extremecarver

Ah and what to buy. In general I would have said, wait and get the Ryzen 7 AI 450. They are sold cheaper than the poor Ultra 5 325/335 models right now with twice the multicore performance, and still great battery life (yeah those low power panther lakes gonna be astonishing in battery life still beating Lunar Lake by 20% or so but at actually less performance). The new H (or X) panther lake look great in benchmarks, but they will cost a fortune. Now the problem is - with RAM/SSD prices skyrocketing right now - prices gonna increase a lot more than expected. A lunar lake Gram Pro on offer or a 255H model on offer looks like the best choice. Especially if you want 32GB it's gonna be a steep price. LG sells the new gram Pro with 256GB SSD in the base models to counter prices (and likely betting buyers just swap with an older NVME they still own and put the cheapest junk in just for selling and getting the price right). Oh yeah - Geekbench 6 with AI fan mode: 2700/10600 vs in silent mode: 2700/10100 Geekbench 6 GPU gives identical 30500 approx (255h would have 15.000 multicore and 40.000 GPU score on default settings with LG gram more or less). So it hardly makes a change but Geekbench has not much sustained load. PL1/Pl2 set at 45w, and Speedshift EPP to 20 (setting it to 0 may gain some more points - but is really pointless as it increases heat a lot. On battery I run EPP at 180 usually, or 210 if I have scarce access to power.)

Oh I see, yeah the LG tools mess around quite a bit in lower settings. But it does make sense in a way. I locked everything in Throttlestop unter TPL to avoid LG messing around the values.

Any software licences do not get transferred, also all websites the login cookie is deactivated. Authenticator needs to be re-initiated. But all my registry hacks and modifications survice - it would take me ages to redo all of this which is needed to tame Windows 11. So it's still much faster. And a used windows pro license is like 10€ so I don't care and just buy a new used one. I don't really know how to deactivat a license so I can reuse it on another PC. Also I think not all licenses support this. Noise is very low. Actually I ran Passmark full test on Silent with fans off, and I still got 19,500 CPU mark result - so higher than an non modified. It fluctuates quite badly but 15-25w are possible passively cooled without the fans running at all. I really didn't expect the fans kinda mainly keep the base cooler but have not that much effect on the CPU below 5-10 minutes. See the results once silent once with AI fan mode. They are better than 155H intel inside the Gram. Passmark is pretty good estimate of real use except gaming. But it's quite obvious that the lower benches which are done later suffered from the heat build up (full run takes nearly 10 minutes) Cinebench is also with AI fan mode.

I asked LG Korea via email about Aerominum and it's use in 2025 LG grams. They replied that indeed they used it but exclusively in LG gram 16 pro models in metal grey colour. It wasn't used in white nor black colour models, nor in any 17". Also they said they still adapted thickness and frame of display for 2026. So I guess the rtx 5050 arrow lake models do not use it because they have black colour. Also it's not yet used on lower body also in 2026 but may come for 2027. I had gotten curious because my gram pro 16 with lunar lake feels cold like aluminium on the display but usual warm on the rest of the frame. So if it feels cold it's the new Aerominum. That's also why the white LG gram pro was 1196 grams but the metal grey 1226g with identical internals. So if they go all body Aerominum it would add well over 100g, I guess the backplate will be kept in magnesium, but the keyboard frame could switch for 2027. That way may only add 40g or so. The backplate is paper thin I don't think they will change it.

Why is the dynamic power limit so low? With that amount of power it will not even best a lunar lake at 40w with much more cores. Is it one fan only? Even then I think you could increase it by 50%. I think it's only needed to set overclocking lock to no then afterwards it's unlocked in throttlestop. With two fans could outright double PL1.

