LG Gram 17 (2021): Some Impressions

[John Ratsey]

I recently bought a Gram 17 model 17Z90P to replace a Dell Optiplex all-in-one which, I had decided, was taking up too much desk space. Before the Optiplex I had used an XPS 15 but my eyes were suggesting that they would like a bigger screen. So, with the Optiplex too big and and XPS 15 too small, I'm hoping that the Gram 17 will be a happy compromise.

 

What attracted me to the Gram 17? There's not much choice in the 17" category and the XPS 17 is overpowered for my needs. As a long-term user of the thin-and-light notebooks I was also curious to try an LG product and the 3lb Gram 17 would make a good companion to the 2lb Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 13.3 which I recently bought to use away from home. I spent most of yesterday transferring everything to the Gram 17 which is now in use. What have I noticed so far? The screen is very reflective but this can be largely mitigated by tilting it back as there's no loss of quality due to the excellent viewing angles. The keyboard action is very pleasant - fairly low travel but comfortable. I'm not a fan of having a numpad and would have preferred a column of navigation keys on the right side of the keyboard. However, pressing the NumLk key toggles between numbers and navigation keys (there's no status light but on an-screen display to show when the status is changed) so it's better than nothing. My last encounter with a notebook with a numpad was a 15" Dell E5570 which ended after a few months as there wasn't enough room for my left wrist on the palmrest. There's no such problem with the Gram 17.

 

A few days ago I had opened up the Gram 17 to add a 2nd SSD (Intel 660p which had been used in the XPS 15). Reviews elsewhere had indicated that getting inside wasn't easy. The difficult part is removing the four rubber feet on the corners as these are not only held in place by adhesive but are also embedded in recesses so it's a matter of prising them out of the holes. There's also a strange little foot between the two back feet which is too small to be in contact with the desk surface. The other screws are under covers which are easy to remove. Once the screws are out then it's a matter of prising off the base. I started at the middle front. Anyway, here's a view of the inside before I added the 2nd SSD:

There's plenty of empty space and I assume that the boards are shared with the smaller Grams using different cables.

 

The fan isn't very big but nor is it noisy. To be continued in due course ....

[John Ratsey]

Some more comments:

(i) There's a quirk in the Battery Life Extender option in the LG Control Center. It's meant to limit the maximum charge to 80%. However, if the function is enabled when there's more than 80% charge then the system maintains the maximum charge at 100% until the cumpter is used on battery for long enough for the charge level drops below 80% whereupon the extender becomes effective.

(ii) The audio quality through the built-in loudspeakers is surprisingly good with more than a hint of bass.

(iii) I did some simple speed performance tests on both the Gram 17 (Core i7-1165G7 CPU) and the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 13.3 (Core i5-1130G7 CPU) and compared these with some results in my archive for older notebooks. Two noteworthy points are (a) the near doubling of nominal CPU power doesn't provide a very big speed improvement and (b) performance is similar to my Precision 5510 with an i7-6820HQ CPU which was quite potent in its era.

[goldfrapp0x0309]

I installed warzone just for science and was surprised it ran (albeit < 15fps). 

I'm debating getting a Sonnet EGPU for whenever I want to game with it.

 

The other similar model is MSI Z17 but the price is disgusting 0.0 

[hfm]

On 3/14/2022 at 12:13 AM, goldfrapp0x0309 said:

I installed warzone just for s&g and was surprised it ran (albeit < 15fps). 

I'm debating getting a Sonnet EGPU for whenever I want to game with it.

 

The other similar model is MSI Z17 but the price is disgusting 0.0 

 

I still have my Gram 17 (2019, i7-8565U). I used to game on it with Sonnet Breakaway 550 + 2070, worked great.

[John Ratsey]

The MSI Z17 is a completely different machine made for a different purpose. The Gram 17 is for people who want a big screen for everyday tasks but many of the other 17" machines are 3D graphics workstations or gaming machines where a 17" display means a bigger chassis for holding the hardware.

 

That's a valid point about using an eGPU connected via Thunderbolt. It's not something I've had a need to investigate but it merits discussion in the accessories forum. I assume that the technology has now been fairly well debugged.

[John Ratsey]

After a week of use my hands are happy with the keyboard even though it's offset. They action is good. I can occasionally hear the fan but it's very quiet compared with an XPS 15 which I've temporarily got alongside it. I've got a Thunderbolt dock connected using one of these magnetic connectors which means that disconnection doesn't cause any port wear.

 

The very glossy screen is noticeable when sun is coming in the window but can be mitigated when there's a light background by turning up the brightness which I normally have at about 60%. I haven't discarded the possibility of getting an anti-glare screen protector although this may worsen what is a delightfully crisp display. A factory-applied slightly matte finish would be the best solution.

