LG 2025 Notebooks

[John Ratsey]

LG announced four new notebooks for 2025 https://www.lg.com/us/press-release/lg-hybrid-ai-gram-laptops .Three models are upgraded versions of the Pro and the fourth is a more wallet-friendly 15.6" model. There's a little more information at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lg-gram-pro-2-in-1-2025-hands-on-of-course-a-thin-and-light-laptop-gets-ai-at-ces-2025-023252332.html . The 17" Pro with dGPU is heavier than the 2024 version.

 

We will have to wait to discover if, as in previous years, the standard models are refreshed with the latest Intel chipsets.

 

[RS4]

LG has neglected the standard Gram models for the last 4-5 years with very few useful updates, I am expecting the same this year too. 

[skipper]

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).

[Samir]

LG was never good at consolidating part numbers/model.  Source:  I was the person that used to stay on top of that for their national call center, haha.

[John Ratsey]

On 2/26/2025 at 6:57 PM, skipper said:

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.

The Gram Book has appeared on the LG UK website. What caught my eye was "Color gamut NTSC 45% (Typical)" which, unless I'm mistaken, is underwhelming. I'm prepared to pay a extra for a notebook with a top quality display but the LG book appears to offer anything above average except for the price tag.

 

7 hours ago, Samir said:

LG was never good at consolidating part numbers/model.  Source:  I was the person that used to stay on top of that for their national call center, haha.

It's a bewildering system and it's challenging trying to make sure that I select the right product out of AD78A1, AA78A1, AD89A1 and AD79A1.

[John Ratsey]

There's a simple review of a 2025 Gram 17 here. There's a lot of emphasis on AI, but how much of that is new? The 2025 Gram has an AI fan setting whereas the 2024 models have an Auto fan setting. I wonder if there's any difference.

[skipper]

1 hour ago, John Ratsey said:

There's a simple review of a 2025 Gram 17 here. There's a lot of emphasis on AI, but how much of that is new? The 2025 Gram has an AI fan setting whereas the 2024 models have an Auto fan setting. I wonder if there's any difference.

Thanks for the link. It is very interesting because it is the only review with benchmarks for the Arrow Lake version.

Here :

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lightweight-with-power-and-20-hours-of-endurance-LG-Gram-Pro-16-laptop-review.992325.0.html

 

is the latest review with Lunar Lake. It is basically a bit slower than your 2024 version with Meteor Lake. So if you want more power you have to go with Arrow Lake.

I just run the Geekbench on my 2023 Gram Pro and I barely get 9000 in multicore, but of course the GPU score of 50000 is still far ahead from the iGPU versions.

I need more power than battery life, I really don't know if I will get any real benefits from upgrading.

 

What is your Geekbench score for the 2024 version. The problem with the 16in 2024 version is that it is a glossy OLED panel that I do not like.

Yesterday also I saw at a store your 17in 2024 version and I feel that the keyboard is a bit mushier with less travel than my 2023 version. This is another issue to consider.

 

[John Ratsey]

6 hours ago, skipper said:

What is your Geekbench score for the 2024 version. The problem with the 16in 2024 version is that it is a glossy OLED panel that I do not like.

Yesterday also I saw at a store your 17in 2024 version and I feel that the keyboard is a bit mushier with less travel than my 2023 version. This is another issue to consider.

I've run Geekbench 6 on my 2024 Gram Pro and, not surprisingly, the results, particularly for the multi-core CPU test, depend on the fan control settings. I could probably get slightly higher results of I closed all my open programs, but I did close Firefox with its innumerable open tabs.

 

For the auto fan control setting, the CPU result is 1809 (single)/ 7688 (multi), the GPU result is 27722.

For the normal fan control setting, the CPU result is 1833 (single)/ 10304 (multi), the GPU result is 26691.

For the high fan control setting, the CPU result is 2207 (single)/ 11658 (multi), the GPU result is 27378.

 

For comparison, I've also done the same tests on my 2024 Gram SuperSlim which has the same CPU but only 16GB RAM, one fan and nothing else running. The SuperSlim's GPU score is consistently lower than for the Gram Pro. Strangely, while the Geekbench GPU report includes "Transfer Rate 5592 MT/s" for the Gram Pro, there's no corresponding entry in the report for the SuperSlim. The OpenCL Device memory shows as 14.4GB for the Gram Pro and only 6.86GB for the SuperSlim. Does the system allocate more RAM to the GPU when there's 32GB?

