A slender body that hides acres of screen real estate and tons of grunt, the 17-inch LG Gram laptop is somehow bigger on the inside.
There was a time when business laptops were divided into two main camps. You could invest in something big, bulky and powerful in order to stay productive on the go, or else you could opt for a lightweight in every sense of the word: small, light and lacking in grunt.
These days, if you have deep pockets, you’re not forced to trade off size, weight and performance in search of the perfect travel companion. Not when you can get a giant 17-inch powerhouse like this $3,099 LG Gram that’s somehow still slim and light enough to slip in a satchel and take on the road.
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LG Gram laptop first impressions
With a generous 17-inch display, the LG Gram laptop looks like it should be much heavier than it is. So it’s quite a surprise to pick it up comfortably with one hand.
The LG Gram tips the scales at 1.389 kg, making it one of the lightest 17-inch laptops around. To be fair, there’s not a lot of competition at this size – 17-inch laptops have gone out of fashion because they’re usually too bulky to carry around.
It’s great to see that the supplied power brick and AC cable aren’t too heavy or bulky, so they won’t weigh down your travel bag – a shortcoming of some supposedly lightweight laptops.
While it sports a slimline design, the LG Gram is not a flashy fashion statement, so it won’t look out of place in the boardroom alongside executive ThinkPads. (Side note: for comparison, Lenovo has retired the hefty ThinkPad P17 Gen 2, which weighed in at a hefty 3.67 kg.)
If you look closely at the design, the laptop isn’t as slim as it first appears. The bottom is tapered on three sides, meaning the edges don’t actually touch the ground.
To keep down the weight, LG has shunned an aluminium body in favour of an “aluminium alloy” which feels a lot like plastic. While the LG Gram still looks premium from a distance, it has a bit of a cheap feel, and the keyboard has a disappointing amount of flex when you press on the centre keys.
To be fair, it’s far from the squishiest laptop keyboard I’ve encountered over the years, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re a fan of the rock-solid keyboards built into more sturdy laptops. Also, if you really need a 17-inch monitor on the road, then you’re probably not going to spend most of your time typing.
Serious typists will appreciate that it’s a backlit keyboard with full-sized shift keys and half-sized up/down arrow keys, which people tend to prefer rather than contending with half-sized shift keys. There’s also a dedicated Copilot button, a repurposed right Control button, for calling up Microsoft’s AI-powered smart assistant.
The width of the 17-inch display also leaves room for a full number pad on the right of the keyboard, and a generous trackpad below. Surprisingly, the trackpad is slightly off-centre to the left, but not enough to be a major problem.
Open up the LG Gram and you’re faced with a vibrant and sharp 2560 × 1600 IPS LCD display, with a productivity-friendly 16:10 aspect ratio but no touchscreen support.
The screen is wide enough to work on two documents side-by-side, perhaps negating the need to carry around a second portable monitor for remaining super-productive on the go. It offers a decent 350-nit brightness, which is good for working in a range of lighting conditions.
The front webcam doesn’t support Windows Hello face recognition for unlocking the laptop, but instead, the laptop has a fingerprint reader built into the power button.
LG Gram (17Z90TL) specifications and price
| Display size | 17-inch, 16:10 aspect ratio |
| Display resolution | 2560 x 1600 pixel WQXGA |
| Display technology | IPS LCD 350 nit brightness 1500:1 contrast ratio 60 Hz refresh rate non touch |
| CPU | Intel Core Ultra7 258V (8 Cores: 4P + 4LPE, P: 2.2 up to 4.8 GHz / E: 2.2 up to 3.7 GHz, Intel Smart Cache 12 MB, 47TOPS NPU) |
| GPU | Intel Arc Graphics 140V (8GB) |
| RAM | 32 GB DDR5 RAM (8533 MHz) |
| Onboard storage | M.2 Dual SSD slots, Gen4 – NVMe : 1TB |
| Ports | USB 3.2 Gen2x1 Type A x2 USB 4 Gen3x2 Type C x2 with Power Delivery, Display Port, Thunderbolt 4 HDMI 2.1 (4K@60Hz) 3.5 mm headphone jack |
| Webcam | 1080p |
| Charging | USB-C 65 W – AC charger included |
| Battery | 77 Wh Li-Ion |
| Wi-Fi | Intel Wireless BE201 (Wi-Fi 6, will support Wi-Fi 7 when updated) |
| Bluetooth | 5.3 |
| Operating system | Windows 11 Home |
| Security | Fingerprint reader, no face recognition |
| Dimensions | 380 x 260 x 16-21 mm |
| Weight | 1.389 kg |
| Price | $3,099 RRP |
| Warranty | 1 year |
| Official website | LG Australia |
Features
Under the bonnet, the LG Gram packs an Intel “Lunar Lake” Core Ultra 7 processor, accompanied by a generous 32 GB DDR5 RAM and 1 TB solid-state drive. If that sounds like overkill, you can step down to an Ultra 5 with half the RAM and storage.
