LG gram 2022 laptop 17Z90Q - 17 Inch, Intel Evo Core i7 - 12th Gen, 80Wh Battery, (2560 x 1600 px), 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD Memory, Windows 11 OS - Black

Product Information

Spec-wise, this is based on the 2022 Intel 12th-gen Alder Lake Core P hardware platform. The Core i7-1260P is a hybrid design with 4 Performance and 8 Efficiency Cores, as well as 16 combined threads. This implementation supplies the CPU with 18+W of sustained power in demanding loads, which is lower than most other portable designs on their top-performance profiles. We’ll get in-depth further down. The camera has been updated from the previous Grams as well, and is now a higher-quality and higher-resolution FHD 2 MPx shooter. It’s better than the average laptop camera, but still not amazing by any means.

The Keyboard is not ISO standard - yes the keys are layed out for a UK audience but instead of the L shaped Enter Key they have the american style horizontal "Enter" and the "#"/"~" key is moved above "Enter". As a programmer this still throws me from time to time and it baffles me that they'd have an American enter key but not an American "Left SHIFT". So it's a half US and half UK layout where we have a UK key placements as well as "Left SHIFT" and "\" living next to one another (as the Queen intended) but we have an American "ENTER" key with the "#" key moved up... WEIRD. The screen is very clear – I can have loads of lines of code showing at any one time which is invaluable. I rarely have it at anywhere near full brightness (it still looks BRIGHT as contrast is good). Consequently, per charge, I get 5-6 hours of use (a day's work for me) and I only ever charge the battery to 80%. There’s a large 80Wh battery inside this LG Gram 17, which is fair-sized for this sort of laptop. Of course, LG could have even included an even bigger battery in this 17-inch chassis, but instead chose a consistent internal design between the different Gram models. A larger 90Wh battery is available with the i7+RTX 2050 Gram 17 Pro models.It’s still ludicrously light and portable for a 17in laptop, but this year’s version has better battery life, improved connectivity and faster performance. If you hanker after something that works just as well as a mobile workhorse as it does a desktop replacement, it’s pretty much the perfect solution. LG’s genre-bending Gram 17 was one of my favourite laptops of 2020. By squeezing a huge 17in display into a laptop nearly as light as a MacBook Air, LG achieved something special and in a world of identikit 13.3in ultraportables that’s something to be applauded.

Those who are not ready to put up with this can take a bunch of other laptops (for example, the new Legion 7 with Zen3+, which is much quieter and faster according review), but Gram cannot be improved in any way without significant fundamental and technological improvements in all industries (about how not to improve the iPhone so that Apple does not tried to do). Even the noise, as you can clearly see, is gradually increasing in level compared to the old models in all laptops, with rare successful exceptions like the Legion 7 2022 with AMD. Because the TDP and CPU consumption of both Intel and AMD continues to rise (and this is pure madness) . And this is not progress, but regression in IT. Consumption should not grow with grow of performance, it should either stay the same or get smaller – this is real progress, which I write about often and everywhere. There’s a high-resolution 17-inch 16:10 screen on the LG Gram 17, with averagely sized bezels all around and a solid-quality IPS matte panel on this 2022 model. Here it is important to understand very subtly the target audience for each model from the point of view of marketers and its size. If they are stupid or just sawing the company's budgets, there will be no sense – sales will be minimal. For example, why does LG make the Gram 16 series with a mutilated numpad, when there is a 17 series with a full-fledged one? Who would agree to carry a 16" (which is uncomfortable in itself) instead of a full-fledged by keyboard 17? From my point of view, the 16" series is pointless to buy. There’s a high-resolution 16-inch 16:10 screen on the LG Gram 16, with narrow side bezels and an average chin and forehead. For the 2022 models, LG also implement a matte-finished display, with a good-quality IPS panel. LG offers this in a few different configurations, some based entirely on an Intel 12th-gen Core P platform with Iris Xe graphics and an 80 Wh battery, well suited for daily activities and multitasking, and a few that pair the same Core P processors with an RTX 2050 dGPU and a 90 Wh battery, for those looking for a little more performance in this format. These are sold as the LG Gram 17 Pro in some markets, but the former Gram 17 variant is the one we’re discussing here.

