 2 fans. Pretty much every Ultrabook that has a Thunderbolt 3 port that can connect to an external GPU has 2 fans because when you're playing games on a thermally throat CPU, it's terrible.
LG just slapped the Thunderbolt 3 port on this machine just so they could say they had one but they didn't spend the time to do it properly. They didn't improve the thermals and its bit of a shame because this thing's got a lot of good hardware if the thermal solution was better.
Conclusion
This laptop got a lot of good hardware if the thermal solution was better like it's got 16 GB RAM, 2 NVMe drives and its got 4 lanes of PCIe support on that Thunderbolt 3 port. Its just not a great gaming setup because of the thermal solution.
So this laptop is for you or not is depending on what you want to use this laptop for. If you want to use it for Ultrabook stuff, it's awesome. If you want to use it for content creation, its great. The fan is quite and the thermals are good. Its a great laptop for productivity. A little over priced but its great.
If you're looking to pick this thing up and connecting it to an external GPU for playing games and stuff like that, this is not a great device for that.
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