Lunar Lake, I'm a bit less positive about my gram. After activation of all power saving options it limits all cores to 37w and puts 28w max power use. That stays even if you plug back in. Now for battery use that strategy really makes sense, anything above 3700w brings rather marginal gains at a high power envelope. But if plugged in I like my 37-45w power budget which is about the max the two fans can cool. Panther lake will be much better. First 25% more airflow from fans , second twice the die size so that alone should bring 50% more power budget at same cooling. So panther lake you should be able to run around 60-70w continuously without worries after repasting and modifying the pl1/2 limits. Arrow lake similar. But it makes sense dual fan increases the cooling power around 50%. So from 28w to 41-42 average. 28w was around the max possible with single fan on U intel chips after repasting (before 23-24w). Note repasting once a year is likely needed.... The plate leads to quite big punch out of paste. And yeah still 8° Prochot offset, cannot find out which setting in bios locks this. That's about 7% less power draw due to this. But then maybe it means less problems with cooling paste punch out.

After repasting I now get constant fully loaded power use slightly above 40watts. Huge change. LG had put enourmous amount of paste onto the CPU. Now good point about that way is - it will never pump out as much as they put, bad think is performance. I went with Durnaut by Thermal Grizzly as this is considered to be the most durable paste on the market right now (except some funky Chinese ones where however you never know if you get what you order...) with great performance. Actually repasted my 2021 lg Gram - it was basically plain metal - everything of the Arctic MX5 pumped out. I guess that's quite common on grams with the thin case and thereby varying pressure on the heatpipe all the time. Not sure about My Gram - it somehow messed around so much that it blocked CPU to 28w and 37 multiplier - changes PL1/2 time limits and much more - it really goes deep down. Also it messed around in some hidden by default windows energy plan settings. Now it does some magic - but it's really changing things you wouldn't expect.

Usually I don't believe much in whatever apps supplied by vendors making claims about battery life improvement - but what does My Gram do? On idle it decreases the CPU package from 0.5-0.8 to 0.3-0.7 watts - that's really crazy low. I left my 2025 16 Gram Pro in idle with browser open and display off prevented for 2 hours and it only dropped 6.1 % battery - screen brightness at 30% which should be around 150 nits. That would be well over 30 hours of battery life. Surfing the web and browsing I usually got without gram about 6-7% per hour, but with my gram only 5% per hour - meaning around 20 hours batttery duration in real life. Yeah not panther lake levels but not far off. Wifi/Bluetooth both on. System drive Lexar NM790 - the lowest power use NVME with Devsleep (lowest) enabled. I really do wonder what windows settings does My gram change.