Attention Sensing

There turned out to be an acceptable amount of volume (84dB average at 1m from a pink noise source and 87dB peak from a music source at the same distance) and even a reasonable amount of bass, certainly more than the old 2021 model produced. Balance and definition are good, too. I really was genuinely surprised by the quality of the sound that the LG Gram 16 (2022) produces. I agree. It's kind of unacceptable that 1000€+ mobile (non-gaming) laptops still only come with soldered RAM, even sometimes only 8GB, still mediocre screens with only 300-400 nits of brightness and less than 120Hz refresh rate and the battery runtime is less than 8 hours even in ultra-thin, ultra-light models. This design particularity is the reason thermals are not significantly improved when placing the laptop on a raiser stand, as I believe they would if the fan would have been allowed unrestrained air access through the intake grill.

There’s no difference in weight from last year, which is very much a good thing. At 1.35kg it remains, rather astonishingly, a mere 65g heavier than the M1 MacBook Air. And it’s pretty much the same shape and size as before. The 2020 LG Gram 17 was a great laptop but the 2021 model is even better. LG has made small improvements everywhere you look while doing nothing to undermine the attraction of the original.

The king of lightweight large-screened laptops returns with faster performance and better battery life; what’s not to like?

I’ve already reviewed the 2022-generation of the LG Gram 17 in a previous article, and in this one, I’ll mostly focus on how the slightly smaller Gram 16 compares to the 17-inch model and how LG were able to improve this notebook significantly in comparison to the previous-generation Gram 16 reviewed in the past. I can work with this – I don't like ultra-books. 'Alternatives' such as the XPS 17 are no use to me – I have had one – yes, its powerful, yes it's surprisingly small but it weighs a lot and compared to my gaming laptop (I use that for video production as well as gaming), its performance is pathetic. And what is the target audience on the planet for the Gram 17 series – from your point of view, as an expert? Indeed, the LG Gram 16 is so good that it has taken over as my new favourite ultralight big-screened laptop. If that extra inch of screen real estate is important to you, however, there’s still no beating the 17in model.

Here’s what we got on our unit, compared to the previous-gen Gram and a few other portable models. Low settings An updated thermal module is most likely available on the LG Gram 16 Pro with the RTX 2050 GPU, but that’s something we will discuss in a future article. The latter is particularly great to see – too many laptop panels are still limited to sRGB – and it means the LG Gram 17 is a fabulous machine on which to watch Netflix or Prime Video with colours leaping to life on that huge LCD panel. LG Gram 17 (2021) review: Performance I note comments asking why this machine exists – for me it fits one part of my laptop requirements – lightness with a big screen and an easy carry.LG offers three power profiles to choose from in the LG Smart Assitant control app, which has been revamped from the previous application. It offers access to a lot of useful settings for the keyboard, display, battery, or updates. If we’re talking software, I still think there’s a fair amount of preinstalled bloatware on this LG laptop, but I appreciate how they centralized many of their past apps into the updated Smart Assitant app now. Compared to the previous-generation Gram built on an 11th-gen Core i7-1165G7 processor, this 2022 model is a major step up in CPU performance, and only a minor upgrade in GPU capabilities. The faster CPU makes a difference both with daily use and multitasking, but also with occasional intensive loads. Finally, if you were looking for a touchscreen on this Gram 17, there isn’t any in this 2022 generation. You will find touch variants of the smaller Gram 15 and Gram 16 models, in their 2-in-1 convertible variants. Hardware, performance, and upgrade options Next, here are some benchmark results. We ran the entire suite of tests and benchmarks on the High profile on this Core i7-1260P configuration, with the screen set at its default QHD+ resolution. Our sample also came poorly calibrated, with a skewed Gamma and White Point. It ended up OK in terms of uniformity once calibrated, with only variations in luminosity in the corners. I did notice a little bit of light bleeding in the top-right corner on this unit, while the Gram 17 panel experienced none, despite being a little brighter.