extremecarver

To end this topic - the Gram is now just used as backup - battery charged to 80% and put into a drawer. I used it for 4 years 9.5 months... But yeah, exchanged keyboard (which means also means part of the case) due to the e letter not working, and battery once. mSD card reader was broken - and one of the two USB-C ports wars broken (happens when lying on bed/sofa with USB-C cable plugged in and standing on it kinda - too bad no USB-C on the other side). Screen had many dead pixels by then - and the case had a fracture (on the part hat I got newly with the keyboard). But otherwise it still worked reliably, and the keyboard on the standard gram surely suits me more vs the Gram Pro. I still make much more typing mistakes on the Gram Pro - it's just too shallow. Otherwise the Gram Pro is better in everything - but 4 years newer model too. Let's hope for the Gram Pro to make it to 5 years too. Sadly lunar lake not panther lake but I could not wait another year and did not want to wait for the Panther lake X7 model to drop in price until affordable (if ever).

I just ran some heavy (40GB) 7z extraction and at the end the Gram hibernated due to overheating. I will lower the Prochot from 2 to 3 - maybe that was the problem? Never happened to me before. Not really sure where to find the actual reason for hibernation. Maybe it was NVME overheating? I don't think so. - was the first time my 2025 did something similar to crashing. It should really lower CPU speed and not hibernate - even if I increased the Prochoot from 10 to 2.

Actually the DELL with LG IPS was tested with 120hz fixed refresh rate on notebookcheck - seems they test all notebooks that way. On Hardware Canucks it got a crazy 43 hours battery life: https://www.notebookcheck.net/43-hours-battery-life-Dell-XPS-14-2026-lasts-almost-3x-longer-vs-MacBook-Air-15-M5-in-web-browsing-test.1262947.0.html The full system runs on 1.8w approx for browsing with VRR activated doing actual work, 1.5w on idle. It really shows that Intel dialled panther lake. Older notebooks are simply so bad because Windows is absolute crap. Linux systems simply face the problem of non optimized drivers and therefore don't fare (much) better than windows. But I guess with 1-120hz VRR display and a CPU like panther lake that doesn't let the OS decide the power management anymore - we really now reach the point were it will be hard to improve for low work tasks. Yes at high load Intel still got loads of work vs ARM based chips. LG will however also come out with OLED 1-120hz displays, I guess they will be even better than their IPS 1-120hz is now. OLED is in principal simply better as it needs less light to be bright. It's just about optimizing the electronics. I actually don't understand why notebookcheck doesn't use VRR enabled on their battery tests. Makes them pretty worthless now with advanced displays (at 20hz it's already bad, at 1hz just not usable anymore). I guess they need to improve their protocol - get a robot moving the mouse, typing from tyime to time on the actual keyboard - and moving the screen. That way the refresh rate will really get appropriate. Actually that's another plus for OLED - I guess they could manage to only update parts of the display that change - while I don't think that's possible for LCD - but I could be wrong. Meaning when typing only refresh the portion of the display that changes - while keeping the rest unrefreshed or only once per second.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-16-review-Two-steps-forward-one-step-back.1251724.0.html#c15814972 Too bad the LG gram 2026 doesn't yet have a WQHD 2560x1600 display with 1-120hz VRR by LG. It actually bests OLED on low to full brightness. 1.5w on idle for the full system on low brightness. 4.5w on 500 nits full brightness (that's as much as the gram 2025 lunar lake on low brightness - both 16"). That means a whopping 50 hours idle battery life at low brightness or 20 hours on idle with full brightness. Pretty crazy numbers. I guess next year LG gram pro will get that 1-120hz VRR display too - hopefullly they can ramp up the colors. But it really also shows that Panther lake is a best on low power use. Test is also interesting as it shows the new base panther lake versions without H. Pretty similar to lunar lake under max load but way more efficient on low load. Graphics are slightly worse than Lunar Lake last year as expected. It would be great if they could test an identical model once with and without H to see if the base one is even better at power use at low load or if there is no difference. I guess messing with Windows advanced power saving features will not help much on Panther lake. The thing is that panther lakes kinda does power management itself including scheduling which cores to use - instead of letting windows handle it absolutely wrongly (for windows 11, 10 was much better at it which is a shame).