 

For the auto fan control setting, the CPU result is 2072 (single)/ 10580 (multi), the GPU result is 19618.

For the normal fan control setting, the CPU result is 2013 (single)/ 10950 (multi), the GPU result is 21448.

For the high fan control setting, the CPU result is 2101 (single)/ 11178 (multi), the GPU result is 21554.

 

Regarding the keyboard on my Gram Pro, I feel it's an improvement on my 2022 Gram 17. However, I find that fingers usually quickly acclimatise to keyboards.

[skipper]

Thank you very much, these results correspond to the Notebookcheck scores. Which means that there was a significant improvement between Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake, like 30% in Multicore. I got 2495/8774, the best I managed in high performance mode and no other apps running. Lunar Lake is slightly inferior to Meteor Lake but Arrow Lake in multicore presents again a huge improvement, almost doubling in multicore from my model and a decent increase in single core. I don't think I will experience a real improvement in everyday use with just 30% improvement and the dedicated GPU in my model is still faster than the latest iGPUs. I was considering to grab a 2024 model but will abstain, if I upgrade Lunar Lake is not for me, I have to see what comes in Arrow Lake.

[John Ratsey]

11 hours ago, skipper said:

Thank you very much, these results correspond to the Notebookcheck scores. Which means that there was a significant improvement between Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake, like 30% in Multicore. I got 2495/8774, the best I managed in high performance mode and no other apps running. Lunar Lake is slightly inferior to Meteor Lake but Arrow Lake in multicore presents again a huge improvement, almost doubling in multicore from my model and a decent increase in single core. I don't think I will experience a real improvement in everyday use with just 30% improvement and the dedicated GPU in my model is still faster than the latest iGPUs. I was considering to grab a 2024 model but will abstain, if I upgrade Lunar Lake is not for me, I have to see what comes in Arrow Lake.

One big unknown at the moment is how much the LG Gram chassis limitations will throttle the Arrow Lake potential. In recent years the hardware improvements have tended to be incremental. Perhaps the biggest performance boost this century came from the shift from mechanical hard drives to SSDs. My reason for changing from a 2022 Gram 17 to the 2024 Gram Pro 17 was primarily to get quieter operation because of the dual fans. I haven't noticed any significant change in performance but my tests indicated an improved battery run time should the need arise.

[skipper]

5 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

One big unknown at the moment is how much the LG Gram chassis limitations will throttle the Arrow Lake potential. In recent years the hardware improvements have tended to be incremental. Perhaps the biggest performance boost this century came from the shift from mechanical hard drives to SSDs. My reason for changing from a 2022 Gram 17 to the 2024 Gram Pro 17 was primarily to get quieter operation because of the dual fans. I haven't noticed any significant change in performance but my tests indicated an improved battery run time should the need arise.

The move from my 2021 model to the 2023 almost doubled in performance. Of course, I don't see this in everyday browsing and office work, but quite often it can be important in some software I use. I think Arrow Lake has also managed improved efficiency and performance and probably cooler operation, though all the attention is on Lunar Lake. Lunar Lake for me will not be a real upgrade and the minimum 5-6hrs of battery life I get with the current one is more than enough. I understand your concern, 2022 onwards with 12-16 cores only single fan cooling was subpar

[John Ratsey]

Comparison of the specs shows that the 2025 Gram Pro 17 is 1.7mm thicker and 70g heavier than the 2024 version. Perhaps the extra thickness is to accommodate thicker fans which will increase the cooling airflow. There's no change in the thickness of the normal Gram 17 although the specs indicate that the Arrow Lake version is 39g heavier than the 2024 model. Has that been given a second fan? If so, that will reduce the feature difference between the two models.

[skipper]

The normal Pros have already dual fans. I think the Arrow Lake version with the RTX4050 is the heavier option. But I really prefer the 16in version for portability. Today on Notebookchekc they communicated a rumor about a 16in Pro with RTX5050 later in the year. Curious about that.