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There's no denying it, COVID-19 has changed many of our usual habits. We work more time at home and many users have found themselves with the need to get a new workstation , perhaps a laptop that can also be taken to the office or on the road if necessary, therefore light and functional. "Lightness" is the keyword that LG has thought of creating its new line of techsupportreviews Gram notebooks , which aims to offer the public great robustness and excellent performance by limiting the weight of the devices to the extreme.
We speak in the plural because the line-up includes
different solutions from 14 "to 17", with Intel i5 to i7 processors.
The model arrived in our hands for the test goes to position itself at the top
of the range and scrolling through the technical characteristics it is not
difficult to understand why.
The gentle giant
We are talking about a 17 "notebook with a 16:10 IPS
display with 2560x1600 resolution that integrates a 80Wh battery, which has
quite satisfied us in terms of autonomy despite an Intel i7-1065G7 1.30GHz
processor with 3.90 GHz Turbo Boost mounted on board.
All this is completed by 16GB of DDR4 RAM at 3.200MHz and an
NVME SSD for 512GB storage. Now try to guess the weight: LG has managed to fit
everything in a "package" of 1,350 grams, we have therefore a 17
"notebook that weighs less than a 13" MacBook Pro from 1,400 grams.
The new LG Gram 17Z90N-V.AA85D is also able to return a good solidity in the
hands: despite the chassis has a "feather weight", amplified by the
general dimensions of the device, it still managed to obtain a MIL-STD military
certification -810S , which protects it from thermal shocks, vibrations and
much more.
As soon as it is switch on, the notebook immediately stands
out due to its excellent IPS screen, of very generous dimensions and contained
bezels - which cleverly hide a 720p webcam at the top .
A PPI level is definitely possible to find something better
on the market, it must, however, understand the LG's efforts to include a 17
"display of good quality in a lightweight and durable body that looks very
much like that of a laptop 15" , looking also to keep the final price at
bay as much as possible. We also liked the choice of the 16:10 aspect ratio,
which adds an entire portion of the screen to the narrow and cinematic 16: 9,
all to the advantage of productivity.
A complete package
The new LG Gram 17Z90N-V.AA85D does not compromise even from
the point of view of the ports available: we can take advantage of a charging
port, three USB A 3.1 inputs, an HDMI 1.4 output, a 3 headphone jack, 5 mm, a
port for microSD, a Thunderbolt 3 USB C with which to transfer data up to 40Gb
/ s, connect an external display with resolution up to 5K, recharge a second
device or the LG Gram itself, which means that we can also take advantage of a
USB C charger (which has enough Watts, we have not had any problems around 60W,
with a charger from 18W the PC instead notified us that the power was not
sufficient). Next to the Thunderbolt 3 port we also have a convenient LED that
keeps us informed about the charging status, even when the screen is closed, a
detail that we certainly appreciated.
A certainly complete connectivity package that perfectly
matches the internal hardware, which provides Bluetooth 5.0 and WiFi 6 AX201
from Intel . LG's offer does not stop there: we must also report the presence
of a backlit keyboard and abiometric sensor for fingerprint control , which
works perfectly with Windows.
We liked the keyboard very much, it is quiet enough, the
keys have a good travel and are spaced just the right way to run into as few
errors as possible; the backlight is functional and flawless when viewed from
above, already from the writing position, however, the white LEDs can be seen
below the keys and the experience is a little dirty, but nothing
transcendental.
The biometric sensor, on the other hand, is small but
precise, it never missed a shot during our test and unlocked the computer with
extreme speed.
Power on-the-go
Therefore, once the notebook has been unlocked, it is
finally time to talk about performance in the field and relative autonomy. The
entire user experience depends - as always - on two essential factors: use on
the move or from a desk. With the first, in the event that our work concerns
only office applications and web browsing, it is possible to obtain an autonomy
that is really not bad by taking advantage of the Windows energy saving mode.
This limits the screen lighting and the CPU clock, which with our usage
resulted in about 9 hours of operation.thanks to the integrated 80Wh battery.
We are far from the 17 hours declared by LG from the technical data sheet but
it is still an excellent result for a 17 "laptop with good performance,
then it is not excluded that with some more sacrifices you can even exceed 10
hours, perhaps using only the apps writing.
Bringing out the best performance and raising the screen
brightness around 75%, perhaps using some app more greedy in terms of energy
such as Photoshop or Lightroom, the hours at our disposal battery is
considerably reduced, we are around the two and a half hours / three doing
heavy editing and some exporting, but we are clearly talking about a "war
set-up" that favors the connection to the electrical grid.
Using the power grid and the Turbo Boost of the i7 processor
we were able to export - for example - 21 uncompressed 42 MP RAW photos in JPG
Full Resolution to Lightroom in 1 minute and 26 seconds , a time better than
the basic MacBook Pro 13 "i5 of 2019 (1:42) and the iPad Pro 2020 (which
despite the out-of-scale power still does not have a properly optimized
Lightroom, which is why it took 2:31 to perform the same operation).
Our LG Gram also benefited from its 16GB of RAM , which are
certainly noticeable in everyday productivity. Another absolute advantage of
LG's laptop is the NVME SSD installed on board, manufactured by Samsung: a
512GB capable of reading data at 3,352 MB / s and writing at 2,013 MB / s , as
you can see in the CrystalDiskMark results .
An office on the stock exchange
Looking at the "office" productivity, therefore,
the new LG GRAM 17Z90N-V.AA85D has really satisfied us, even if clearly there
are some small flaws. The size factor is obviously subjective, here you can
still see a direct comparison with a 13 "MacBook Pro and a 10.5" iPad
Air 3. Then you have to take into account an integrated graphics card in the
tenth generation i7 processor , not a dedicated GPU. The Iris Plus Graphics
present on board is in any case able to manage 4K HDR video without problems,
if you also plan to play but be careful. An Asphalt 9 is enough to run into
some lag too much and an execution far from the fixed 60fps, after all we are
talking about a product intended for everyone
We then found a trackpad of not exaggerated size and with a
slightly "woody" feeling, with a heavy click, noisy and not always
pleasant to use. However, with Bluetooth 5.0 you can easily connect an external
mouse without putting too much strain on the battery. Another aspect on which
LG will have to work with subsequent iterations concerns in our opinion the on-board
speakers .
The integrated speakers are cleverly hidden in the lower
part of the chassis, therefore they are not visible, and this is a choice that
we liked; the sound, however, is not very balanced, the bass is almost
completely absent and the reproduction of voices and high frequencies is
generally not too crystal clear; after several minutes of listening it could
even give some annoyance if you are used to more performing devices from this
point of view, which is why we strongly recommend the use of external speakers
or headphones , perhaps Bluetooth.
The LG Gram we tested then proved to be a far from silent
laptop, with the fan turning on often after a few minutes of use, even without
putting stress on the CPU.
So we comes to the end of our analysis talking about a small
"plus" of LG that we liked: the Control Center , a small and light
application that allows us to manage different aspects of our LG Gram, from the
possibility of loading external devices through the USB C to the interesting
features that allow us to extend the life cycle of the battery, limiting the
loads to 80%, or to view its "state of health".