LG Gram SuperSlim 15.6

[John Ratsey]

I have been using a Galaxy Book Pro 13.3 (model NP-935XDB) as my travel notebook for the past 3 years (I didn't realise it was that long). It's behaved very well and the most recent upgrade was to a 2TB SSD in the M.2 2230 format. However, I've become increasingly annoyed by two aspects (i) the lack of keys for Home / End / PgUp and PgDn and (ii) the keyboard / touchpad layout is sufficiently different from my LG Gram 17 to cause a lot of mis-types for several days after changing notebooks. My eyes would also appreciate a bigger screen (although the Samsung's display quality is excellent). After my latest trip I resolved to look around for a replacement travel notebook which provided the missing navigation keys with the minimal weight or thickness increase. I've found that this time of year is good for computer shopping as retailers want to clear their 2024 model stock to make space for the 2025 products.

 

Samsung, despite my slim and light (0.9kg) Book Pro 13.3, make nothing similarly lightweight in a bigger size plus the 15" model lacks the wanted navigation keys. HP makes 14" notebooks with a column of navigation keys to the right of the keyboard but these weigh 1.3kg or more (almost as much as my Gram 17). Some Lenovo notebooks have PgUp/PgDn in cursor block and lightest is X1 Carbon (1.08kg) which is somewhat expensive. I then looked at LG's line-up and discovered the SuperSlim 15.6 which was introduced in 2023. It wasn't so much the slimness which caught my attention but the weight of a few grammes under 1kg. I wasn't looking for a display as big as 15.6" but the format meant that the computer has a 3 column numpad which I can use for my navigation keys. It also has what LG claims is a premium OLED display. The next question was whether it was available in the UK and how much did it cost? The 2023 model (15Z90RT) was offered by a third party on Amazon but further searching revealed that the 2024 model ( 15Z90ST) with a 16GB RAM + 1TB SSD was available at a major UK electronics retailer for a lower, and what I considered to be reasonable) price so I placed my order.

 

What have I found? The SuperSlim is indeed both thin and light. It's 3/4 of the weight of my Gram 17 with 80% of the screen area. I've been less impressed by the display quality. The supplied LG colour profile had a strong red bias but this has been fixed by my Spyder 5 monitor calibrator. 1920 x 1080 resolution in the 15.6" seems a bit coarse compared to both the Gram 17's and smaller Samsung's displays. A 16:10 panel would also have been a welcome improvement. I suspect, however, that once the LG designers had decided upon a weight of less than 1kg, they found other other compromises had to be made. Hence only USB-C ports (three) and no USB-A although Samsung managed to fit the latter into a notebook of the same thickness. A micro-SD card slot is also absent. They didn't, however, compromise on the battery which is 60Whr. The fan noise at the default cooling mode is noticeable in a quiet room. I've visited the BIOS advanced settings (accessed using the key sequence here) to raise the fan threshold temperatures by 5C to encourage less fan activity. I've noticed one improvement over my 2022 Gram 17 - the new notebook sleeps silently. The SuperSlim has dual M.2 SSD slots and the second one is now occupied by a WD SN770 SSD which had been sitting on my shelf since it was superseded by a 4TB SSD in the Gram 17. Only time will tell if the SuperSlim will fulfill my travel notebbok requirements (spending most of it's travel in a bag and only used in the evenings). At the moment it's the second device on my desk with the primary use of streaming TV.

 

Photos and some data to follow.

[RS4]

I agree about the navigation keys, went from a Sony Vaio 14 inch to LG Gram 16 2021 and at first I thought these extra keys are useless but now these are a must have for me. The SuperSlim model sounds good for a secondary laptop but too many compromises, the standard LG Gram 14/16/17 is still the best allrounder. I have upgraded both my SSD slots and now it sports 2TB+4TB, my Gram 16 2021 still works as good as new and hopefully I can use this for another four years.

[Bullit]

Thanks for the feedback, this is part of what a forum should be.

If LG Gram had a 800 nits screen i would have considered it against an Android tablet albeit would be probably too expensive.

[John Ratsey]

Here's a photo of the SuperSlim 15.6 between the 13" Samsung and the Gram 17. Size-wise it's half way between the two. By itself, the SuperSlim looks big but the Gram 17 puts it into context.

 

In reality, there are few compromises compared to the standard Gram 15.6" which also has an FHD display: Fewer ports (easily fixed with adaptors), a slightly smaller battery and, I assume, a thinner fan. The internal arrangement looks very similar (the 2nd SSD slot now contains a 2TB SSD) and I'm mystified how the weight reduction was achieved.

 

I've done a few performance tests. In Cinebench 23 the Intel Ultra 7 155H CPU comfortably out-performs the i7-1260P CPU in my 2022 Gram 17 but in wPrime the opposite applies. I suspect that wPrime is too old to know how to get the best out of those 16 cores with different performance characteristics. I've done a simple battery test by playing mp4 videos. The result looks more than sufficient for my needs (I remember when getting 3 hours on this test was a very good result!).

 

One issue I would highlight is that whereas the 2023 SuperSlim featured an anti-glare coating on the display, the 2024 model does not so reflections are a potential problem. Another issue for UK (and I think EU) purchasers is that the SuperSlim is shipped with a power brick and two leads which weigh 0.36kg. I have left that in the box and use a much lighter 65W wall-mounted USB-C PSU. The SuperSlim will work, however, with lower rated USB-C PSUs but won't be able to concurrently charge the battery and handle a big CPU load (the maximum battery charge rate is 35W).

 

As for wanting an 800 nits screen, I wonder what the battery drain would be like?

[John Ratsey]

A couple more comments:

1. The SuperSlim seems to sleep properly whereas the fan runs on my Gram 17. I presume that someone figured out how to get the hardware and BIOS to wprk properly with Windows Modern Standby.

2. A useful little feature is that holding down the Fn key brings up a list of extra Fn key short-cuts suh as Fn+Q to change the fan setting.

[RS4]

LG should improve the display of the standard Gram series, they are selling it at premium prices and it needs a Mini LED HDR screen. In normal use the SDR mode will be at 500 nits but during HDR use it can go upto 1600 nits like Macbook Pro. LG has been selling the same display in Gram since last 5 years.

 

Nice to see SuperSlim having functional Modern standby, I have disabled the Modern standby on my Gram 16 2021. Still on Windows 10, will get ESU updates bypass after October 2025.

[skipper]

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)

[John Ratsey]

On 2/19/2025 at 9:47 AM, skipper said:

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)

I propose that LG makes a 15" 16:10 notebook. The display (preferably more resolution than 1920 x 1200) size would be 201mm x 323mm which is slightly higher than a 15.6 panel and about 20mm narrower. I would make the notebook narrower and provide a column of navigation keys instead of the numpad. The overall size will be slightly smaller than the SuperSlim so there would be no difficulty in keeping the weight below 1kg. This design would fill the gap between the 16:10 14" and 16" models.