[Steerpike]

I just picked up an LG Gram 17 at Costco (Bay Area, USA) for what I believe to be the stupidly low price of $1,100 (1,600 - 500 instant rebate, rebate ends tomorrow!).  Model number is 17Z95P (17Z95P-K.AAE8U1 in full).  Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1195G7 @ 2.90GHz

 

It has 512 GB SSD, 16 GB Ram, and a rather unusual (to me) display resolution of 2560 x 1600. I typically seek out FHD displays because I don't like how some older apps run on higher res displays but decided to risk this one.

 

1. I just love how light it is! I can pick it up by the corner and walk around with it (which I do quite often). The Dell XPS17 I returned last month was a brick by comparison. It is obviously relatively delicate, but I look after my gear and don't anticipate any issues; certainly a good trade-off for the weight. The XPS was just over-engineered, IMO. 
2. The screen is very highly reflective but I seem to be able to mitigate that by tilting the screen and increasing brightness.  Very nice display overall. 
3. The keyboard, overall, is fine. Not as solid as my old samsung NP940X5J, but quite usable.  Like you (John Ratsey) I didn't want the numeric keypad (mainly because of how it skews the trackpad to the left) but I do appreciate the dedicated home/end/PgUp/PgDn keys, which the XPS didn't have. I've had a few 'misfires' where my right hand (Palm) has touched the trackpad and repositioned the mouse, but it does seem to be relatively well managed. 
4. The trackpad (touchpad) is not working well for me, so far. As a basic mouse device it's fine, but I do make extensive use of 'two finger scrolling' to move up and down in spreadsheets, emails, etc. On a web page, it seems to work fine but in email, half the time my two-finger movement gets mis-interpreted as a zoom action (which is two finger pinch), and in excel, half the time my two-finger movements are mis-interpreted as right-clicks (which is two-finger tap, rather than two-finger drag). I'm trying to teach myself to be very precise in how I use the two-finger actions, but if I can't master this, I may just have to return it as this is quite critical to me.  I do use an external mouse quite a bit of the time, but still - there are times when I'm stuck with the trackpad and I really need it to work well for me. I'll soldier on with it for now. 
5. Battery life. I've been testing battery life the past two days, unplugging it from the charger and seeing how long it runs.  The battery is running down surprisingly fast!  I'm doing nothing but browsing the web and opening spreadsheets; no games, no videos, nothing to stress the machine (I have yet to hear the fans kick in, ever!). I haven't done detailed measurements yet, so I can't give specifics, but it seems like I'm getting only ~6 hours from a full charge, which given my use-pattern, doesn't seem great. From 8pm to midnight last night it dropped from 100% to 50% under light usage; I then hibernated to save power; this morning, from 9am to 11am it's dropped from 50% to 27%. I'm hoping that by cycling it a few times it will 'calibrate' the battery, or whatever, but so far not so great.  I do love the fact that it ships with a small (light) 65 Watt charger. The Dell XPS17 shipped with a monstrous (heavy) 130W charger. 

As mentioned above, I prefer FHD displays (1920x ...) because my eyesight is not great and I don't need anything 'finer', plus, I've found that older apps just don't scale too well. I'm currently running Quicken, and reports are coming up very weird (Quicken is a real POS when it comes to display scaling, quite shameful given how long it's been around and how much they charge for it!) I'm also using 'PWSafe' (trusty old password safe). It came up way too small initially, but it does allow me to select fonts. It didn't seem to be remembering those font settings, but that may be due to other issues. So I would say, so far, 'most' apps I'm trying seem to be doing OK with the higher res display (I've set 'scaling' to 175%, up from the 'recommended' of 150%). 

 

I am planning to add a second 2TB SSD, so I can house my entire photo collection, all my data files, and a lot of videos, but for now I'm going to see just how livable 'OneDrive' is. I have a 'business' OneDrive allocation of 1TB, and I'm going to see just how practical it is to use its feature to store everything in the cloud and only download files as needed. I sometimes do searches across all files for various keywords (using Agent Ransack), and I'm sure that won't work, but I will see just how usable it is. I'm also going to try to live with Windows 11 with minimum hacking / tweaking ... so far I've just turned off the 'show more options' feature in Explorer, and enabled Hibernate. 

 

PS - I love how they included a full-size HDMI port, and, two 'classic' USB ports. The Dell XPS included neither, which meant my external wireless mouse transmitter had to be connected via a USB-C dongle. 

 

 

 

[John Ratsey]

2 hours ago, Steerpike said:

I just picked up an LG Gram 17 at Costco (Bay Area, USA) for what I believe to be the stupidly low price of $1,100 (1,600 - 500 instant rebate, rebate ends tomorrow!).  Model number is 17Z95P (17Z95P-K.AAE8U1 in full).  Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1195G7 @ 2.90GHz. It has 512 GB SSD, 16 GB Ram, and a rather unusual (to me) display resolution of 2560 x 1600.