I've received my Gram 16 Pro 2025 with Lunar Lake 256v today from Amazon Warehouse in Like new condition. As far as I can tell it was never used before - but package shortly opened and then directly returned. 1104€ made it worth it. I had to be below 1200€ inckluding VAT for writing it off on my business. The CPU power limits can be set in the bios, but it's not respected. However they can be successfully modified with Throttlestop - so setting 35/45 for example isn't a problem. However the cooling for me doesn't manage more than 35w continously without throttling. I haven't found out how to change Prochot offset to 0 from the default 8° (in order to increase CPU temp limit to 100° instead of 92° which LG set - this should be possible via advanced bios somehow. Battery size is fully charged is 79630Wh - so 103.4% of indicated. That is very nice as LG isn't good at all in this regard and ofen battery in new gram have less fully charged capacity vs design capacity. It had 0 cycles so clearly is brand new. I think I will need to repaste the CPU with Arctic MX-5 or MX-6 as I am about 5% lower in benchmarks even with PL1/PL2 limits removed vs say notebookcheck on Cinebench R23 Multi. It still has the old cooler. Only the RTX 5050 Gram Pro 2025 already has the vastly improved new coolers (lighter and 25% stronger at same power use). I guess If I find out how to remove the Prochot offset of 8° and repaste the CPU around 45w constant power draw should be possible instead of the 35-36w right now (each measure helping 5w or so I estimate) Yeah the pro has a stiffer bottom part vs the old LG Gram. The display however is still just as flimsy - the new 2026 Aerominium are much better in this regard. And even though the production date The speakers are much much better vs my old LG gram, or well say louder. My old Gram the display clearly lost brightness - at around 30% on the new it equals 100% on my old. That is something which will always happen as displays age - the get less bright - so after nearly 5 years of using my old Gram it has done it's job. I think also the speakers got less loud over time - also something usually happening. For the form factor - I would have prefered the old - the slimmer design for me isn't a good trade for 1cm deeper size. But yes I understand only because it's slimmer it's much more stable vs the non Pro lg Gram. The reason it's more stable is the battery helping tremendously in stability vs the non Pro grams. Out of the box however quite a few things weren't working well. It wouldn't enter C3 or lower states on the CPU - dunno what advanced bios setting I changed but now it goes nicely into C10 and CPU package power goes down to 0.6w on idle instead of 1.2w before. Also note that HIPM DIPM isn't activated out of the box - wasting a lot of power. So you need to add that registry entry to show up in the power plan and put the NVME into lowest. Otherwise you burn at least 0.5w additionally. Yes I would have prefered the 5050 RTX version - but that would have been at least 70% more expensive. The same likely will go for the really far superior new 2026 LG gram with Panther lake. They have a new OLED that is better vs the older OLED displays, another 15% better battery life, 50-60% more CPU power, 100% more GPU power but will be much more expensive. I really would like the new Aerominium case. While I can see in Korea you can get a keyboard for the 2026 already - which will mean turning the lower body into Aerominum - for the screen this will be very expensive. Also the bottom is still plain magnesium I think - it's only the Display case and the upper part (the one with the keyboard) that is now Aerominium. If I had the money for the 5050 version I would wait for the 2026 Panther lake which except if your a gamer is the far superior notebook overall. I haven't yet migrated my old 2TB disk into this one - that should help battery life a bit too - as the 980 Pro is pretty power hungry. I'll actually try hot swapping in my old drive. Let's see how that goes. My old 2021 Gram was at it's limit on 4K UHD playback with UHD monitor connected - no worries here now of course. Often the main thing slowing out an older laptop are video codecs that have no hardware decoding. Well Lunar Lake has H266 hardware decoding - but it will not have AV2. Likely that won't make it before 2027 into any laptop. That's kinda the biggest drawback in a couple of years if you get a Lunar lake based notebook. Placement of the primary NVME drive below the CPU: Do not use this placement for your primary drive - but only for data grab. Being so close to the CPU it gets too hot. This is actually a little bit (5mm or so) better then 5050 mainboard. It is much better on the standard LG gram. Otherwise you may quite likely fry your NVME. I'm not sure if it's possible to install some sort of barrier there by putting a small rubber insulator there. I really wonder that no one so far noticed this. But it's pretty apparent when running a continours benchmark and then looking at the NVME temperature. It hit's 60 without any actual load if the CPU plugs along at 92°... Edit: so it worked to just plug in my old harddrive. Steps to do: 1. you need a USB mouse. 2. Change boot order and move old disk to spot 1 in bios, best remove fingerpring login and any other login before moving the drive - else you will need to cut power three times while booting to get into boot option, boot in safe mode with networking - change a registry setting, reboot, use the physical mouse to click on other sign in option and select password... Then install the new LG updater for the current model (the old program is useless now) - install all updates. 5. Make sure under settings --> apps --> optional features --> to install windows hello facial --> reboot plently of times and run windows update --> after 3 hours everything was working without fresh windows installation. Power options were messed up again - so need to set in registry all the options especially AHCI link and again select lowest - as otherwise it defaults once again to HIPM only. Last step - get a new windows license used and activate windows. Somehow you will need to login back to many places - and still reactivate the 2nd factor authentication from fingerprint now to facial. For me that still saves plenty of hours vs a fresh installation of windows 11 madness.

