84 PCWorld JANUARY 2020REVIEWS LG GR AM^17
in luxurious comfort on an almost desktop-
sized display and getting well over a full day’s
battery life to boot, the LG Gram 17’s handful
of issues have a way of receding into the
background.TECH SPECS
As the name suggests, the LG Gram 17 has a
17-inch, 2560-by-1600 resolution display, and
it comes in one configuration, with an
8th-generation Intel Core i7-8565U
processor, 16GB of DDR-2400 RAM, and a
512GB solid state drive. A fingerprint reader
is built into the power button on the top-right
corner of the keyboard, but there’s no face
recognition to go with the 720p webcam.
Keep in mind also that this is a traditional
clamshell laptop, with no touchscreen.
On the laptop’s left side, you’ll find
Thunderbolt 3, a USB 3.0 Type A, HDMI, and
a DC input for the Gram’s proprietary
charging brick. (The laptop can also take a
charge through the USB-C port.) The right
side includes two more USB 3.0 Type A ports,
a headphone jack, and—in what increasingly
seems like a rarity on consumer laptops thesedays—a MicroSD card slot. One might nitpick
the lack of USB-C on both edges, but this is a
solid arrangement of ports overall.DESIGN AND DISPLAY
The vast majority of 17-inch laptops aspire to
be desktop PC replacements, with spinning
hard drives, discrete graphics cards, and
sometimes even old-school optical disc drives.
By contrast, the LG Gram 17 aims to hang with
smaller thin-and-lights, making it one of the
most unique laptops available today.
Just looking at it, you’d expect something
much heavier, so when you pick it up, its lack
of density is wow-inducing. (I know this,
having foisted the laptop upon various friends
and family members during my time
reviewing it.) The laptop is fairly slim as well,
measuring 0.7 inches at its thickest point.
The display itself is no slouch either. I’m a
fan of the 16:10 aspect ratio for laptops in
general, and on a 17-inch screen that amounts
to a half-inch of extra vertical screen space
compared to typical 17.3-inch laptops with
16:9 aspect ratios. Meanwhile, the 2560-by-
1600 resolution display makes everything look
sharp, and we
measured a peak
brightness of 362
nits, which is on the
high end for any
laptop.
This ultralight
The LG Gram 17 has a proprietary charger, but you can use USB-C in a pinch design does have