That's good value. There's also some clear-out pricing on this side of the pond but in British pounds instead of US dollars (but our 20% VAT accounts for much of the difference). Personally, I think the 1TB SSD is more useful than the slightly faster CPU which probably hits the power limit a bit quicker. It is an unusual display resolution but provides more sharpness than FHD while not going all the way to QHD. I've just checked and I'm also on 175% scaling. I've also got my older software where I've had to fiddle with the High DPI Settings in the program properties to find the best compromise. Overall, I like the display, particularly the sharpness and the 16:10 aspect ratio. The glare problem I was having a couple of weeks ago has diminished as the sun has got higher in the sky.

 

My hands and fingers have got accustomed to the offset keyboard and I've got NumLk off so the numpad becomes a navigation pad. I haven't used the trackpad much as I've got an external mouse but one suggestion for the two finger scrolling is to try to hold the fingers together. I've had the problem of two fingers being interpreted as zooming on other computers so it's not specific to this computer. One work-around is to disable the pinch to zoom in the touchpad properties.

 

I'm surprised by your observed battery drain which needs investigation. BatteryInfoView is simple free utility which makes it easy to check the current power usage in Watts. You'll be looking for no more than 6W to get a comfortable 10 hours on battery. Task Manager shows which software is using the resources (particular CPU and Disk) although tracking down which software is causing high activity by a background process can be challenging but Process Explorer will help. Also check the effect of display brightness on power drain. I'm wondering if OneDrive is one of the problems if it is continuously trying to sync files. It will be using the CPU and network connection plus stopping the SSD from sleeping. I've avoided Windows 11 as it won't let me put the Task Bar on the left side of the display so I can maximise the vertical space.

 

I also appreciate the good selection of ports although most are having an easy life as I bought a Thunderbolt dock which is connected to the computer using a magnetic USB-C plug which seems to provide good connectivity (no adverse impact on the speed of an external SSD connected to the dock).

 

Overall, the Gram 17 is fulfilling my objective of having a bigger screen than a 15.6" notebook while being easy to clear off my desk.

[Steerpike]

8 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

...

My hands and fingers have got accustomed to the offset keyboard and I've got NumLk off so the numpad becomes a navigation pad. I haven't used the trackpad much as I've got an external mouse but one suggestion for the two finger scrolling is to try to hold the fingers together. I've had the problem of two fingers being interpreted as zooming on other computers so it's not specific to this computer. One work-around is to disable the pinch to zoom in the touchpad properties.

 

 

I just tried to compose an important email (in outlook) where I had to copy / paste info from several other emails, scrolling through them extensively. The two-finger scrolling drove me crazy!  I've since disabled 'pinch to zoom', and the three- and four-finger gestures in the hope this helps. I do have the external mouse plugged in but I'm trying to simulate my 'on the road' use case.  Also, the darned 'start menu' (windows 11 style) kept popping up for no apparent reason, mid-typing! I've turned off more features in the hope of killing that. If I really focus on holding my two fingers together, it does seem to help. But I've been doing exactly this on my Samsung for years and it works flawlessly, so I'm really hoping I can get to the bottom of what's going on! 

 

EDIT TO ADD: disabling 'pinch to zoom' obviously seems to have stopped that issue, but - I'm still getting the situation where, half the time I try to use two-finger scrolling, I get the 'right click context menu', which is what you get if you "two finger tap" to simulate right-clicking. This seems to be almost exclusive to outlook, though - I'm only seeing it occasionally in other apps. 

8 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

 

I'm surprised by your observed battery drain which needs investigation. BatteryInfoView is simple free utility which makes it easy to check the current power usage in Watts. You'll be looking for no more than 6W to get a comfortable 10 hours on battery. Task Manager shows which software is using the resources (particular CPU and Disk) although tracking down which software is causing high activity by a background process can be challenging but Process Explorer will help. Also check the effect of display brightness on power drain. I'm wondering if OneDrive is one of the problems if it is continuously trying to sync files. It will be using the CPU and network connection plus stopping the SSD from sleeping. I've avoided Windows 11 as it won't let me put the Task Bar on the left side of the display so I can maximise the vertical space.

...

I'll be digging into this over the next few days. I will say, I was doing a LOT of work in Chrome, using the 'Google timeline' feature, which may have used a good deal of power. 

 

Regarding windows 11 and the 'left side' taskbar, I did stumble across this utility that claims to address this (and a lot more) GitHub - valinet/ExplorerPatcher: This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows . I may try it myself, even though I have no desire to see the taskbar on the left!  

EDIT TO ADD: FWIW - I did install 'ExplorerPatcher', and it does indeed allow you to place the taskbar on the left side!  It does a whole lot more too!  Quite amazing how powerful it is. But I'm going to uninstall it for now, as I want to explore the 'pure windows 11' environment for a bit longer 🙂

[John Ratsey]

1 hour ago, Steerpike said:

Regarding windows 11 and the 'left side' taskbar, I did stumble across this utility that claims to address this (and a lot more) GitHub - valinet/ExplorerPatcher: This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows . I may try it myself, even though I have no desire to see the taskbar on the left!  

