lg Gram - Durability long term - Paint and screen (16Z90P)

[extremecarver]

How are your LG Gram's holding up? In general mine holds up pretty good. Battery degradation is for me noticeable after nearly 2 years of use - but still pretty good. Clearly not as good as it once was however.

 

The main problems are - the super flexible screen - seems to get more dead pixels. I have 8 white pixels if I count correctly. I never had such a problem before that slowly more pixels became dead - but then it's way more flexible display as I ever had before. Luckily the resolution is high so it's only visible on a full black screen (or single color). On the plus side - besides the dead pixels the screen is still very uniform and the backlight hasn't lost power. It's still really hard to see on the balcony in shadow when it's very light in summer however. Would still prefer a semi matte solution (and 50-100nits more brightness).

 

More annoying is the paint slowly loosing touch with the magnesium body. I used a blade to scrape of the paint on the edges because micro bubbles if formed are pretty sharp. I think this happens in combination with sweat. Never had such a problem before on another laptop. It's a bit more annyoing around the touchpad area. Cannot easily flatten it there.

 

Fingerprint reader has clearly become degraded too. Get about 50% wrong results and yes I updated my fingers in Windows. I still used Windows 10 as some days on 11 had much worse battery life so I rolled back and don't plan on upgrading as long as Windows 10 is supported.

 

Keyboard had some keys getting stuck - taking the cap off and putting it back carefully solved it. 

 

Great - the display hinge still works like new. Touchpad glass is still very good - and the keyboard hasn't gotten smeary either. The palm rests lost some texture and are a bit stickier - but less so than on other notebooks used before.

 

 

Overall - not as sturdy as some older Lenovo Thinkpads (e.g. T440s) but actually better than my previous laptop - a Thinkpad T480s (which I never should have bought because it had too many problems right out of the box). I would give it 9/10 (considering the light weight, or 8/10 not regarding the weight). Components/hardware inside all fine - no problems. 

 

The chassis of the Gram 16 still holds up very well - even though I often stuffed it into my backpack without any cover while hiking/backpacking/travelling. If I could chose - I would opt for a plain magensium chassis without color however. The main upgrade still would be a brighter and less mirroring display - the second big upgrade of course would be if it used AMD Ryzen platform for even better battery life and thirdly some more supports below the chassis so it flexes less (anything I glued on didn't survive long term). I will wait out I think another 2 years before upgrading - and then hope for a laptop with those problems solved - and also will chose 32GB RAM. Cutting video 16GB RAM is a bit troublesome. I don't compile other stuff on the laptop - I do that remotely on servers (with 64 respectively 128GB RAM) so only video cutting is where the Gram 16 is limited for what I ever did and really noticeable not that fast - it's both the internal graphics and the RAM however which are a factor. I don't cut video often so I do want IGP only as battery life overall is more important to me. I do want to stick to lg gram form factor and weight class with great battery life.

 

 

Oh yeah in super low temperatures the battery fared really bad. Used it in Nepal at -5° Celsius and the numbers dropped liked a stone. Was happy to get 4 hours or so at those temps. Yeah my T440s didn't do better but never had such a great battery life in first place (meaning it lost comparatively less).

[RS4]

I have a  LG Gram 16Z90P in white colour, have kept the battery charging locked to 80% since the start and the battery health is excellent, battery wear level is at just 1.1%.

 

The screen is in excellent condition, zero dead pixels and brightness is same as new.

 

The white paint used by LG is good, no chipping/bubbling or fading or yellowing.

 

Fingerprint reader works as good as new, no change. I have kept the laptop on Windows 10, have added 2TB SK Hynix P31 to the second SSD slot. 

 

Keyboard is in good condition, no stuck keys, some frequently used keys show signs of oil which is expected on a white keyboard.

 

Touchpad is as good as new, palmrest is also in excellent condition, the white paint used is fantastic.

 

The Gram chassis is strong, I move it around daily from desk to sofa to bed and have also travelled with it in a laptop backpack with zero issues.  

 

conclusion:  I am very happy with the LG Gram 16, no complaints, I plan to use the same laptop for 5 years and will keep updating the thread here.

