skipper

Grams always had good battery life, Lunar Lake will have probably exceptional battery life, but if you keep it always on your desk it does not really matter. John has already written that he bought the Slim as a super light travel laptop and since the Slim is not a battery monster, I guess he does not care about battery that much. Lunar Lake probably will be a downgrade in performance and Arrow Lake is only incremental, so I guess it is not worth the extra money for the latest versions. The rest, screen, chassis, battery, fans will be the same anyway.

Well done, enjoy!!!. Could you remind me, your 2022 version is with the 12 cores? Or still 4 cores? Do you mind also checking how is the battery life? I am really tempted. I plan to sell to a friend my old 2021 Gram that I just have it as backup and thinking to get a small upgrade, just to be on the safe side. EDIT: Unfortunately on Amazon.co.uk there is only your model that is 32gb, no 16in with 32gb RAM.. But will check again. By the way you have the Variable Refresh Rate monitor if I am not mistaken, you can see this in the Display settings- Advanced Display and set it in Dynamc

This LG Gram "Book" should never exist and never called Gram, it is heavy as a brick and has subpar specs. The Grams were always supposed to be light and premium laptops. Then they launched the "Pro" adding dGPUs and better cooling, bigger battery in 2022. Now they have the Pros to indicate better cooling, screens with VRR or OLED, better speakers. But basically after the 2022 models with the Alder Lake processors (too many cores for the traditional one-fan cooling to handle) they should have stopped selling the normal Grams with one fan (they were subpar products, not premium anymore with a lot of thermal throttling) and move everything to what they call Pro line. But now in 2025 with Lunar Lake the one fan Grams might make again sense (they seem to have the old chassis with the SD card reader) and become battery champions. The pre-order possibilities on the LG US site for the Pros is a freaking mess: 16in come with OLED or IPS or IPS and touch, Lunar Lake or Arrow Lake (OLED are paired with Arrow Lake), all the 16in have only 77Wh batteries, the 17in also come with Arrow Lake (90Wh battery) and Lunar Lake (77Wh battery).

I like Andrew's reviews. But this is the one with the RTX3050 and since 2022, all models with the dGPU have always dual fans. And actually they were necessary for all models after the core count increase since the 12th gen Intel processors. At the same time of this review on Youtube Notebookcheck did the 17in version review that I posted above. No reviews of the model you mention are to be found. This one is also with the one fan:

When it was first launched in 2024 with Meteor Lake it did not have the two fans: https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-Gram-17-2024-laptop-review-Small-improvements-and-a-new-Core-Ultra-7.826926.0.html and used the old design. The 16in pro was already with the 2 fans and slimmer design (and no SD card reader anymore). So I guess the slimmer design and the Pro moniker guarantees 2 fans now. The 2025 with Arrow Lake and RTX4050 will be a beast but almost 1. 5kg

My biggest issue with the 15in models is the 16:9 ration vs the 16:10 of the 14,16,17in. I still have my old 2018 15in Gram and the screen looks so narrow when I play with it. But it is always a pleasure to lift it up and handle it, 200gr make a difference (It think 1.1kg vs 1.3)

Shutting down is not the same as hibernate, yes it is not instant like sleep, but with hibernate you get all your work back where you left it. With the fast SSDs it resumes pretty fast anyway. If I just move around from one room to another, or just from the waiting area to board the plane, I just close the lid and that's it. But I am careful, too many times battery got depleted with the lousy Windows Modern Standby, or the laptop got too hot in the backpack. But I don't know if it is feasible to get the old sleep for our Grams and found that just alternating between Standby and Hibernation will do the trick

I strongly advise against using the Gram with the lid closed. I have mine also docked but always the lid open, it is on the side and does not disturb me visually. If you use the Gram for some time, you will feel how the surface of the keyboard emits heat. Not unpleasant, but the metallic keyboard surface helps to dissipate heat. If the lid is closed, this heat will be slowly cooking the very thin LCD of the Gram and the overall cooling will be suboptimal. Laptops have become too thin to properly dissipate heat from the back and underneath. If you keep the laptop docked and plugged, you don't really care about battery decharge, it will always remain charged (better to limit it at 80% to protect the battery through the LG Smart Assistant). So you can just use normal sleep and awake the laptop with the keyboard or mouse. If you undock the laptop, then you can put it in hibernation before you put the Gram in your laptop bag. I set the laptop to sleep when I close the lid and to hibernate when I press the power button.