EDIT TO ADD: FWIW - I did install 'ExplorerPatcher', and it does indeed allow you to place the taskbar on the left side!  It does a whole lot more too!  Quite amazing how powerful it is. But I'm going to uninstall it for now, as I want to explore the 'pure windows 11' environment for a bit longer 🙂

Thanks for the pointer to Explorer Patcher. I'll keep an eye on how it evolves although it's also possible that M$ may modify Win11's behaviour.

 

You could also try changing the touchpad's sensitivity setting to see if it helps with the remaining problems.

 

And I'll be interested to hear the outcome of your battery drain investigations. One measure I've used in the past is to cap the maximum CPU speed as the turbo mode uses a lot more power to provide a small improvement in speed. However, the CPU settings (and others) are missing from the advanced power options so tweaking will be needed to un-hide those settings or use software such as ThrottleStop.

[Steerpike]

9 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

Thanks for the pointer to Explorer Patcher. I'll keep an eye on how it evolves although it's also possible that M$ may modify Win11's behaviour.

 

You could also try changing the touchpad's sensitivity setting to see if it helps with the remaining problems.

 

I'll be trying touchpad sensitivity today - something has to be done as it is driving me nuts! 

 

9 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

 

And I'll be interested to hear the outcome of your battery drain investigations. One measure I've used in the past is to cap the maximum CPU speed as the turbo mode uses a lot more power to provide a small improvement in speed. However, the CPU settings (and others) are missing from the advanced power options so tweaking will be needed to un-hide those settings or use software such as ThrottleStop.

 

Others have said that also, but in my two recent encounters with Win 11, processor power management is present in Win 11 so I wonder if you experienced an earlier version?  I can go to - Control Panel, Power Options, Change Plan Settings, Change Advanced Power Settings, and there I can open 'Processor Power Management', and have the option to set Maximum Processor State for 'on battery' and 'plugged in'.  I've used this for years in windows 10 on my Samsung to stop the fan from kicking in. 

 

Edit To Add: shouldn't I be hearing the fan, though, if Turbo mode is kicking in? I honestly have yet to hear the fan on this LG, which really surprises (and pleases!) me.  I need to do some stress tests just so I can get familiar with how it sounds! 

[Steerpike]

@John Ratsey - would you happen to know, will a SATA SSD (M.2 2280) work in the M.2 slot in the LG? I've read that SOME laptops' M.2 socket can support both (NVMe and SATA).  OBVIOUSLY, the NVMe is going to be much faster, but - for 'bulk storage', I'm considering moving my 2 TB SATA SSD from my Samsung to the LG. 

 

EDIT TO ADD: I just googled for the manual for my model. My model is 17Z95P-K.AAE8UI . I was able to find a page on LG's site (Product Manuals & Documents| LG USA Support )  for 17Z95P-K.AAB8UI, which is pretty close.  I downloaded both manuals from the page. One manual says this: 

 

Storage Device

SATA or NVMe™ SSD (M.2 2280) SATA-type SSD is supported only through an expansion slot

 

This seems rather contradictory  - "SATA or NVMe SSD (M.2 2280)" strongly suggests SATA is supported using the M.2 slot, but then "SATA-type SSD is supported only through an expansion slot" totally contradicts that! 

 

 

 

[John Ratsey]

5 hours ago, Steerpike said:

Others have said that also, but in my two recent encounters with Win 11, processor power management is present in Win 11 so I wonder if you experienced an earlier version?  I can go to - Control Panel, Power Options, Change Plan Settings, Change Advanced Power Settings, and there I can open 'Processor Power Management', and have the option to set Maximum Processor State for 'on battery' and 'plugged in'.  I've used this for years in windows 10 on my Samsung to stop the fan from kicking in. 

 

Edit To Add: shouldn't I be hearing the fan, though, if Turbo mode is kicking in? I honestly have yet to hear the fan on this LG, which really surprises (and pleases!) me.  I need to do some stress tests just so I can get familiar with how it sounds! 

I suspect tht the Win 11 is a standard installation whereas Win 10 has been customised. I'm sure a little research will reveal what registry edit is needed to reveal the missing advanced power settings.

 

I've noticed the fan at times but only if there's no significant ambient noise. It's quiet compared with the XPS15 I had on my desk last week being prepared for rehoming. A consequence of the low fan noise is the low power limit imposed by the BIOS so the CPU will only run at full speed for a short period before being throttled.

39 minutes ago, Steerpike said:

@John Ratsey - would you happen to know, will a SATA SSD (M.2 2280) work in the M.2 slot in the LG? I've read that SOME laptops' M.2 socket can support both (NVMe and SATA).  OBVIOUSLY, the NVMe is going to be much faster, but - for 'bulk storage', I'm considering moving my 2 TB SATA SSD from my Samsung to the LG. 

I think the photo below has the answer: The slot is marked "NVME x4 SATA3." A SATA SSD has two notches and a SATA-only slot has two keys whereas an NVME slot has one key. SATA will fit into an NVME slot but not the other way round.

