LG Gram 17 (17Z90N-V) Review

The LG Gram 17 mobile office laptop comes with a huge 17-inch screen. Despite having large screen LG kept it light and thin, only 1.350 KG weight and 17.4mm thick. At the first look, it gives me impression of being a heavyweight laptop, but it feels featherlight when I pick it up. But what about durability and performance? Let’s check out –

Build quality

LG Gram 17 has an elegant design and slim case built out of magnesium alloy which keep is lightweight and enhances the durability. The dark silver-grey case has a smooth matte surface that is not at all susceptible to fingerprints. Despite having 17.4 mm thickness, it looks sleek. There are no noticeable sharp edges. The hinges allow to open the screen up to 140 degrees and it holds the display tightly in position.

LG Gram 17 (17Z90N-V) Review

17-inch Display

The 17-inch screen IPS display with 16:10 format and offering a native resolution of WQXGA (2560x1600p). It has a contrast of 1077:1 and brightness of 354 cd/m². The screen delivers vivid colours and clear imagery without any distortion at any angle.

Working on the screen is pleasure, with its superb colour reproduction. Text appears sharp and viewing any video or image remain steady even from any angle. But the reflective display surface, make it difficult usually in outdoor conditions.

One thing which I missed with the LG Gram is touch capability which we can find with most of the Windows laptops at this price.

Keyboard, touchpad, speakers and fingerprint sensor

The notebook has an illuminated chiclet keyboard. It has 16 mm keys that offer a short stroke and a clear pressure point. Keys have a smooth surface and when you type on it, keys bounce slightly. Overall, it is a comfortable keyboard suitable for daily typing tasks. The power button comes with a fingerprint sensor which enables secure and smooth logins.

LG Gram 17 (17Z90N-V) Review

The touchpad is about 12 x 7.8 cm offering ample space for using gesture controls. The touchpad has smooth surface enabling you sliding over it easily. It offers a short stroke and a clear pressure point.

The Gram comes with 1.5-watt stereo speakers which are loud enough to watch movies and play games, but with almost no bass. The HD webcam is adequate for video calls and virtual meetings.

Performance

The Gram laptop comes with the latest-gen Intel Core i7 CPU with integrated graphics Intel Iris Plus, 8 GB RAM, and 512 GB SSD. The combination gives you enough juice to handle most of the day-to-tasks. But when it comes to graphics performance, it might struggle with some high-graphics intensive applications.

While browsing the internet and working on daily productivity apps, I didn’t notice any performance lag. It was super smooth to switch between the apps and work on the PC even for longer hours while using the PC for more than a month. Though it's not built to deal with heavy applications, yet I loaded it with various high graphics-intensive apps, including Adobe Suite. We opened two chrome browser with 10 tabs in each with applications like MS Word, Excel and Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. While operating the machine with all these applications running in the background, we didn’t notice any performance lag. We were able to switch between applications. When I used the Adobe Premiere for video editing, it was able to handle the application however the rendering time was a bit higher compare to Asus ExpertBook P2451.

Also, I run some games that consume a whole lot of power, such as and games like Shadow of Mordor and Thief. Though it’s not a gaming machine, yet these games can help us to understand the real-world performance. The laptop did well, but yes I missed a discrete graphics in it.

Further, I opened 10 Tabs in Chrome and Mozilla, MS Word, Excel, PPT, etc, plus run Adobe Photoshop, Premiere and CS. There was no noticeable performance, just a little delay when switching between apps.

LG Gram comes with a giant 80Wh battery that gives you juice to run for more than 12 hours with daily productivity. With some heavy usage, you can get over 7 hours of battery life while with heavy graphics usage it can last for over 4 hours. While using the Imtec Battery Mark it resulted in 3 hours 37 min, which I can expect when using 100 per cent CPU.