In Taiwan it's now on presales. The X7/32/1gb model sells for 77.000 ntd (2076 Euro ) with list price of 79.900 NTD. Delivery by 25-30 April. Seems ssd prices are more affected than RAM. Big SSD are really expensive now while the RAM surcharge is not that out of line. With 7% VAT in Taiwan let's see where pricing in Europe and USA will end up. Taiwan pricing used to be quite similar to EU before adding VAT. I guess LG and others need to cut margins to sell new models. Somewhere else read about LG bringing lower power IPS displays for 2027 saving about 40% electricity by going down to 1hz refresh rate. Similar tech to Sharp igzos using oxydes. Could be until 2028 however to end up in the gram pro of world economy still exists then... But after 4-5 years stagnation in battery life things now getting better year by year again.

I'm writing this here because it affects the 2026 models more than my 2025 with Aerominum as exception - but there is a slight problem with that material - it's easy to chip. After my first more serious abuse - the laptop getting stuffed into a bag with several metal tools - there is some small chipping on the edges of the material. I'm not sure if this is actually better on the 2026 which looks like it has an aluminum border ring - or if that is just design. At least from the cosmetic side it will be much better on the 2026 - because where it chips the color becomes like aluminum shiny silver. The old magnesium casing certainly didn't get damaged that easily. Yes it's hard - but around the edges that is problematic. Can maybe solve by putting a ring of superglue around on the edge? Maybe LG noticed that chipping on those rare 2025 models in metal grey color and improved it for 2026 models? On the other hand the lower casing since years suffers like many other laptops from the very sharp edges. Especially on the front that is my main annoyance - it's really a pain to use the laptop while sitting on a couch with the laptop on your lap.. those edges dig into your forearms. LG really should round all those exposed edges a little. Otherwise to me the casing is perfect with Aerominum.

In China the X7 358H/32GB Ram/1TB is sold now for 14500rmb. Not that expensive. But it surely won't be below 2500 Euros or 2500usd with that price. China and Korea are always the cheapest places to buy the gram.

But not sure about the pro. It has a different keyboard. But likely too new to already have many with problems. Just 2 years now.

Great. Yeah that's about as much as I got the few tries when I had managed to unlock my lunar lake in the 16 pro with max fan (on normal it would settle to around 37w). As I cannot find out at all what is messing up the power I have to settle with 30w which is nearly even possible with Silent mode (and power limits unlocked with throttlestop). I wonder what EPP setting for you is still smooth enough to tolerate. But that's the best setting with intel before power lake to really prolong idle and low power use activities battery life.. at 255 it will feel pretty bad but it's good to see two extremes first to know the difference and what to look for. Even scrolling then becomes catchy instead of smooth and opening apps really makes a big difference. I settled for 210 on battery and 60 on AC (keeps the notebook slightly cooler and actually improves on Cinebench - and I cannot notice any difference Vs 1 in snappiness.)

how many seconds do you actually get how much power? As the PL1/2 can be a bit unrealiable. But yeah great that you already have the new 2026 model fans. My Gram Pro doesn't have them yet - but was manufactured in early 2025. Mine came however with a much smaller power adapter (65w EU) - but it's still bigger than others being 3 connectors instead of 2 only. It must be an UK problem. Some 10-20w chargers will actually work - others won't. Mine is okay on 5v/2A (but yeah 10w charging may mean you still lose power if you use it for demanding things). As for battery power. Things you need to do. Enable lowest for the NVME drives in power manager (the setting where you can select HIPM+DIPM but lowest is even less). Use power saver windows profile by default on battery - but then increase the PL1/PL2/power limits for that to your liking with Throttlestop. Set EPP to 220 or even 230. Use Bitdfender Free as Antivirus and switch of browsing protection and similar things. Otherwise Windows 11 is draining battery way too quick. You can get into some more detailed power saving things via enabling them in the power profiles via windows registry, but they will not change much (HIPM/DIPM stuff needs to be activated in registry too). Your Cinebench 23 score of 16.000 does show it has quite liberal power usage. I think the version with older fans only reached to 15xxx points. On the Lunar Lake with liberal power settings (if you find in bios the setting that actually unlocks it - I cannot anymore) I got 12xxx - but with the default 40/30 it's only 10600 or so. Panter Lake H could get around 20.xxx but only with high power. I guess with 40/30w it gets around 18000 - it's using a bit less power vs Arrow Lake - but the biggest difference is that at 0.3-3w package power it gets much more work down vs older Intel chips. They really optimised how it can switch off parts of the CPU and the management about cpu power moved away from windows mainly to the CPU deciding if cores should sleep or not because Windows 11 still messes up the management which core should compute what to pure chance.