 

Regarding your earlier comment about the small PSU, the PSU provided with the UK version of the Gram 17 is significantly larger than the 65W PSU provided with the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro which looks like an over-sized USB-C phone charger. However, if you want to travel light then there's a good selection of compact 45W USB-C chargers which are fine for powering the Gram 17 and charging the battery at moderate rate. The 65W charger allows a faster charging rate. The computer will complain about but run on a 25W charger - it might need to draw on the battery under maximum CPU load.

[RS4]

@John Ratsey The LG Gram charger is the same all over the world, they have changed it for the 2022 Gram which is similar in size to a phone charger.

 

When connecting a lower power charger there is a small message/pop up indicating that a low power charger is connected but there are no issues. I have used my phone's 18 watt charger while torrenting and it worked fine with no battery usage.

 

 

[Steerpike]

2 hours ago, RS4 said:

@John Ratsey The LG Gram charger is the same all over the world, they have changed it for the 2022 Gram which is similar in size to a phone charger.

 

When connecting a lower power charger there is a small message/pop up indicating that a low power charger is connected but there are no issues. I have used my phone's 18 watt charger while torrenting and it worked fine with no battery usage.

 

 

@John Ratsey said his LG Gram was model 17Z90P; mine is model 17Z95P.  Do you think the 95 vs 90 denotes 2022 vs 2021 model? I haven't found any way to decode the LG model numbers, yet.  Interesting to see that you can get away with even an 18W PSU! I presume that PSU is still putting out 20V, though? That is - an old phone charger that doesn't output 20V would not work? 

[RS4]

53 minutes ago, Steerpike said:

@John Ratsey said his LG Gram was model 17Z90P; mine is model 17Z95P.  Do you think the 95 vs 90 denotes 2022 vs 2021 model? I haven't found any way to decode the LG model numbers, yet.  Interesting to see that you can get away with even an 18W PSU! I presume that PSU is still putting out 20V, though? That is - an old phone charger that doesn't output 20V would not work? 

 

No, the 2022 LG Gram is different: anti-glare screen, different CPU generation, different cooling system etc. The 2022 names are 17Z90Q, 16Z90Q etc

 

Nope, my phone charger does not output 20V, it has two modes 5V-3A and 9V-2A. Both of these qualify for the USB PD (Power Delivery) standard.

[Steerpike]

7 hours ago, RS4 said:

 

No, the 2022 LG Gram is different: anti-glare screen, different CPU generation, different cooling system etc. The 2022 names are 17Z90Q, 16Z90Q etc

 

Nope, my phone charger does not output 20V, it has two modes 5V-3A and 9V-2A. Both of these qualify for the USB PD (Power Delivery) standard.

 

Ah, so maybe that explains why I got my LG Gram 17 for such a great price ($1,100 at Costco) - it is last year's model.  I presume the 'Q' denotes the new generation?  I just did a quick search, very little info out there on the Q models; I did find some info suggesting the 17Z90Q has an NVidia graphics chip, anti-glare, etc.  I wonder if I should return my just-purchased 17Z95P to Costco within the 90-day window and wait for the 2022 model, since I would really like to get an anti-glare screen. 

 

Edit To Add - I just looked at the LG website (which for me, being a US resident, redirects to a US-specific page - LG Laptops: 4K, Gaming & 2-in-1 Laptops | LG USA ) and I don't see any 'Q' models at all. Also, I see some 'P' and 'N' models with 11th gen Intel processors, so my guess that 'Q' was 2022-specific may not be quite accurate.  This is a site that talks about the 2022 models you referred to - LG unveils Gram 16 and 17 with 12th gen Intel CPUs and NVIDIA RTX 2050 | Pocketnow .  There it says "... It’s not clear when the new devices will become available in North America, but LG often unveils its devices in the US one month after the unveiling." 

 

I just plugged my a Samsung 9V, 1.67A (15W) non-USB PD charger into the LG, but a pop-up said "Cannot charge the system with the auxiliary power supply connected. Connect a USB PD power supply of 10W or more". Interesting that it will go as low as 10W!  I then tried with my g/f's USB-PD charger, with great optimism - it's described as USB Type-C PD charger 20W; It offers 5V/3A; 9V/2.2A; and 12V/1.5A (so obviously over 10W!) but I got the same pop-up warning. However - I was using a USB-A to USB-C cable, so that may be a factor. I can't seem to find any USB-C to USB-C cables in my home! 

 

[John Ratsey]

4 hours ago, Steerpike said:

 

Ah, so maybe that explains why I got my LG Gram 17 for such a great price ($1,100 at Costco) - it is last year's model.  I presume the 'Q' denotes the new generation?  I just did a quick search, very little info out there on the Q models; I did find some info suggesting the 17Z90Q has an NVidia graphics chip, anti-glare, etc.  I wonder if I should return my just-purchased 17Z95P to Costco within the 90-day window and wait for the 2022 model, since I would really like to get an anti-glare screen.

