Pros
- High contrast 17-inch display
- Unbelievably light design
- Great productivity performance
- Generous selection of ports
Cons
- Glossy screen difficult to see outdoors
- Not the sturdiest design
- LG Gram 16 offers better battery life
As a general rule, the bigger the screen, the heavier the laptop and the bulkier they usually are. The LG Gram 17 (2021) is a rare exception, offering a massive 17-inch screen in a 1.35kg shell. For reference, that weight is equivalent to most 14- and 15-inch laptops.
Having a 17-inch laptop so light made it incredibly portable, which we found to be super convenient to sling into a bag for the commute to work. With the slim chassis and lightweight form in mind, the port selection is great with USB-C/Thunderbolt 4, USB-A HDMI and microSD all represented. For such a lightweight laptop though, some corners have been cut, as the Gram features a magnesium-alloy case that flexes under pressure.
During testing, the 17-inch display, complete with its 2560×1600 resolution, proved to be excellent, offering sharp imagery. With it also came a great contrast ratio of 1518:1 and superb colour accuracy, with our colourimeter measuring the panel to hit 100% of the sRGB coverage, and 81% and 96% for Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 respectively. This means you could use this LG laptop for colour-sensitive design work as much as for general use.
Inside, it packs an Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor, the same as the smaller 16-inch model that we found to breeze through productivity tasks. With that being said, we found it to lag behind competitor’s models with the same chip inside, as well as laptops that were smaller in size. The SSD read and writes here were also quick, making loading your files on and off the 512GB drive incredibly easy.
The battery present here is the same 80Wh capacity as in the 16-inch model too which, during our PC Mark 10 benchmark, managed to last 11hrs and 20 minutes. For a laptop this size, it’s a respectable result, although lasted just under 4 hours less than the LG Gram 16.
So if you fancy a 17-inch laptop that’s also portable enough to bring to the office or the university lecture hall, there really is no better option than the LG Gram 17.
Reviewer: Ryan Jones
Full review: LG Gram 17 (2021) review