" When connected to my docking station and KVM switch, the BIOS screen does not show on the attached external monitor, and the attached keyboard also does not function" . No laptop is doing this, they all revert to the laptop display at BIOS. Laptops are different beasts from desktops. Sleep mode on a desktop has no issues because it stays always plugged, you see no battery drain. The article that John linked shows how to activate the Hibernate mode, have to go to old Control panel power settings. He is right, the laptop should come already with the option enabled by default

Same here, 2023 version, always hibernation to be on the safe side. This is a Windows 11 issue, not a Gram specific issue, you will have similar problems with other Windows laptops. There was a vide on Linus Tech tips about it, it showed that if you put the laptop in sleep while plugged in and then unplugged, it never went to sleep, had to unplug and then put it to sleep. Also when Windows is freshly installed it will keep on indexing and syncing in the background. So the best solution is to activate hibernation. Use the LG Power Manager App to activate hibernation.

You should really have a look at the 2023 RTX version. There is less flex, matte screen and higher brightness. There is no other laptop at this size/weight/battery/performance. Wish they went with Ryzen, but is is still good.

LG Electronics 16Z90R-A.ADB9U1 As I explained it is i7 13th gen with the RTX3050, 32Gb RAM and 2x1TB SSDs. It is the US version, I don't think the dGPU version has made its way in most European countries. Still very happy with the upgrade.

Just finished chatting with LG support in US. He said that the 2nd SSD is for storage and the slower speed is by design. I was seeing in HWinfo64 half the speed in the PCIE bus. Maybe it is also because it has the dGPU and it occupies bandwidth. Anyway, not a big problem, but interesting to know that it is useless to buy a PCIE 4.0 drive for the second SSD. I guess I might use the 970 of my older Gram then. Just a question: Did you do a clean install in the new @2Tb SSD or did you clone the original one? Any advice how to proceed with cloning if I need to keep original factory setup?

I got 9601 in Cinebench R23 multicore, more than double my 2021 Gram. The fans are not louder under load but kick more often but I am getting used to them and the increase in speed that I noticed with some VMs is phenomenal. Have I already mentioned I really prefer the screen? I still miss the fingerprint reader and a USB one I have that was working at the desktop setup with my old Gram is not recognized by this one, it is active in Device Manager but Windows Hello does not find it. Also I spent also hours trying to figure out how to avoid losing the Windows Hello credentials every time I was restarting with the eGPU connected, had to fiddle deep in the BIOS Settings (CRTL+SHIFT+ALT+F7 for the advanced settings).

Greetings LG Gram fans. I am writing this on my new LG Gram 16 with RTX3050 and 32Gb RAM at the airport. I will add later in the week/next week more detailed impressions and add comparative photos, but just to let you all know that it is a HUGE upgrade from my 2021 11th generation. The first immediate and impressive improvement is the display. Much brighter, no reflections, crisper. This has the variable refresh rate which I have the feeling improves massively the battery life . It has the massive 90Wh battery and the Nvidia card is NOT having any influence on battery for most normal productivity uses. Right now I am at 66% and Windows shows 8h20m, brightness at 30%, (seems more like 50% on the old version), wifi on, Chrome and Firefox showing a couple of tabs and writing on Word. Since the display has much less reflections I can also keep the brightness at lower levels and still see better while typing. Keyboard is very similar, maybe a tad less mushy feeling, crisper and faster feedback, trackpad very similar but clicking is a bit harder, I am tapping more than clicking. And the whole keyboard has much less flex everywhere and underneath in the back the feet resemble the ones from the 12th gen, much better stability. And of course it has much better cooling, double the intakes underneath. In High cooling mode, it can become loud, much louder than my old one, but the pitch is lower so I don’t find it disturbing. But under normal use it is super quiet. For storage it came with two 1Tb Samsung SSDs (SAMSUNG MZVL21TOHCLR-OOBOO), which seem to be the same model, but with the 😧 drive I get no more than 3400MB/s sequential reads at CrystalDiskMark, which is almost half of the 6500 sequential reads of the 😄 drive. In my old Gram I had a PCIE 3.0 drive in the 😧 slot, so I could not see a difference. But here I guess the 2nd SSD only provides half the speed, a bit disappointing. The only thing I miss is the fingerprint reader, I keep tapping on the power button. The IR camera is ok indoors, but while I was outdoors under the sun I had to always type my pin. I have not yet tried to play any games or put the RTX3050 in use. Don’t hesitate to ask me what you want to know, I will try to do some Cinebench tests soon when I get back home. In summary, if one wants to upgrade from the 2021 model, I think one should opt for the RTX version.