[John Ratsey]

I'm now on my 2nd Gram 17 and each has accumulated about 6 months use as a desktop. The most obvious wear being a shiny area on the left palm rest. The 2021 Gram 17 (16GB RAM) was bought secondhand in early 2022. My eyes loved the big screen (apart from the occasional reflection problem) but occasionally suffered major slow-downs due to full RAM (Windows' memory management asleep on the job?). When I saw a 32GB 2022 Gram 17 in Amazon Warehouse at 2/3rd of the new price I grabbed it. This has solved both the overflowing RAM problem and the screen reflections. The only improvement which would get me to upgrade would be a better cooling system as the current inadequate small fan limits the CPU performance (every now and again I unsuccessfully search the www for a dual fan cooling solution).

 

I would note that my Gram 17 is either in use on my desk or put away if I need the desk space for something else. I use a 13" Galaxy Book Pro for travel. If I did need to take the Gram 17 out of the house then I've got a neoprene sleeve made for a 15" notebook which fits nicely.

[Steerpike]

I posted here (with a picture) -

 

that the coating on the spacebar and several keys (esp. Alt) is coming off  after less than a year of gentle use. Palm rests are so far holding up, but then, I don't rest hard on them; I've found the trackpad to be not very good at palm-rejection, so I have trained myself to keep my wrists / palms elevated. 

 

I'd love to see a picture of yours, with the various paint issues!  Like JohnRatsey, my machine has yet to travel! 

[extremecarver]

Here are pics of the paint problem. I could guess it's related to sweat and abrasion, in summer I live in Cyprus and it's pretty hot there so sweat is a problem, then as I said no case and into backpack for hiking or other things.

I also throw my laptop onto my bed or let it drop 10cm from time to time. I've never had a mechanical problem (except cosmetics like here) so I am rough with my gear... The paint chipping near the touchpad however is due to normal use. And even being quite careful I think on the edges I would face problems without a case. There is clearly some bonding issue of paint and magnesium...

 

(Mind my first LG gram had a hardware fault right on arrival so I had to send it back straight away (which wasn't easy due to shipping back to USA from Taiwan and lithium ion battery problem - cost 200usd with DHL of which Amazon only refunded half the concept of the gram still convinced me so I straight ordered another one)

 

I didn't clean the touchpad before taking a picture - so while the palm rest the color has gotten that shiny, the touchpad actually is a bit fatty and still works as new (something I cannot say of older Lenovo touchpads which got smeary over time).

Can also see the front with the color chipping off - that started already maybe 3-4 months into using the laptop - so I scraped it of and sometimes have to scrape a bit further as the edges get shar on new paint scraping off.

 

),

 

 

[extremecarver]

BTW - the baseplate has some different material - so there the color chips of without those sharp edges. The sharp edges are why I had to scrape of the color - because it hurts on the skin at the places the color srapes off.

 

My perfect Gram would be a 500 nits screen, with 3200x2000 resolution or maybe even 4K if it doesn't impact battery life too much on ZEN 4 anymore, OLED if battery use is same as backlit LED, ZEN 4 and a 99WH battery, same format as right now, keep weight nearly same too (guess 99WH battery would be 40g heavier vs 80WH, add 20g on the chassis so it flexes less in the middle/better support from below, but keep it light weight foremost). 

Yes with my use I have some dead pixels (just counted it's 9 dead ones) but I don't care much and prefer that a lot over a heavier chassis.

[extremecarver]

I got my keyboard working for a couple more weeks by exchanging the e letter - however by now it's really broken. "e" is wrongly registered or too late on like every 5. time - for the N°1 letter by usage this is horrible. So I need a new keyboard.

Also the battery is degrading like crazy now - Within 2 weeks from 69 to 67kwh. I think it's nearing it's end of life and the degradation will be pretty quick now. 

Cannot fault the battery too much, but the keyboard is really annoying - that*s way too fast to break (and no  there is no dirt below the keycap). Maybe that's due to the excessive flex so the keyboard breaks faster.

 

The build quality is simply not fully up to Lenovo/HP/Dell business notebooks but seems more like their premium consumer noteboolks.