Keep in mind, it runs on the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, which is designed for energy efficiency, whereas the Intel Ultra 7-155H is designed more for high performance. Also, it relies on integrated Intel Arc graphics rather than a discrete graphics card, so it’s not really intended to be a gaming powerhouse.
The LG Gram runs Windows 11 Home, and Intel’s Ultra processors are optimised to make the most of Microsoft’s AI features thanks to a built-in Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for handling AI-heavy tasks. It’s a “Copilot+ PC“, but thankfully, it runs on an Intel x86 chip and not an ARM processor, such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon.
Admittedly, ARM-based Snapdragon chips are more power-efficient. The big trade-off is that they run a limited version of Windows 11, which relies on an emulator to run most third-party Windows applications, which can result in performance issues.
You don’t need to worry about this with Intel inside the LG Gram. Power isn’t a problem when it features a generous 77-Wh battery, which should comfortably get you through a long workday.
When it comes to connectivity, the laptop features two USB-C 4.0 ports on the left, which also support charging and DisplayPort for connecting to external monitors. Alongside these are HDMI 2.1 and an old-school 3.5 mm combination headphone/microphone TRRS (4-pole) jack.
On the right, you’ll find two USB-A 3.2 ports along with a Kensington security slot. There’s no optical drive, as you’d expect, but you also miss out on an SD card slot.
When it comes to software, you’ve got Microsoft’s Copilot and LG’s “Gram AI” powered by Chat GPT-4o, which runs offline.
LG’s Gram AI performs the usual tricks, such as providing personalised answers based on your data, summarising documents and taking regular screen captures to help you keep track of what you’ve been doing.
Meanwhile, LG Gram Link makes it easy to exchange data with iOS and Android devices, as well as extend or mirror the laptop desktop onto your mobile devices. You can also use your phone as a webcam, or control your mobile device with the laptop’s keyboard and mouse.
Quality
Putting the LG Gram laptop through its paces, it’s worth noting that it only has a balanced power plan, so I couldn’t switch it to high-performance mode.
That said, it’s interesting to note that GeekBench 6 results were 1,540 single-core and 9,475 multi-core when running on the battery, but jumped to 2,404 single-core and 9,986 multi-core when running on AC power. So obviously, there is a performance mode, it’s just difficult to activate when running on the battery.
Meanwhile, it scored 27,373 on GeekBench 6’s OpenCL tests on batteries and AC power. Switching to the PCMark 10 productivity test saw a score of 6,853 on AC power.
These results are very respectable but not quite best-in-class compared to what this CPU/GPU combination can deliver on other 15 to 16-inch laptops. It seems that LG has dialled down the performance a tad as a compromise for cramming so much into such a slender design.
Who is the LG Gram (17Z90TL) for?
If you really need a 17-inch ultraportable laptop, then the LG Gram is hard to beat. You’ll struggle to find anything thinner and lighter with a display this large. Especially if all that screen real estate means you don’t need to carry around a secondary external monitor when travelling.
Of course, there are trade-offs in terms of the hefty price tag and the slight performance drop compared to what this CPU/GPU combination can deliver in rival 15 to 16-inch laptops.
If you want the Ultra 7 powerplant but could make do with a 15 or 16-inch display, then make sure you weigh up the 17-inch LG Gram against options like the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 15 Aura Edition, Dell 16 Plus, and Acer Swift 16 AI.
