I’m wrapping up my review of the new LG Gram Style (starting at $1,799), and I wanted to give you a sneak preview of what to expect from one of the most stunning Windows laptops I’ve tested this year. Well, actually ever.
And that's because this laptop is very light. Very, very light. Yes, Apple is expected to unveil a new MacBook Air 15-inch soon, perhaps during its WWDC 2023 event in June. But I'm telling you that LG's machine is amazingly portable for a laptop with an even bigger 16-inch display.
Now this is LIGHT
Until I picked it up I thought the LG Gram Style's weight of 2.76 pounds might be a typo. By comparison, the 13-inch MacBook Air weighs 2.7 pounds, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro is 4.7 pounds. So the Gram Style is nearly 2 pounds lighter than Apple's big-screen laptop.
Although it's made of nano-magnesium alloy for the base and Gorilla Glass on the lid and deck, the Gram Style feels a bit plasticky on the bottom. But it's not plastic. Still, there are some trade-offs for the super light weight. For example, I can feel a bit of creaking when I twist the design with two hands (my personal torture test), and the lid wobbles a bit when you place it down on a desk.
In other words, the LG Gram Style is almost too light, although I can't tell you how liberating it feels to slip this Windows 11 laptop in a backpack and head home on my commute. My usual workhorse is the MacBook Pro 14-inch, and that thing weighs 3.5 pounds — almost a pound more than LG's system. And that makes a difference when I'm dashing to the bus.
Color-shifting design, disappearing touchpad
Another head-turning aspect of the LG Gram Style is its iridescent design. It looks like a pearl finish at first glance, but the color shifts depending on how light hits the lid and deck. It can shift to orange, yellow or even purple depending on the light source.
In a controversial design move, the Gram Style sports a hidden touchpad, which illuminates with two LEDs when you touch the pad. It's a completely seamless surface, too. Personally, I don't mind that I can't see or feel the touchpad's edges, but I did encounter some accidental touches with my left hand, so the palm rejection could be better.
Stunning OLED display
As one would hope for such a premium laptop, the LG Gram Style sports a bright, colorful and smooth 120Hz OLED display with sharp 3K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate.
The Marvels trailer looked rich on this panel, and there's so many pixels available you can easily run two apps side by side without missing any key info. (I actually had to use my reading glasses to make everything out.)
Registering over 156% of the DCI-P3 color gamut in our testing, the Gram Style beats both the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra (121.6%) and the MacBook Pro 16-inch (118.2%). Plus, the Gram Style's display is more than bright enough to use in direct sunlight, which I learned when I took it to Bryant Park.
LG Gram Style Outlook
The LG Gram Style is one impressive laptop, but there are some downsides.
Other than the high price, the LG Gram Styles's performance doesn't quite live up to the specs. In our testing, the 13th-gen Core i7 CPU inside this machine held up well to direct competitors in Geekbench but fell behind the likes of the Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 and Lenovo Yoga 9i with the same chip in our video transcoding test and in graphics benchmarks.
Also, the bottom of this machine can run a bit warm, as it topped 100 degrees in our heat testing in one spot. That's what happens when there's just not a lot of room for cooling and you opt for a design that's so fricking thin.
But overall I think LG deserves credit for creating a laptop that will literally make you say "wow" at a time everyone else just seems to be iterating. Stay tuned for my full LG Gram Style review for my final review and rating, and if you have any questions about this system feel free to hit us up in the comments.
