John Ratsey

The card reader doesn't show up in device manager as a storage drive unless a card is inserted and recognised (the same applies to the USB ports). I suspect that the problem is a bad/dirty contact which prevents the card from being recognised. You could try cleaning the contacts with a suitably sized piece of thin cardboard soaked in isopropyl alcohol pushed in and out of the slot. I admire your bravery in changing the keyboard. At least it was replaceable. I recall that some years the Samsung keyboards were bonded to the back of the palmrest and not built for replacement. Both SSDs (WD) in my 17Z90Q show up as 4x in HWiNFO. Samsung make a Galaxy Book 3 Pro with 16" screen. It might be worth investigating when you LG suffers too much from the hard working life you have given it. My Gram 17 has an easy life in comparison and rarely moves from my desk.

The RTX version is the Gram Pro which has an Nvidia RTX GPU and dual fans to provide better cooling. I would like the latter even though there's a small weight penalty but so far this version of the Gram 17 hasn't been on sale in the UK.

I've just tested my Gram 17 and the microSD card reader shows up as a storage drive but only after I've inserted a card. Consequently, a dirty contact which stops a card from being recognised would prevent the reader from showing up as a storage drive. This is much more plausible than a hardware failure. Contacts are always one of the troublespots in electronics. How to clean it? I would start by trying to blast the slot with some canned air. The next step would be to make a small piece of good quality cardboard with a thickness to suit the slot and cut to a suitable width cut but longer than a micro SD card. I would then wet the bottom side of this card with some Isopropyl alcohol and jiggle it in and out of the slot to try to wipe off any dirt. IIRC the ports on the right side of the computer are on a daughter board connected to the mainboard by a ribbon cable so disconnecting / reconnecting that cable is another troubleshooting option.

I've just treated my Gram 17 to a storage upgrade. It already had 2 x 2TB SSDs but photos and videos gobble space. The slower of these SSDs (WD SN770) has now been replaced by a 4TB Crucial P3+. It's not the fastest 4TB SSD but fine for bulk storage and is very reasonably priced. 4TB was slightly less expensive than 2TB 15 month ago.

I would add that if the computer's power management offers a mode to limit the maximum charge level to less than 100% then use it to reduce battery wear. 80% is a good compromise.

Yes, model codes ending with R indicate the current (2023) versions. The glossy screen is OK until you've seen the non-glare version. Personally, the improvement which would have me reaching for my credit card is a better cooling system but there's no sign of a UK version. I hope LG will sweep aside the sub-3lb weight target in future and give all the 17" models better cooling hardware.

Apologies for the slow response - I've been away from my desk. Cooling may be part of the reason for additional weight: The 14" Galaxy Book Pro 3 has two fans and I would expect the bigger version to be similarly equipped. Intel notebook hardware will only sustain the rated output for a few seconds unless supported by a good cooling system and this seems to get more noticeable with each generation which leaves the notebook manufacturers with the dilemma of either providing more fans or let them run fast and noisy. Samsung may have opted for less noise - one drawback of my Gram 17 is that it gets noisy under load as it only has one small fan (although there's room for another one). The slightly bigger display sizes are the result of the welcome shift from 16:9 to 16:10 aspect ratio. Chassis rigidity is much less of an issue than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Modern LCDs seem to be tolerant to significant flexing while mainboards are much more compact (and hence less vulnerable to chassis flexing) with ribbon cables connecting to subsidiary boards. Materials might also be a factor if it lowers the production cost.

I've been using Total Commander as my file manager for over 20 years. Highly recommended. That said, as the photo folder on my phone fills up, it becomes slower and slower to list the files so that I can copy the recent photos. I would be interested in software that can avoid this problem provided it doesn't mess up the files or their metadata.

It's currently being tested as I'm on holiday and seems to be running fine. I was wanting more storage space. Higher speed is a bonus.

That could be useful. At the moment I connect my phone and computer via a USB-C cable to copy any photos I've taken. More details are available here.