that gram book has nothing at all in common with the normal grams, and even less gram pro.

I think the Samsung isn't too glossy, way better than the 2021 lg Gram IPS displays - which were like a mirror. The LG OLED on the new gram has quite effective matte coating. But yes, depending on the eyes of you the refresh rate is or isn't problematic. I actually never worked a longer time with a OLED display laptop so I should try that out before I ever upgrade. I remember on CRT I was fine as long as refresh rate was 120hz. 50/60hz really strained my eyes. But I worked quite long with a 21" CRT and only upgraded once 24" IPS got decently priced. TN was really horrible but my first notebook was TNT... This Samsung is too heavy too - I linked it here because many people still believe OLED use more power - but it's crazy how little the now need at high brightness, it's like 1/3 of IPS at that brightness. On very low brightness IPS still wins - but that's not really relevant as we are talking maybe about 0.5-1w difference max in favour of the IPS. Maybe 1-2 generations more and OLED will win at any brightness. I think LG uses 480hz right now - some review mentioned it but I cannot remember for sure. that's what last years model used in any case. It's a bit better vs 240hz.

https://www.notebookcheck.com/Samsung-Galaxy-Book6-Ultra-im-Test-Beeindruckender-Multimedia-Laptop-mit-tollem-OLED-und-RTX-5070.1243968.0.html Not the gram pro panther lake test yet, but showing that at 150nits the OLED/5070/365H combination already beats last year's LG gram pro with the 5050/255H with IPS. At full brightness of 500nits it just trashes the energy consumption of IPS display at 400 nits. All with a 12% smaller battery and a capacitive touchscreen. Samsung but also LG according to those Korean videos just showed that IPS says are over. OLED uses way less power at anything over 100-150nits brightness now if you get the latest and greatest OLED displays, and panther lake anyhow is more efficient than any previous CPU for windows. Yes apple is still ahead on power/efficiency of CPU and GPU but the difference is getting smaller, and Apple still hasn't got OLED. And finally we got an EU price. Seems that panther lake notebooks will sell from 1800-4000euros this year depending on low spec or high spec/quality. 3400 Euro for 32/1 with RTX 5060, another 200 Euros more for 5070. No 2TB pricing out yet.. Guess the lg gram pro with 32gb ram/2TB and 5050 when it comes out will be well above 3000 Euros too. Maybe the lowest spec panther lake gram pro with OLED costing 2300??

I don't trust hwinfo. it shows 40/50 (PL1/PL2) for me - but then it doesn't get there even though it's not overheating and throttlestop doesn't throw any limit and just gets stuck lower. hwinfo64 just shows whatever I set with throttlestop (and as I unlocked in bios it shows unlocked). For fanspeed the AI setting works quite well - though if you remove the LG software for better battery life - you will be stuck with silent, normal and high. As for the fan - the new powerful ones look like here: So maybe the 255H version manufactured later already got upgraded, the earlier ones had the old fans - so it will be a bit of a lottery if you get old or new stock. Guess the two dual speakers are only on the RTX model however.

Well maybe it already has the 2026 model fans. You could find out by putting them on a scale or comparing the image to the Korean reviews of the 2026 model. How did you determine the power levels at each fan setting? I still can't find out which setting in bios actually hard locks them and how LG tools mess with it. Mine now stays on same power levels no matter the fan setting. But yeah the 255H Vs the 256/258V is twice the die size so makes sense to give it higher power.