John Ratsey

I'll put an internal photo with the fans in my mini-review. I use HWiNFO to see a lot of performance data (below is an extract from the long list of values). The PL1 dynamic value changes immediately when I change the fan speed (note that I have not investigated the BIOS settings or installed any other power management tools. What I would like is a slightly lower normal fan speed setting with correspondingly lower power limit but I've not seen any option for fine-tuning fan speed in the advanced BIOS when previously looking at the options.

My 2025 gram 17 Pro (model 17Z90TP-G.AD88A1) won't be going back. It is altogether a much better thermally designed version of the gram 17 than the non-Pro machine which was a disappointment (see my post here) to the extent that I wonder if LG deliberately crippled it in order to encourage people to buy the more expensive version. I also discovered that this model has the 90Whr battery in spite of most specs saying it has a 77Whr battery. The original source of this mininformation is probably this LG global listing which states 77Whr in the summary spec but shows 90Whr in the detailed specs. I will start by providing this table showing the design power limits which programmed into the BIOS (I didn't realise the significance of this information until after I had sent the 17Z90T back so I've only got the power limits for the normal fan setting for that machine). The power limits reflect the designers' estimates of the heat disssipation of a notebook's cooling system for a particular maximum fan speed. However, it seems that some designers have done a better job than others as the 14Z90T out-performs the 17Z90T despite having lower power limits. The difference in the power limits between the 2024 gram Pro (17Z90SP) and the 2025 gram Pro (17Z90TP) is noticeable. The fans look better in the newer model. However, subjectively, I also feel that the newer model is also noisier on the normal and high fan settings although using my phone as a sound meter doesn't reveal a significant difference in sound volume. I think the newer model's fan noise is higher frequency. Where the 17Z90TP really scores, however, is the performance at the low fan setting where overall performance is similar to the 17Z90SP at the normal fan setting and the low fan is barely audible so I'm planning to forego some performance in favour of having a quieter computer. That performance hit depends on what is happening. The difference in the Passmark score is minimal while it's big for the Cinebench 23 multi-core test. Once I've sorted out my test results I'm going to put the details in a separate mini-review thread for the 2025 gram 17 Pro.

I've just pressed the buy button on a returned Gram 17 Pro at Amazon UK which was almost 25% off the current inflated price and slightly below the brand new price of two months ago. There was an even cheaper returned model a few weeks ago but I was away on holiday. I will be checking if this two fan gram 17 can match the performance and quietness of my gram 14 with the same 255H CPU. The single fan gram 17 failed this test and was returned to LG (a slow process but I got my money back).

I didn't notice a significant difference in display quality between the IPS panel on my 17" 2024 gram Pro and the 15.5" OLED panel on the LG gram Superslim. I will be watching the prices of the Panther Lake models with interest. I feel that notebook manufacturers will have to absorb part of the higher RAM cost if they want to sell the 2026 products. For most users the improvements offered by the new models aren't sufficient to pay a big price premium.

You have been very adventurous with your changing of the advanced BIOS setting than I would consider doing. Amazon UK has followed LG UK with big price increases on the 2025 models but I'm waiting to see if one which is returned is offered at a tempting discount.

Regarding your original starting question for this thread about the LG My gram software, I've not yet noticed any significant difference in power usage when My gram's battery saving mode is enabled. There would need to be long tests under controlled conditions to see if there is any overall difference and also figure out whether LG has done more than is offered by the standard Windows power options. I get the impression that the Intel Arrow Lake / Lunar Lake package (with some parts made by TSMC) provides a welcome improvement in power efficiency under light usage conditions. Overall, I'm not impressed by the user interface of the My gram software which brings all the LG controls into one place.

This is something I would like to be able to do if I change computer. Do you have any software with a single licence which needed to be transferred? If so, did you release the licence before moving the SSD and then reapply? The need to do this probably depends on what hardware fingerprint the licence system uses. How much fan noise are you getting at 40W? I want good performance with minimal noise. LG refunded my money for the Arrow Lake gram 17 (not Pro version) and I'm wondering what to do next. (i) Get the gram 17 Pro if the price is right; or (ii) get the Nvidia version which is known to have a better cooling system (but this is likely to have a substantial price premium); or (iii) get another non-Pro gram 17 if at a good price and modify the air vents for the fan plus the power limits; or (iv) wait for the Panther Lake models to first appear and then be discounted. LG seem to have had some muddled thinking while configuring for both Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake. I'm currently away from home at the moment so thinking and watching the prices.

This is the 14" gram so no room for two fans. The dynamic power limits are changed in response to the chosen fan noise setting. I'm a little puzzled why it showed 23W for the PL1 dynamic limit when I captured that dature because it's currently showing only 12W for the normal fan setting and 28W for the high fan setting.

