LG Gram 17 (2022) Step-by-step review

[John Ratsey]

I've now had my 2022 Gram 17 for several weeks and a report is long overdue although it has yet to take over the prime position on my desk from the 2021 Gram 17. What are the key differences compared to the 2021 Gram 17:

 

The differences from the 2021 Gram 17

 

The visible differences are:

• The anti-glare screen (the 2022 screen is the LP170-WQ1-SPF2 whereas the 2021 screen is the LP170WQ1-SPE1 which suggests that the basic panel is the same)

• The changed keyboard lettering with the main and shift functions being side by side rather than the conventional below and above (I find this change baffling)

• No fingerprint reader on power button (effectively superseded by the better webcam)

• Full HD webcam + infra-red sensor at top of screen which works well with Windows Hello

• Pre-installed Windows 11 (although the later 2021 stock also came with this pre-installed)

• Rubber strip along the back of the bottom instead of the two back feet (this probably works better if using in laptop mode)

The less visible differences are:

• Intel 12^th generation platform with i7-1260P CPU + 32GB RAM

• Faster SSD (Samsung MZVL21T0HCLR = PM9A1 which is the OEM version of the Samsung PM980 Pro)

The biggest visual difference is the screen as illustrated by this photo:

I think that LG has done well with the coating as there's no visible reduction in the clarity of text although photographs seem to be slightly less crisp. Overall it's a reasonable compromise with the much reduced reflections.

The Battery

The battery has a nominal 80Wh capacity. Mine showed 79.51Wh (99.4%) after being plugged in for many hours.  The battery drain on idle is around 4.5W with a fairly dim, but usable, screen. After a few minutes I wondered why BatteryInfoView wasn’t showing the estimated battery time. I then noticed that the charge was still on 79.51Whr. This remained unchanged after running on battery for a couple of hours which intrigued me. Perhaps it was a consequence of setting the maximum charge level to 80% so I set it back to 100% and left the computer on charge overnight after which it showed the fully charged capacity to be 80Wh (which, unusually in my experience) is exactly the same as the design capacity. After this the battery discharge behaved as expected. I've yet to do any proper battery drain tests but expect it will handle a working day of light usage. There's plenty of room for a higher capacity battery and I assume that the headline weight was considered to be more important.

CPU Performance

My Gram 17 is fitted with the Intel i7-1260P CPU which is the only option offered with the 32GB RAM I wanted. Given the thermal and power limitations associated with the slim design the i7 CPU isn't able to reach its potential for any significant amount of time and most likely provides no performance improvement relative to the less expensive i5 CPU but is probably used to keep the marketing people and/or Intel happy. wPrime is a simple test of CPU capability and it's possible to select a different number of threads to share the workload. I tested with normal and high fan setting and with/without Turbo mode enabled. The results are interesting:

The high fan setting provides negligible performance benefit in wPrime while disabling Turbo results in about 5% performance reduction which illustrates how much the CPU speed is capped by the power limits when running four or more threads. Cinebench is another software package which tests the CPU and tests both single core and multi-core performance.

Cinebench 23 does multiple runs which provides a good test of thermal limitations. The results for this test show that the high fan setting enables a noticeable performance improvement but Turbo mode provides no benefit.

That's all for now. More in due course. Any questions or requests?

[John Ratsey]

An update is long overdue but it's only a couple of weeks since I transferred software and commissioned the 2022 Gram 17 as my primary computer. What have I noticed?

 

Perhaps the first point is what I haven't noticed: Glare from the screen was starting to be a problem on the old Gram 17 as the sun got lower in the sky and shone in the window. This problem has disappeared at the cost of barely perceptable reduction in display sharpness. Also, as I had hoped, I haven't had any slow-downs due to 100% RAM utilisation.

 

The 2022 Gram 17's fan is more active than I would like even though Turbo mode is disabled although overall it's no worse than my 2021 Gram 17. Both have an i7 CPU although it's not an appropriate CPU for LG's thermal solution. I had repasted the CPU with some Noctua NT-H2 when I was inside changing an SSD but this made no improvement so I bought some of the Honeywell TPM7950 sheet paste which had been favourably mentioned elsewhere in this forum.  It's slightly fiddly to apply as it's a 0.25mm thick layer with a peel-off backing and I'm sure it helped reduce the fan activity. I also think the fan has gone a bit quieter in recent days. Perhaps Windows has finished indexing everything on 2 x 2TB SSDs. I'm also wondering if there's potential to adjust the trip points or fan speeds in the BIOS.

If I could find someone to buy a better heatsink with two fans then I would. There's a lot of empty space inside the computer. Perhaps I could then make use of the speed potential of the i7 CPU without having a lot a noise.

 

I don't like the changed lettering style on the keyboard with the primary and shift characters side-by-side instead of below and above. In the case of the number keys the alternative characters are also smaller and difficult to read at arm's length. I know my way round a keyboard quite well but my fingers are used to keyboards without numpads so they need some guidance.

 

I've been having problems with the computer not properly sleeping but suspect the underlying problem is with Windows Modern Standby which turns off the display and not much else. I don't like shutting the computer at the end of the day and hearing the fans continuing to run. A busy computer that can't vent hot air properly is never a good thing.

 

The above comments appear to be negative as the 2021 Gram 17 sets a high standard. I must run some comparative benchmarks on the old Gram 17 to see if CPU performance has improved. The 2022 version has a faster bus serving the SSDs as demonstrated by the CrystalDiskMark results for a WD SN770 SSD which was in the old Gram 17 (left result) and is now in the new one (right result).

[John Ratsey]

I've managed to significantly reduce the fan noise under my normal (=light) usage condition by increasing the fan operation trigger temperatures in the BIOS. These settings are in the Advanced BIOS options, Platform Thermal Configuration. To get there first get into the BIOS (hold down F2 while the LG logo is showing during (re)boot then first hold down Ctrl, then also push down Alt, then also push down Shift and finally push F7.

There is pre-defined list of temperatures. I raised both triggers by one step (trip point 0 from 71 to 79C and trip point 1 from 55 to 63C. Perhaps another option would have been to reduce the fan speed for trip point 1 to, say, 50.  I deduce that those trip points are not steps in the fan speed but there's interpolation between them and also includes an unchangeable minimum temperature to trigger the fan operation. As I type this HWiNFO shows the CPU temperature fluctuating around 60C, which is below my new trigger point 1, but the fan is still running but more quietly than before.

 

I also found that I could disable the S0 sleep state in the ACPI settings which will disable Modern Standby.

However, while this makes S3 sleep available it doesn't work properly as the computer immediately reboots when it wakes up. I suspect other things need to be changed in Windows 11 to get S3 sleep to work properly. As this may be a generic Windows 11 issue I've started a separate Modern Standby topic in the Windows forum.

[Samir]

New to the party since I just got some 'new to me' Grams and was looking to see if anyone has played with the extensive bios options in the advanced mode.  Of course, NBR and NBT deliver. :)

 

Interesting that you played with those settings as I was considering messing with them once I have mind configured the way I want.  There's other options too that will probably affect cooling as well--but I don't remember any of them off the top of my head atm.

[John Ratsey]

I've just treated my Gram 17 to a storage upgrade. It already had 2 x 2TB SSDs but photos and videos gobble space. The slower of these SSDs (WD SN770) has now been replaced by a 4TB Crucial P3+. It's not the fastest 4TB SSD but fine for bulk storage and is very reasonably priced. 4TB was slightly less expensive than 2TB 15 month ago.