I assumed you appreciated that the $1,100 was clear-out pricing getting ready for the new model. We've got our own thread about the 2022 model. I would assume that the non-Nvidia model will appear at whatever price the P series was when it arrived and the dGPU will add more to the price tag (and reduce the time on battery). Given that you've got the generous returns window you've probably got time to see the new prices and be sure that you need the anti-glare screen (and ideally find out if it significantly degrades the sharpness) before you have to make your return.

 

Yes, you need a full USB-C cable and charger for the power delivery system to work (the chips at each end have to talk to each other and find out the highest voltage supported by both devices). Power-delivery capable power banks also exist if you want a longer time away from a power socket. The power supply options definitely apply to my Galaxy Book Pro 13 and probably most (all?) recent notebooks which use a USB-C power supply (recent goes back a few years as my Dell Latitude 7370 would run on other USB-C supplies).

 

I'm wondering what difference there is between the 17Z90P and 17Z95P versions. Does the 17Z95P come with Win 11 pre-installed?

[RS4]

10 hours ago, Steerpike said:

 

 

Edit To Add - I just looked at the LG website (which for me, being a US resident, redirects to a US-specific page - LG Laptops: 4K, Gaming & 2-in-1 Laptops | LG USA ) and I don't see any 'Q' models at all. Also, I see some 'P' and 'N' models with 11th gen Intel processors, so my guess that 'Q' was 2022-specific may not be quite accurate.  This is a site that talks about the 2022 models you referred to - LG unveils Gram 16 and 17 with 12th gen Intel CPUs and NVIDIA RTX 2050 | Pocketnow .  There it says "... It’s not clear when the new devices will become available in North America, but LG often unveils its devices in the US one month after the unveiling." 

 

 

 

 

Nope, the Q name is accurate and The 2022 LG Gram model names are 17Z90Q, 16Z90Q and 14Z90Q. You will get these in stock in USA within a month or two.

[Steerpike]

8 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

I assumed you appreciated that the $1,100 was clear-out pricing getting ready for the new model. We've got our own thread about the 2022 model. I would assume that the non-Nvidia model will appear at whatever price the P series was when it arrived and the dGPU will add more to the price tag (and reduce the time on battery). Given that you've got the generous returns window you've probably got time to see the new prices and be sure that you need the anti-glare screen (and ideally find out if it significantly degrades the sharpness) before you have to make your return.

 

Yes, you need a full USB-C cable and charger for the power delivery system to work (the chips at each end have to talk to each other and find out the highest voltage supported by both devices). Power-delivery capable power banks also exist if you want a longer time away from a power socket. The power supply options definitely apply to my Galaxy Book Pro 13 and probably most (all?) recent notebooks which use a USB-C power supply (recent goes back a few years as my Dell Latitude 7370 would run on other USB-C supplies).

 

I'm wondering what difference there is between the 17Z90P and 17Z95P versions. Does the 17Z95P come with Win 11 pre-installed?

No, I didn't realize the pricing was clear-out pricing - I just assumed it was Costco being Costco :).  But of course it makes sense now. I have no desire whatsoever for a dedicated GPU (less battery life, more weight, more likelihood of fan noise, etc), so if I do get the 2022 (Q) model it will have to be without the Nvidia. I'm 'coping' with the glossy screen so far, but I have always preferred 'matt' type screens and will gladly sacrifice a bit of sharpness if necessary.   My main two issues now with the model are the touchpad and the battery. The touchpad is driving me crazy. I've tried all sensitivity levels to no avail. I've now disabled 'two-finger tap for right click', in addition to the earlier disable of the 'two finger pinch to zoom', and that's helping but now, my two-finger scroll attempts are often getting mis-interpreted as 'single-click and drag' (select) actions!  But I'm trying hard to be really precise with my touches.   I'm still exploring the battery issue. 

 

Regarding 'does the 17Z95P come with Win 11 pre-installed' - my simple answer would be yes, because I never saw any Win 10 elements, but - it was a different experience from the Dell XPS 17 I bought in Feb; With this LG, the OOBE (Out of box experience) included a lengthy 'update' download that might just have been an update to Win11, though I wasn't taking notes at the time. It was certainly Windows 11 by the end of the process and I had no control over it, but I wonder if it was win 10 with an immediate upgrade. Thanks for the link to the 2022 model thread! 

 

I'm very excited by the possibilities of USB PD; having universal power supplies has been a long goal of mine. And the idea of being able to keep the laptop 'limping along' with a phone charger is also cool. 

[Steerpike]

On 4/5/2022 at 2:19 PM, John Ratsey said:

...

I'm surprised by your observed battery drain which needs investigation. BatteryInfoView is simple free utility which makes it easy to check the current power usage in Watts. You'll be looking for no more than 6W to get a comfortable 10 hours on battery. Task Manager shows which software is using the resources (particular CPU and Disk) although tracking down which software is causing high activity by a background process can be challenging but Process Explorer will help. Also check the effect of display brightness on power drain. I'm wondering if OneDrive is one of the problems if it is continuously trying to sync files. It will be using the CPU and network connection plus stopping the SSD from sleeping. ...