As noted elsewhere, I have been impressed by the overall performance and power efficiency of my Arrow Lake gram 14 and was therefore disappointed by the 17" version of what should be the same hardware couldn't match the performance while making more fan noise. The gram 14T's power limits for the normal fan setting are shown below. These aren't changed when using the battery.

I wonder what the fan noise is like.

I'm a little confused by that video. At about 5 minutes it shows an internal photo labelled 16Z90U with two fans. Later, at about 11 minutes, there is a thermal image which is typical of the one fan configuration. Which version was used for the benchmark testing?

My gram 14Z90T has shown that it's possible to get good performance with one fan and no excessive noise. It's unclear whether that is by accident or careful design but my quick look at a gram 17Z90T revealed that is easy to get things wrong. One mystery is why this Lunar Lake non-Pro gram 16 has two fans but was quite noisy when stressed. Are different teams not talking to each other or is there deliberate experimenting?

The memory manufacturers won't suffer so much if the AI bubble bursts because they are avoiding ramping up production (which takes several years) in response to the current high demand. Their profits will suffer if there's a downturn but not as badly as if they were heavily investing in more production. They've been there before.

I've just checked (advanced BIOS is still Shift+Ctrl+Alt+F7) and the power limits are locked. It's possible that changing some other setting might unlock them. There are also custom TDP options but I'm not going to try to understand them.

I received the Arrow LakeGram 17 on Monday, tested it for a day then reset Windows, put it back in its box and applied to return it (as I'm entitled to do in UK) but there's no response from LG yet. As you anticipated, it failed to meet my expectations being both slower and noisier than my gram 14 with the same internal hardware. I spent some time trying to figure out why the smaller notebook perfoms better than the bigger one. I've put my findings in the attached note (with a copy in the box with the gram 17). The key points are (i) the gram 14 has a higher power limit than the gram 17 (I wonder if LG has used the same BIOS for both Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake) and (ii) the gram 17 has about 2/3rds of the open vent area adjacent to the fan compared to the gram 14 which could well be reducing the fan effectiveness. Strangely, for what is effectively the same hardware platform, the 14 has an AMI BIOS and the 17 has a Phoenix BIOS. I'm trying to resist the temptation to try the gram 17 Pro on the basis that while it should have better cooling, the same sub-optimal BIOS settings will still apply. Gram 17T observations.pdf

Thanks for the video links. I can see from the first video that the fans are thin but metal bodies are probably thinner than plastic which leaves more room for the fan blades within the overall thickness. Out of curiosity I measured the fans in my 2024 gram 17 Pro and the 2025 gram 14 and these were about 5mm and 5.75mm in overall thickness. There's also a demonstration of the scratch resistance of the Aerominim material. The colour is clearly in the material itself and not a layer of paint. The second video includes, at approx 2 min 25 s, a comparison of the display stiffness between the 2025 and 2026 models.

Thanks for the link. That is an impressive selection of models. AMD seems to be an option across the new product range (worries about Intel producing sufficient Panther Lake parts?). There are plenty of 16Z90U (Intel) and 16Z95U (AMD) but, so far, zero 2026 17" models with more 17Z90TR (2025 models with NVIDIA graphics) still in the pipeline. Are they clogging up the 17" production line?

LG appears to be adding more AMD versions. There's another press report here which seems better than many of the others and states that the "gram Books" have AMD CPUs. There are noticeable reflections on the displays of some notebooks on the photos in that report, more than I would expect for an anti-glare panel. I wonder who likes white or silver notebooks? They don't work well with backlit keyboards. The bronze version, however, looks nice.

LG's press announcement prior to CES 2026 focussed on a new lightweight material they have called Aerominum to achieve "a more portable, durable and premium design", "This innovative material reduces the laptop’s weight while reinforcing its structural strength." Initially, notebooks with this material will only be sold in the North American market. See also https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lgs-aerominum-gram-pro-laptops-feel-impossibly-light-and-strong-200317743.html. I wonder if the new material is less expensive than magnesium. The press release and CES only included two models: The 17Z90UR with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 GPU and the 16Z90U with a 2880 x 1800 OLED display (will that be the display sold in this 2025 model or something different?). We can expect that other versions will also be refreshed with Panther Lake CPUs. Searching the internet for "1LG 6Z90U" or "LG 17Z90U" doesn't reveal many other clues about the 2026 models. The only link which showed up is this.

I agree that higher display resolution increases the GPU workload. For laptop computers normally used at arm's length, display resolution is sensibly dependent on display size. Phones and tablets tend to be held much closer. The power used during surfing the internet will depend a lot on the number of browser tabs open, many of which may have unwanted background activity. Give Lunar Lake a bit more workload and the power efficiency is similar to Arrow Lake.