I've treated the little Galaxy Book Pro to another upgrade. I found a 2TB M.2 2230 SSD on sale in the UK at a lower price than the 1TB 2230 cost in January 2022. The WD SN740 gives a decent performance despite its diminutive size. That's roughly twice as fast as the 1TB Kioxia SSD (which was faster than the original SSD). It took Macrium Reflect over an hour to clone the old SSD onto the new one (temporarily housed in a USB enclosure), then less than half an hour to do the physical swap after which I used Minitool Partition Wizard to adjust the partitions to use the new space.

That's an interesting point about the 2nd SSD being slower by design. You are probably correct in assuming that it's due to the dGPU needing some bandwidth on the bus. I'm sure that I cloned the SSD which came with the computer as that saves having to look for and separately install the LG-specific software.

I believe that both SSD slots are capable of running at full speed. HWiNFO reports NVMe (PCIe 4x 16.0 GT/s) for both. I've just checked my 2022 Gram 17 which has two SSDs (fitted by me): Slot 0 - WD SN850 2TB - 6873/4847 MB/s maximum Slot 1 - WD SN770 2TB - 5054/4646 MB/s maximum This suggests that either one of your Samsung SSDs isn't reaching its potential. That might be because LG has done a deal to get some ultra-cheap sub-standard SSDs to fit as secondary drives or the computer is configured to run the second SSD more slowly (perhaps to get an insignificant power saving). I'm not sure where that could be changed. It might require looking in the BIOS. If you can be sure that the problem is the SSD and you want better performance then the good news is that high capacity SSDs have never been so cheap. PS: Samsung SSD Magician might throw some light on the differences.

I'm interested in better cooling/quieter than I've had in the 2021 and 2023 Gram 17s and the twin fan solution on the model with the Nvidia graphics may be one solution. However, I can't justify an upgrade at the moment and it appears that there isn't a UK-specific model with the separate GPU. I've just checked the LG UK website and it mentions "**Modified keyboard location to improve the airflow. Larger fan with more blades. Applied graphite sheet under the keyboard. The advanced cooling feature is in comparison to the preceding model" with this video. Comparing notebookcheck's internal photos of the 2022 and 2023 versions confirms that the latter has a larger diameter fan. 2022 2023 This difference isn't mentioned in the notebookcheck review but could well be a factor in the 2023 model being about 50% faster in the benchmark tests than the 2022 model. i7 vs i5 CPUs doesn't make much difference once there's thermal throttling.

I've had no problem with my connectors but they've had much less use than yours. I partly see them as a safety device to protect the port and computer should the cable get snagged while they also mean that there's much less wear on the port where USB-C looks more fragile than the older connectors (I use wireless charging for my phone for the same reason).

Currently, the reported fully charged battery capacity in my 2021 is reported as 73190mWh after 35 charge cycles. This is slightly better than the reported 72190mWh when I checked last April. I would, however, note that (i) I bought the computer second hand in January 2022 and (ii) it's not had significant use since August 2022 when I commissioned the newer Gram 17 (which reports 1 charge cycle (!) and still 80,000mWh capacity. I don't know if the 2021 Gram 17 lost capacity during the months it was used by its first owner or if the battery never had the advertised capacity (I've had plenty of those over the years). It may be worthwhile disabling the battery saver so your Gram 17 charges to 100%, then running it down (you'll have to boot into the BIOS screen when Windows automatically hibernates due to low battery) then fully charging to 100% again.

I already had 4TB on the 2021 Gram 17 and wouldn't want to have less storage capacity. I also didn't want to overwrite the 2TB boot drive in the older Gram 17 so it was a matter of finding the best deal on an fast new 2TB SSD (WD SN850). I then cloned the Samsung 1TB onto the 2TB WD SN850 temporarily placed in a USB NVMe enclosure and moved over the 2TB WD SN770 from the second slot in the older Gram 17. For historical reasons I've got my SSDs arranged in several partitions with those on the 2nd, slightly slower, SSD being data that is mainly read with little writing so that SSD has more opportunity to sleep. I used to use Acronis which sometimes gave me problems but have been using Macrium Reflect for several years without problems. I should add, however, that I put the target SSD into an internal enclosure to avoid the risk of the cloning software thinking there will be two boot SSDs in the computer (which might arise if the target is in the 2nd SSD slot). Minitool Partition Wizard is my currently preferred tool for partition management. The 2023 Gram 17 models are around so the 2022 model is being discounted. It's worth watching out in case some sellers apply some even bigger discounts to shift the last of the old stock. 32GB and the anti=glare coating are useful upgrades. I see that Costco in UK is offering the 32GB 2022 Gram 17 for £1080 - about 40% off last year's price and 10% lower than my Amazon Warehouse deal last year.

