LG 2025 Notebooks

[RS4]

Acer Swift Air has some deficiencies but it is still a decent first attempt in this segment, they will improve the product year by year. The first few versions of LG Gram also had few problems. 

 

LG Gram lineup is very popular in Korea with both consumers and business, that is why Samsung tried to compete with them and failed. Samsung Galaxy Book 5Pro now weighs 1.56 KG for 16 inch.

 

 

[Samir]

Personally, I find the 2880x1800 resolution too small to work natively on a display less than 17".  I can see why the Grams have a niche, especially in Korea--they are a dominant brand there along with samsung and the two are always back and forth.

[skipper]

13 hours ago, Samir said:

Personally, I find the 2880x1800 resolution too small to work natively on a display less than 17".  I can see why the Grams have a niche, especially in Korea--they are a dominant brand there along with samsung and the two are always back and forth.

I agree, last year LG introduced the 16in Pro version only with an OLED screen and the same 1800p resolution, also glossy. I would have never bought this version. I am glad that this year the top of the range came back to matte IPS with 1600p, but there are still some versions with the same OLED 1800p screen, Arrow Lake processors and no dGPU. The Lunar Lake versions are all with the same IPS display.

[John Ratsey]

I've just noticed that LG has introduced three grams, 14Z90RU, 16Z90RU and 17Z90RU as part of its 2025 range. There is no product information for these on the LG UK website but I was able to discover more from other LG European websites. They are all fitted with the 15W Core i5 1334U CPU with 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM and either a 256GB or 512GB SSD. Perhaps the R in the model number is because of the 2023 CPU and the U in the model number is for "Updated"? Pricing is more competitive than the other 2025 models with newer Intel chips. I assume that they were able to get the older CPUs at an attractive price and reflect this in the product pricing. Displays and batteries appear to be those used for other products of the same size. I know from experience that the higher rated CPUs can't sustain their nominal speed for very long due to thermal limits of the chassis so there's not much disadvantage in having a nominally slower CPU.

 

Curiosity has prompted me to order a 14Z90RU with a view to it replacing the LG Superslim as my travel notebook. I was unsure when I bought the latter how well I would get on with it. While my fingers liked the same keyboard as my Gram 17, the Superslim's size is a little awkward for putting in bags and I missed the 16:10 display. Battery performance under typical usage wasn't as good as I expected. The OLED display may be a factor while whatever is running in the background tends to get the CPU running faster (and using more power) than really necessary. The 14Z90RU has an advertised weight of 999 grams so I'm wondering what is missing compared with the 2025 14Z90T which is said to weigh 1.12kg. I thought hard whether I should buy the latter as the price difference is 18% at Amazon UK's current pricing but decided that I didn't want the AI systems getting tempted to send my personal data to a server somewhere.

 

PS: Something I noticed in the notes under the Thunderbolt graphic on the translated website is the comment about power supplies: It says that even 10W will work (obviously for slow charging when turned off). I've previously found that 45W and 25W are OK although the computer will grumble.

[extremecarver]

You found them with oled? 16Z90RU-G.AA55G

 

For example is just the 2023 model with a new name, it sold for 700 euros so it's a good deal for people not needing something new or with great battery life.

100% they just dug out old stock maybe reserved for warranty or whatever.

 

If battery life is important need actual 2025 model. The battery life went downhill from 2022 and onwards Vs 2021 as intel didn't get it done. 

 

Finally at tsmc things improved!

[John Ratsey]

Something else I've noticed: There are now LG grams with Ryzen chips. Use your favourite search engine to find out more but those I have found have 16:9 15.6" displays.

[John Ratsey]

18 hours ago, extremecarver said:

You found them with oled? 16Z90RU-G.AA55G

 

For example is just the 2023 model with a new name, it sold for 700 euros so it's a good deal for people not needing something new or with great battery life.

100% they just dug out old stock maybe reserved for warranty or whatever.

 

If battery life is important need actual 2025 model. The battery life went downhill from 2022 and onwards Vs 2021 as intel didn't get it done. 

 

Finally at tsmc things improved!

No. The OLED I was referring to is in the LG gram SuperSlim. My gram 14 has the standard IPS panel.

 

I agree that the 2025 machines should be more power efficient but I'm happy with something that has a bit of inherent hardware throttling to limit the maximum power drain by rogue applications. I've now got my gram 14 and will put my observations in a separate thread.

[skipper]

21 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

No. The OLED I was referring to is in the LG gram SuperSlim. My gram 14 has the standard IPS panel.

 

I agree that the 2025 machines should be more power efficient but I'm happy with something that has a bit of inherent hardware throttling to limit the maximum power drain by rogue applications. I've now got my gram 14 and will put my observations in a separate thread.

The 2025 machines are not just more power efficient. Lunar Lake but also Arrow Lake are day and night. They are not produced by Intel but by TMSC, on less than half nanometers than the previous generation, they are much cooler and the Lunar Lake battery that has RAM integrated in the CPU like Apple has the greatest battery life of any Intel processor ever made.