1. I'll start a separate thread for the 2026 models. We don't want to confuse the AI bots! 2. There's a big disparity in pricing between the 16GB and 32GB 2025 grams, at least in the UK. I'm happy to have 16GB for travel but not as my desktop substitute. Is this difference already reflecting the rise in RAM prices? I've just ordered one of the 32GB Arrow Lake gram 17s direct from LG UK as it seemed wrong to have my travel notebook faster and quieter than my big machine. I decided to not pay the extra for the Pro 17 with its two fans on the basis that if the 14" Arrow Lake with one fan can be fast and quiet then a 17" with one fan should also be able to achieve those objectives. The basic gram 17 is thicker than the Pro 17 which may result in a thicker fan and a bit more keyboard travel. I'll find out within a few days.

Now that I've been able to test the 14" gram with Arrow Lake I would suggest you add the models with that CPU to your watch list. It's impressively frugal with power under light load while also capable of good performance when needed. It can match my 2024 gram 17 Pro in speed but with less fan noise. I'm now thinking about upgrading to a 2025 gram 17. If rumours are correct the 2026 models may be more expensive as AI training is pushing up demand (and hence prices) for RAM.

And now to the big question. How is the performance of the 14Z90T with the Arrow Lake CPU? I used Cinebench as I have results for four recent gram notebooks. Cinebench 23 runs the tests for a minimum of 10 minutes which reveals how well heat management affects the performance.The highest scores indicate a cooler CPU and/or better cooling. It can be seen that the 14Z90T is the fastest of the four notebooks for single core applications, although the difference between all four isn't large. For multi-core loads the 14Z90T is also the leader when the "normal" fan setting is used and there's a close call with this notebook and the dual fan 17Z90SP when the "high" fan setting is used. I also noticed that the14Z90T's fan noise is less than those in the 17Z90SP. I would presume that putting the Arrow Lake CPU into a dual fan chassis would enable even higher multi-core performance. I also think that the Cinebench Open GL test is a rough indicator of the GPU performance where the 255H CPU scores almost double the 155H part. The other performance indicator of interest to me is how quickly the 255H CPU eats the battery. I used my standard test of playing an MP4 video. That CPU is very frugal: Using 17% of the battery in 6 hours represents a potential run time of over 30 hours! It's not obvious on the graph but the first 3 hours were at about 70% display brightness which I then increased to 80%. In comparison, an 8 hour test on the 14Z90RU used 35% of the battery which gives a run time in excess of 20 hours. Roughly, the 255H CPU uses 2/3rd of the power of the 1334U under light load conditions.

I agree that there is room internally and externally. Perhaps LG think that users no longer use micro SD cards. I now rarely use a digital camera as the phone has taken over as the primary photography device and the phone has plenty of internal storage from where images can be moved using either a cable or LG gram Link. Nonetheless, there's the apparent inconsistency that the cheaper of the 14" grams made in 2025 has the slot and the more expensive gram doesn't. Perhaps the older Intel CPUs were sufficiently cheap that LG decided to include other features to help sell the notebooks with them in.

More observations: The 14Z90T comes with LG software called "My gram" instead of the LG Smart Assistant on the 14Z90RU or my 2024 Gram Pro. "My gram" is a step or two backwards in terms of providing easy user access to features such as fan settings and battery management (Fn+F7 also steps through the fan settings). The home page of "My Gram" is dominated by some coloured graphics which look as they have escaped from some childrens' game while the text on the PC maintenance pages isn't friendly to anyone with aging eyes. I thought the folder for LG Smart Assistant was bloated as it takes up about 1/2GB but "My gram" is nearly double that! I have to admit. however, that I hadn't tried the LG gram Link software until I was setting up the 14Z90T. I've now realised that it is an easy way of moving files between phone and computer. Both the 14Z90T and the 14Z90RU have the same good 1920 x 1200 LGD06EC display. The 14Z90T doesn't have a micro-SD card reader, the RU does. Another subtle difference between the two models is that the T has a smaller dent at the front of the chassis which makes opening the display more difficult than the RU with its bigger dent. Perhaps 2026 will reveal which is LG's preference going forwards. It's time to look at the basic hardware. For some reason, the 14Z90T has the Intel AX211 WiFi / Bluetooth chip instead of the newer BE201 chip. Not that most users have a desparate need for whatever extra the newer chip offers. In other respects it's an Arrow Lake machine with the Intel Ultra 7 255H CPU. This raises the question of why did LG put the 28W CPU into the smallest of the 2025 gram family instead of the lower-rated Lunar Lake CPU? Was availability a factor? The CPU is supported by 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM which is both faster than the DDR4 RAM in the 14Z90RU but also the DDR5 RAM in my gram 17 Pro.