I've used BatteryInfoView in the past; great utility. I just grabbed the latest version and let it run for a while. I'll do some analysis tomorrow when I have more data, but I do have a few quick questions that you may be able to help with. 

 

First of all, I installed it, turned on logging to a file, and went out for dinner. On return, laptop was in hibernate (I have it set to hibernate after 60 mins). I specifically turned on the feature to log suspend/resume events, but there are no such events in the log. I checked event viewer to confirm hibernate did occur.   

 

 

Looking more closely at this, I'm guessing the problem here is, a) 'modern standby' is not recognized by batteryinfoview, and b) batteryinfoview doesn't claim to log 'hibernate' events.  But regardless, I can 'infer' the hibernate by the total lack of entries in the log. 

 

Here's a quick sample from the log: 

 

 

Group 1 covers about 5 minutes, before 'modern standby' occurred. 'rate' was roughly 8,000 (8 Watts, I presume).  Group 2 covers about an hour, presumably 'modern standby', before hibernate kicked in.  Note how events are logged every 10-20 minutes (very randomly), even though it's supposed to log every minute; I presume this is related to how 'modern standby' handles the processor. During this period, 'rate' is around 250. There is a time gap between Group 2 and Group 3 (19:29 to 21:22, almost 2 hours - the time the laptop spent in hibernate).  Group 3 represents the period when I got back from dinner and resumed from hibernate. 'rate' is in the range of 6,000 to 15,000 during this period (6 to 15 Watts, I presume). The 'crazy' rate I've circled in red at 21:22 is presumably some weird result of the laptop having been hibernated for 2 hours, but I can't really make sense of it.   Right now, as I've been typing this and doing nothing else but flipping back and forth between the browser and the screen shot, I'm seeing about 7 to 9 watts consumption. I did lower the display brightness to  '46' along the way as the room got darker. So that's a fair way from your 'no more than 6W' metric!   Task manager reveals nothing much going on, other than Chrome and Edge (I'm currently using Chrome and Edge concurrently for various reasons). 

 

Looks like I have more digging to do! 

 

 

[John Ratsey]

Your research has prompted me to test my Gram 17. However, I'll first note that the 6W is a theoretical number based on getting 10 hours on the battery assuming 60Whr of usable capacity. I unplugged the mains and let BatteryInfoView log the battery discharge. I've changed the logged power to Watts for clarity and would add some comments on the graph below which crops off some extreme values such as you observed (caused, I assume, by the way the power drain is calculated). About half way through I decided to test a big RavPower powerbank that claims to deliver up to 30W. It was putting just under 20W into the battery and the balance would be powering the computer. However, given that the computer thinks it is running on the mains, manual tweaking of settings would be needed to use a powerbank efficiently.

 

The display was on about half brightness and I tried different situations of what was running. I wouldn't want to go lower without reducing the room brightness (it's sunny outside today). My measured power drain is mainly between 3W and 10W. However, less than 5W is only achieved when I leave the computer long enough for the display to turn off but when I closed Firefox (with >50 tabs open) then I could get below 6W. With Firefox open the drain was around 8W.

You mentioned Modern Standby which I don't think is enabled on my Gram 17 as no value is set in the registry. Modern Standby's desire to keep connected is well known for blocking entry into the lower power states.  As we've already noted, my Gram 17 appears to have an LG customised version of Windows so they probably realised that Modern Standby would trash their claims of battery run time but you appear to have a non-customised version of Win 11.  One test you can do is to run ThrottleStop which can show the C States being used by the CPU (the bigger the number then the lower the power). Press the C10 button to see the C States. Below is what I saw after running for several minutes on battery with Firefox and all those tabs open.

 

BTW, I found a very useful bit of software called Power Settings Explorer which let me add missing features to my Power Options (run as Administrator, find what you want on the list and  double-click on the entry in the Settings list to go to the registry entry then change the Attribute value to 2 to make it visible). This software may help with stopping Modern Sleep (this might be the Allow Hybrid Sleep entry).

[Steerpike]

Some quick questions and comments as I work my way through this ...

 

 

6 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

I've changed the logged power to Watts for clarity and would add some comments on the graph below which crops off some extreme values such as you observed (caused, I assume, by the way the power drain is calculated).

 

Were you able to change the display in batteryinfoview to Watts, or did you do that outside of the tool?  And what tool are you using to create the graphs - excel? 

 

6 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

 

The display was on about half brightness and I tried different situations of what was running. I wouldn't want to go lower without reducing the room brightness (it's sunny outside today). My measured power drain is mainly between 3W and 10W. However, less than 5W is only achieved when I leave the computer long enough for the display to turn off but when I closed Firefox (with >50 tabs open) then I could get below 6W. With Firefox open the drain was around 8W.