I didn't do before and after tests for the thermal pads as the pads were applied when I installed the SSDs. A drop of 9C is impressive. My 2022 Gram 17 came with the 1TB version of that Samsung SSD (it's the PM9A1) but I never tried running Samsung Magician because once I had checked out the computer I replaced the SSD with the 2TB WD SN850. The Samsung SSD is in the WD's box so it can be put back in the future if the Gram 17 gets rehomed. You should find that HWiNFO can read the Samsung's SMART data.

If you want something really light then look at the Samsung Galaxy Book family or the LG Gram. They may not offer 14" but their 15" models are lighter than other 14" notebooks and have decent battery life. The older models have come down in price while the new models don't offer significant improvements. While they may not appear to be sturdy they seem to be fairly durable. I've got a 13" Samsung which came from Curry's outlet on ebay and a Gram 17 from Amazon Warehouse. Both appeared to have been unused.

I used this and cut a piece to suit my needs. I had some left over from using the material in previous years to improve cooling of hot chips (earlier generations of SSDs used a lot more power when under load). However, a compressible pad could give an advantage if it touches the computer base but avoids the risk of transfering load onto the SSD. I did not apply any pad to the bottom of my SSDs. The chips are only on one side and there's not much space between the SSDs and the mainboard so a very thin pad would be needed. I don't think the pads are needed for thermal management. My WD SSDs don't exceed around 55C unlike some of the SSDs from earlier era (I bought my first in 2009).

I've not really noticed the potential speed boost because LG failed to upgrade the cooling system and, instead, put relatively low power limits on the CPU so any speed boost is short duration. I could fiddle with the power limits in the advanced BIOS settings but I'd then get even more fan noise.

I haven't noticed my Gram 17 making annoying high-pitched whines but that may be because any sound is drowned by the continouus purr of the cooling fan or maybe because my ears are old enough that they struggle to pick up the highest frequencies. Furthermore, I put thermal pads (2mm, I think) on the SSDs because I had some in the drawer. The pads should benefit the cooling but could also dampen any vibration of the electronic components. Thanks for the tip about removing the base. I'll have to remember that for when I next need to get inside.

Two here: 1. A Dell E310dw A4 monochrome laser print that lives on standby for the everyday printing. It cost me £35 in 2016 and I've subsequently replaced the toner (in 2017) and the drum (in 2021). It's not had a hard life. 2. A Canon MX925 A4 multi-function inkjet which cost me £128 in 2013. It has probably scanned more pages than it has printed. I've lost count of how much ink (not Canon ink once the warranty had expired) it's consumed. Because it doesn't get used much then it has to go through head-cleaning whenever it's switched on. I would prefer to have one device which did everything (printing, scanning, copying, duplex and with photo-quality colours) but consideration of anything which might tick all the right boxes will have to wait until one of the current machines needs to be replaced. And when that happens I'll look at what's on offer at https://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/c/582/Printer-Deals/ (UK only).

I would be more interested in the dGPU version if it means that the dual fans reduce the overall fan noise when the dGPU isn't used. However, this noise problem isn't enough to get me thinking about going shopping should the RTX3050 be released for the UK market. At the moment it's listed on Amazon UK but sold by Amazon US. Maybe in a couple of years there will be enough other improvements (eg better CPU efficiency) to justify an upgrade. I'm a little surprised that the OLED panel uses so much power. My 2021 13" Galaxy Book Pro has an FHD AMOLED panel and very good battery life. However, a 17" panel has 70% bigger area to illuminate than 13". More important, under my usage conditions, there's no obvious difference between the AMOLED panel and LG's very good IPS (or similar) LCD panel. The little Samsung is also much quieter than my Gram 17.

I think that's identical to mine. Someone somewhere might be able to do a BIOS mod to reveal more settings but it's not something I would try unless desperate and it's possible that would still not reveal a default brightness setting.