Well I guess identical to your 5050. On the 5050 model the 5050 can push 40w continuously I think according to reviews. That way the CPU can still add over 25w. According to that review the fans were first used already on the 5050 version - but not the Aerominum case. It does make sense IMHO. On my old 2022 it throttles to around 27-28w on continuous load with single fan that is smaller. I think even with single heat pipe but two fans that push a bit more air 50-55w should actually be possible in thermal envelope. Lunar lake LG gram are not thermally throttled but because LG set very small tdp limits (well easy to see in throttlestop why it throttles). And yeah in summer over 30° that may be different vs the typical 21-22° of normal tests.

Comparison between last years Lunar Lake, and this year AMD and Intel X7 options. Summary Intel X7 is basically a little more CPU power than the old Ultra 9, graphics power about RTX 4050 so much better than anything old integrated. AMD is similar in single tread to Arrow lake, but loses out a little on multi threading. It still clearly wins over Lunar lake quite easily. She mentions that the Aerominium is indeed more stable and feels more premium. It's again very visible in the outside frame of the display if you have or have not Aerominium. Both the new panther lake and AMD have basically zero throttling still pushing 45w into 20 minutes mark. That is pretty impressive so the new fans do work much better. Battery life - now she's comparing an 1 year old Lunar lake model, so I would add a little to Lunar lake. And she compares with max screen brightness. Panther Lake with OLED comes out on top of AMD with the lunar lake last. Differences are rather subtle. AMD for price concious and office work, Intel for gaming and high performance... But yeah - I really guess only the X7 is this piece of marvel - other Panther lake without B390 graphics or less cores will rather feel like an optimized lunar lake - even better battery life but not much performance uplift, and actually worse graphics. I feel the x7 models of many laptops are gonna be sold out soon or as they appear - as word will spread about how much better it is vs older generations or the less able intel products. There must be a reason why LG and others are sending out the X7 models on masse but no other panther lake are widely distributed to reviewers. Also the weight is lower again - the new Aerominium gram pro 16s are at 1195g - so back below 1.2kg.

Yes the shape is identical, but the material surely not. And with only the pro switching to the new material the differentiation will be bigger. But yeah there won't be any no pro 16/17 while 14/15.6 inch likely won't be put much effort in. In 13/14 inch size LG has a lot of competition, in 16 less and in 17 no competition at all. I'm pretty sure most sales have always been 16/17. It's not only tapered edges, the pro is a bit slimmer overall, I guess this improves stability as there is very little empty space. It's exactly the empty space that makes the non pro grams so flexible. But yeah I found an offer for a lunar lake Pro at 1100 euros so let's see. I don't think we will see the 2026 panther lake below 1800 Euro anytime soon, and maybe not even in sales next year dropping below 1500.

yeah, but it still has no Mux, right? So battery runtime with the RTX5050 will be worse. I'm pretty sure it's possible to retrofit the 90wh battery to any pro model. Screws look identical. I wonder if the 77wh battery just has more reserve cells (and worse batches) for better longevity or is actually different. For the case I mean min 4:22 to 4:23 - that is quite different from the old models. At 5:11 it's very visble too.

I'm pretty sure it's testing once an oled version with X7! And an ultra7 IPS Version in comparison. In some places there is comparison with the old 255h with Nvidia 5050, the X7 seems to beat 4050 Nvidia but Cannot keep up with 5050.

Yeah we certainly will not get as much choice as Koreans. I guess they will put the best sellers from Korea on intl market if the processors are available. I guess X7 will be more about availability Vs want. I don't think 2025 with Aerominum exist, the feeling is very different. But you can easily tell on the edge of the screen. Is it aluminium there or magnesium? The new model has an aluminium strip there. But yeah it's likely possible to just upgrade any old pro and change to the new Aerominum by waiting till the case shows up as replacement. I think the pro has been stiffer Vs non pro. But it's again a pretty major increase in battery life, much more performance Vs any previous gram in case of the x7 (all others much less) and GPU performance for the X7 only that rivals the previous dedicated models... But yeah apart from the X7 model the changes are much smaller.