Of course you do not have to update every year. The 12th gen processor is more than double fast (in theory, actual cooling mitigates the improvement), you have 32gigs RAM and matte display. For me if I end up upgrading from the 2021 model I would go for the RTX version for thee reasons I mentioned.

Almost all the new 2023 Grams are now on LG.com. The LG Gram style is too much form over function and the OLED screen kills the battery, it shows in the specs almost half the battery of the normal Grams. I think I might go for the RTX3050 version, better variable refresh rate and the best battery.

If you noticed in the review the photos of the back cover, the tape covering the vents leaves more space than in the iGPU version. Some people claim that they have improved thermals by removing the tape completely, but the laptops have become louder. Some users of the dGPU version on Reddit were very happy saying that when not under stress, for general productivity the laptop stays quiet. On the other hand at the review they are clear that the quiet mode is almost unusable.

At last a review of the 2022 model with the RTX2050. https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-Gram-17-review-A-super-light-17-inch-laptop-with-a-modest-dGPU.698340.0.html The increase in weight is so small compared to the bigger battery and much better cooling. The dGPU is the cherry on the cake. Unfortunately it gets much much louder... For 2023 models we will get RTX3050, variable refresh rate displays and better speakers. I guess it is worth upgrading only to the dGPU version.

https://www.lgnewsroom.com/2023/01/2023-lg-gram-lineup-offers-more-stylish-yet-powerful-user-experience/ Again incremental changes, probably the dGPU RTX versions look better, variable refresh rate screens and slightly brighter. The new models, Ultraslim and Style go to the wrong direction of looks and form over function.

I think next year I will upgrade to this one: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-Vision-16-Pro-Laptop-Review-Lightweight-16-inch-Ultrabook-with-RTX-3070-Ti.670849.0.html It has a very light magnesium alloy frame like the Gram, better cooling and is very configurable. It is 400gr heavier, but I guess this is the price to pay for real performance, but is still more than 400-500gr lighter than the lazy competition. I will wait for the next iteration, hoping they will use a better less power hungry monitor, less oriented for gamers and improve battery efficiency. Meanwhile I hope LG works on their cooling and maybe AMD for the next generation. I am used to Windows, some of my software is exclusive Windows (and a bit of gaming) and Apple is always lazy with optimizing weight, so I think no Mac for me

So, the standard setting of LG Glance is to be suspended when on battery. I did not change it because I guess they know better... Also it does not work when the windows settings are open. I cannot tell if the 720p camera is less efficient in my 2021 Gram, but basically it works as it is supposed to, I think it follows the face, not the eyes. The window movement from one monitor to the other is hit or miss and ends up being a gimmick. But I started having better results with a 2nd external monitor. To move a window from the far left to far right monitor it is pretty effective. Also the cursor moves to the monitor you look. In the beginning it was not very practical because I was using VMs that were capturing the cursor and made a mess. For normal office work looked more interesting. I have to try it a bit longer to see if it really increases productivity or it is a gimmick after all.

Just to let you know that I installed the Mirametrix software in my 2021 Gram 16 and works perfectly. Still figuring out if it really helps or I will uninstall it eventually. But just to say that one less difference between the 2021-22 versions. I followed the 2nd link in the following page and installed it through the app store. https://help.mirametrix.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018030672-Installing-Glance-on-your-system

I thought the 2022Gram does not have the fingerprint reader. When I read this review I thought that they just did copy-paste and they did not really bother.

The 11th Gen had only 1277 points in multi core vs 2979 points for the Alder Lake. This is 133% faster!!! I also do not understand why Notebookcheck uses Normal performance as their base for measurements (at least they show both in Cinebench, 10% faster and more stable in performance). They are stuck also with Cinebench R15 where its the only version where the differences between Performance and Normal mode are minimal, maybe this is why they are miss-guided. In Geekbench it is 56% faster!! Only in PCMark the difference is 8%. So I guess for normal productivity-Office work the gains will be small and you get more noise, heat and less battery. But in case of video editing or some heavy processing the update is a no-brainer. I will pass this version because I am still ok with my 11th gen and I think the multiple cores of Alder Lake are not yet optimized. I would love if LG went for Ryzen 6800. On Notebookcheck there is an article of a new LG Ultra with Ryzen, but they have crippled specks compared to the Grams. I have "upgraded" to Win11. I don't see a change in battery, but have not tested extensively. I hate the OS decisions and use ExplorerPatcher to get back the Win10 functionality, but I saw a substantial improvement in how it handles my multi-monitor setup and this is why I stayed with it.