Although the LG Gram 16 (2022) is expensive, it does come with a 16-inch +View monitor, which normally costs £299.98. This pairing cannot currently be broken at the point of purchase. The laptop’s screen’s 2,560-by-1,600 resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio are exactly matched by the +View monitor, and we found working with both together to be simple. The Dell XPS 17 or the LG Gram 17 are essentially your only choices if you want a Windows laptop with the biggest screen possible. Between the two, the calculus is fairly simple. Choose the XPS if power is your top priority; the Gram if portability is your top need.
LG Gram 16 laptop review: Design
While the lid of the Gram 16 is made of plastic, the body is composed of magnesium. Although it’s fantastic for weight loss, it’s not so good for twisting resistance. When you grab the sides and exert significant torque, the base will flex and creak and the lid will deform dangerously. Of course, while reviewers engage in such behavior, owners typically do not. Additionally, pressing the middle of the keyboard causes a definite degree of flex. Overall, there is little evidence to suggest that the Gram 16 won’t withstand the rigors of daily use, despite the flexing. In fact, it has passed MIL-STD 810G testing for resistance to shock, extremely high or low temperatures, dust, and — somewhat esoterically — salt fog intrusion. With an HDMI 2.1 video output, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 connections, two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, a 3.5mm audio socket, a microSD card reader, and a Kensington lock slot, LG should be commended for providing the Gram 16 with a full complement of ports. The dependable Intel AX211 card, which supports the most recent Wi-Fi 6E standard and Bluetooth 5.1, provides wireless communications. Intel’s Evo certification is applied to the entire system. The delicate bottom panel needs to be removed carefully in order to reach the laptop’s internals. Before you can remove the screws, you must pry off two rubber feet and four glued-on covers. After carefully peeling off the panel, you may remove the screws. Once inside, you can add an additional M.2 2280 SSD, but other than that, everything is fixed. I believe a little access hatch would have been an advantageous feature given how delicate you need to be to remove the back.
Keyboard and touchpad
The Gram 16 has a full-size keyboard with appropriately spaced and sized keys, a thinner NumPad area, and a roomy glass clickpad. The extra right column of keys with the + and additional Enter key found on the Gram 17 is absent from the NumPad region. Not a major concern to me, but we don’t use NumPad and have had others gripe about it, so maybe it’s important to you. For this generation, LG altered the fonts they were using, and we think the smaller text is more aesthetically pleasing. This keyboard still has a limited stroke depth and generally harsher feedback than we remember from the 2021 Gram, but it still types similarly to the majority of other Ultrabook keyboards. Even though it’s a little noisier than the typical Ultrabook implementation, it makes for a good typer if you get used to it. The keyboard deck feels a little bit more sturdy than we remember from the 2021 Gram 16-inch, though you might still notice some chassis flex, especially when hitting the keys in the middle of the deck. Although we can’t compare the two side by side, LG might have slightly increased the stiffness of the chassis this iteration. White LEDs that are sufficiently bright and uniformly distributed backlight the keys. The pickier among you might find it bothersome because quite an amount of light leaks out from under some of the larger keycaps (Shift, Space, Enter), just like on the Gram 17 sample. Although it’s not as severe as on other laptops, we felt it necessary to note it with such a high-end design. The big, smooth glass surface with Precision drivers that serves as the clickpad for this series is remarkably similar to the one in the LG Gram 17 model. During our time using the laptop, it operated without a hitch. We should point out that this is positioned in the middle of the laptop’s chassis rather than to the left of the Space key, which we know some of you will find to be a nice touch. you can read our article on LG Gram 16 laptop review.
Display
The LG Gram 16’s huge 16-inch screen is one of its greatest qualities. With so many windows open at once, multitasking is made simpler by the large panel, which also greatly accelerated our work flow. When watching TV shows on Netflix and other services, we also appreciated it. LG isn’t only focusing on size, either; it also chose a super-sharp 2560 x 1600 resolution, which gives images and videos more clarity than a typical 1080p laptop screen. For viewing web pages and spreadsheets, the 16:10 aspect ratio also guarantees plenty of vertical space. We looked at these screen specifications with a colorimeter and were really impressed. A remarkable contrast of 1297:1 is achieved by having an above-average brightness and a respectable ability to reveal deep blacks. Although OLED laptops, like the Dell XPS 13 OLED and Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED, have more brilliant displays, this is still a perfectly acceptable outcome for high-quality video streaming. The Gram’s color coverage, which received scores of 99.8% for sRGB, 84% for Adobe RGB, and 97% for DCI-P3, further impressed us. This indicates that the LG Gram 16 can produce a wide range of colors, guaranteeing that images and movies displayed on screen are accurate. This is crucial for professionals that edit with color sensitivity. Although the LG Gram lacks more opulent features such a touchscreen, 60Hz refresh rate, and OLED technology, we believe it would be unjust to demand these features at this price point. It’s really lovely to see LG get the fundamentals right and provide a gorgeously large, colorful, and sharp display.
LG Gram 16 laptop review: Audio
A Realtek chip handles audio, while a bundled programme makes use of DTS:X Ultra technology. The two speakers are downward firing because they are mounted on the laptop’s base. Without a separate subwoofer like on the Apple MacBook Pro, there are only two of them. There is just so much you can do in a compact enclosure; defying the laws of physics isn’t one of them. LG claims that the bigger speaker box should deliver “clear sound” and “heavier bass.” The audience and the music being played have a significant impact on how well the sound is performed, as expected. While it was clear and free of the kind of audio artefact you’d get from speakers on cheap computers, the majestic “Toccata et fugue en ré mineur” and other recordings we tried lacked the depth and presence of more audiophile-friendly machines.