I killed Edge and Chrome (I too have >50 tabs open, typically). I set display brightness to 60. Task manager indicates nothing else of significance running. I paused OneDrive to stop it from checking for changes. I'm still not getting below 6W. 

 

6 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

 

You mentioned Modern Standby which I don't think is enabled on my Gram 17 as no value is set in the registry. Modern Standby's desire to keep connected is well known for blocking entry into the lower power states.  As we've already noted, my Gram 17 appears to have an LG customised version of Windows so they probably realised that Modern Standby would trash their claims of battery run time but you appear to have a non-customised version of Win 11. 

 

There are two things on my laptop that suggest an LG-specific config - one is, I had 'LG Control Center', 'LG Update Center', and 'Virtoo by LG' pinned to the taskbar on initial run, and secondly ,a boat-load of McAfee crap showing in Task Manager that I haven't even got around to getting rid of yet ... Look at all this crap! 

 

 

 

The quick way to check your 'standby' config is to open a command prompt and type 'powercfg /a'

This is what I get: 

The following sleep states are available on this system:
    Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Connected
    Hibernate
    Fast Startup

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
    Standby (S1)
        The system firmware does not support this standby state.
        This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

    Standby (S2)
        The system firmware does not support this standby state.
        This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

    Standby (S3)
        This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

    Hybrid Sleep
        Standby (S3) is not available.
        The hypervisor does not support this standby state.

 

I haven't yet ventured into the BIOS to see what options I can change. I remember reading that Dell had completely removed S3 / standby support from its firmware, and I'd assumed LG did the same but don't know. I'll take a look in the BIOS. 

 

EDIT TO ADD: I looked in the Bios for the first time just now; wow - what a sparse BIOS! NOTHING relating to standby configs, or much else for that matter. I read there is an 'advanced' view accessed by Ctrl-Alt-F7, but that didn't work for me.  Am I doing something wrong? 

 

I would also note, Windows has a pretty decent battery report of its own - type powercfg /batteryreport at the command prompt and you'll get a pretty decent report.  There are a LOT of reports available through powercfg, actually - worth a browse. 

 

6 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

 

One test you can do is to run ThrottleStop which can show the C States being used by the CPU (the bigger the number then the lower the power). Press the C10 button to see the C States. Below is what I saw after running for several minutes on battery with Firefox and all those tabs open.

 

I will explore ThrottleStop next ... 

 

6 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

 

BTW, I found a very useful bit of software called Power Settings Explorer which let me add missing features to my Power Options (run as Administrator, find what you want on the list and  double-click on the entry in the Settings list to go to the registry entry then change the Attribute value to 2 to make it visible). This software may help with stopping Modern Sleep (this might be the Allow Hybrid Sleep entry).

Wow, that download site 'mediafire' is a sneaky one - threw all kinds of stuff at me!   Nice little utility though! 

[RS4]

I have disabled modern standby and Enabled Legacy S3 Standby. A lot of this information was already discussed on the NBR forum threads:

 

https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/lg.29/Advanced LG Gram 2021 tweaking/page2.html

 

@Steerpike Uninstall Mcafee using Revo uninstaller and use Kaspersky Free or Bitdefender free instead.

[Steerpike]

1 hour ago, RS4 said:

I have disabled modern standby and Enabled Legacy S3 Standby. A lot of this information was already discussed on the NBR forum threads:

 

https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/lg.29/Advanced LG Gram 2021 tweaking/page2.html

 

@Steerpike Uninstall Mcafee using Revo uninstaller and use Kaspersky Free or Bitdefender free instead.

I just read the first thread posted in the NBR thread - Windows 10 V2004: Can't deactivate ‘Modern Standby’ | Born's Tech and Windows World (borncity.com) . It sounds like, in win 10, MS first did, then did not, allow Modern Standby (S0) to be disabled in the registry, but finally re-allowed it by the following settings: 

 

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power

Enter the 32-bit DWORD value PlatformAoAcOverride and set it to 0. 

 

Since I'm on Win 11, any thoughts on whether this will work for me?  I will try it and report back .... rebooting now ... 

Edit To Add - seems to have worked like a charm!  I read the reddit thread a few months ago when I bought the Dell XPS17 with win 11, and the indications were that Dell had removed firmware support for S3 standby, and trying to enable it could cause instability.   So I've set some very aggressive timers for screen off, sleep, and hibernate - let's see how it behaves! 

 

Edit To Add (#2) - I set screen off at 3 mins, sleep at 5 mins, and hibernate at 10 mins.  The screen darkened at 3, the system went to sleep at 5 mins, BUT - hibernate did not kick in at all. The system stayed in sleep for 17 mins.  The good news is, BatteryInfoView did record the standby / resume activities :).  Event Viewer confirmed no transition to hibernate. I'll do a full reboot and see if the hibernate timer gets picked up. 

 

(I've read the reddit thread before, but it's rather long and tortured at this point).