Graphics
As can be seen above, both in terms of compute and graphical performance, the LG Gram 16’s lightweight CPU falls short of similarly spec’d notebooks like the Huawei MateBook 16s (2022) outfitted with the regular i7-12700H. Results really more closely resemble those of the $899/£949 Samsung Galaxy Book 2 360 with its i5-1235U and 8GB of RAM. But they are just numbers; the Gram 16 performs quickly and accurately in actual use. It starts up quickly from a cold start and can run numerous apps simultaneously on the screen, including Chrome, Slack, and Microsoft Word. It is Intel Evo approved for a reason, after all. But when it comes to processing-intensive activities like gaming and video editing, it starts to struggle, and the shockingly audible fans start to turn on quite rapidly. In some places, you can get a variant that has an external RTX 2060 GPU, but it kind of negates the point of a lightweight laptop.
Performance
Our review edition of the LG Gram 2022 includes the Intel Core i7-1260P, which is part of Intel’s latest 12th Gen Intel Core processor upgrade. That chip is incredibly quick for productivity tasks; in fact, according to our benchmark results, it is even faster than the M1 chip found inside the MacBook Air. Even though it uses the same chip as the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 2, there are indications of possible throttling. But as long as you want to stay to daily productivity workloads, that shouldn’t be a problem. The integrated graphics capability of the Intel processor is likewise outstanding. Although you won’t be able to play contemporary games at their highest graphics settings, you can still create content and play games for fun. However, competing productivity laptops with greater performance in this area can be found due to the throttling difficulties. The LG Gram 16 truly shines in one area: SSD performance. During testing, it reached read rates of 6514 MB/s and write speeds of 4898 MB/s. The Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 2 is one of the other laptops we just evaluated, and this one is twice as quick. This indicates that the Gram can swiftly install and load files onto the actual drive. This is helpful for starting up and launching your favorite downloaded programmes, among other things. The 512GB standard storage capacity is likewise respectable, and there is also the choice of the larger 1TB SSD.
Battery life
In our YouTube battery test, the LG Gram 16 comes in first place with a time of slightly over 9h40m. We play a 20-hour countdown video as a reminder while Wi-Fi is turned on, the brightness is set at maximum, and all power-saving features are disabled. Although that is an extreme example, it does indicate that the laptop will perform much better in actual circumstances. also you can learn our article on LG Gram 16 laptop review. With its screen set to 150 nits of brightness and in aeroplane mode, LG claims 13.5 hours of video playback using Bapco’s MobileMark 18 benchmark and an astounding 22.5 hours. Although the Evo platform helps to keep power demands low, the 16-inch display does require a somewhat significant amount of power. Its 80 Whr battery is greater than what you’d find on comparable notebooks. The Honor MagicBook Pro (AMD), which also has a 16-inch display, consumes 0.138Whr per minute, which is more than what the LG Gram 16 does (0.13Whr per minute). In other words, the LG Gram 16 would have an additional 35 minutes of battery life if it had the same power efficiency as its competitor. A 65W Type-C Power Delivery adapter in the form of a vintage power brick powers the battery. Notably, LG stated that despite having identical specifications, the LG Gram 17’s battery life will be shorter than the LG Gram 16’s. Despite having the same number of pixels, expanding the screen by an additional inch does have a detrimental effect.
LG Gram 16 laptop review: Heat
On this typical Gram 16, fresh air enters through the intake grill on the bottom of the computer. In an effort to direct air over the CPU, into the fan, and finally out through the exhaust grill, that intake grill is only partially open over the CPU and is covered over the fan and the heatpipe. The Gram’s processor operated at 92 degrees in a multi-core test, and its P-Cores reached 91 degrees in a single-core benchmark. These are fairly high for a low-power Core i7 processor and help to explain the energetic throttling of this thin, light laptop. However, it’s impressive how little of that heat actually reached the external panels of the Gram, ensuring that it is always comfortable to use.
Configuration options
The LG Gram 16 (2022) is bundled with a complimentary 16-inch USB-C portable display, the Plus View, that has a suggested retail price of $299.99 and is available until the end of July 2022. The model that was supplied to us has a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD and sells for £1549.98. Other alternatives include a Core i5 CPU, 512GB SSD, 8GB or 32GB of RAM, and a colour selection between silver aluminium and obsidian black. A 2-in-1 LG Gram 16 is also anticipated to be released later this year, and Windows 11 Pro is also available as a premium upgrade.
Conclusion
Anyone looking for a stylish, professional Windows 11 laptop will be interested in the LG Gram 16, which checks a number of performance, battery life, and build quality boxes. Even while the price is higher than some individuals would want to spend on their next laptop update, we believe LG provides good value for the money. The main selling point in this case is the union of a sizable 16-inch screen with a remarkably light weight. You may combine the best of both worlds, just like on earlier LG Gram laptops. It’s quite an engineering accomplishment in that aspect, but given the 16-inch screen, there isn’t much LG can do about the size, so you’ll still need a sizable bag for it.
