LG Gram 17 Laptop Review

Nicholas De Leon
·4 min read
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This 17-inch Windows computer delivers on both performance and portability

By Nicholas De Leon

Available in several sizes, including this 17-inch model, the LG Gram is a smart choice if you’re in the market for a Windows laptop. It’s light enough to easily carry around and powerful enough to crunch through everyday tasks without breaking a sweat, and it will run as long as 18 hours on a single charge. For trips to the local Starbucks, feel free to leave your charger at home.

Does such a nice laptop come cheap? At around $1,600, not really, no, but this price is in line with other similarly situated laptops. At the same time, you can easily spend more on a laptop, particularly high-end gaming models or fully kitted-out Apple MacBook Pros, but the LG Gram more than holds its own against even these pricier models.

LG Gram 17 (2021)

Notable Features

  • Feathery weight: As we say every now and then, “It’s in the name.” Weighing in at 2.9 pounds, the 17-inch LG Gram is a seriously light laptop, especially considering its size.

  • Long battery life: You can expect 18 hours of battery life while browsing the web, or around half that while watching high-res video, both of which are stellar results for such a large laptop. (They are usually battery hogs.)

  • Massive storage: Two terabytes of solid-state storage is plenty of room for even a hefty collection of large files.

  • Fast performance: The LG Gram 17’s Intel Core i7 processor, which might be overkill for using Microsoft Word or browsing Facebook, will come in handy if you’re crunching large spreadsheets in Excel or editing and rendering video in Adobe Premiere.

How Well Does the LG Gram 17 Work?

The LG Gram first came onto our radar a few years ago, offering a truly compelling combination of size, weight, and performance that made it easy to recommend. That continues to be the case. This latest 17-inch Gram is equipped with enough high-end specs to ensure that it performs at a top level for you for years to come. Our testers note fast boot-up and individual app startup times—nobody likes waiting for Photoshop to load—alongside other welcome features, like a large, comfortable-to-use keyboard and color-accurate display. Coupled with the Gram’s size and weight, this would be a fine choice for a portable Netflix machine to take with you on the road.

The display is not a touchscreen, but it has a large resolution that splits the difference between 1080p and 4K—2560 x 1600 pixels. So not only is the display physically large, but you’ll also be able to fit more content on there than you would if it were “only” 1080p. Sure, it’s a few pixels short of 4K, but 4K on a 17-inch monitor may be overkill.

If there’s one weak spot with the LG Gram 17, it’s that it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card from the likes of AMD or Nvidia. That might not matter to you if you haven’t touched a video game since the original Super Mario Bros., but it could mean serious gamers may want to look elsewhere. Then again, given the proliferation of video game streaming services like Xbox Game Pass, Google Stadia, and the newly revamped PlayStation Plus, you may still be able to scratch the occasional gaming itch.

Who Is the LG Gram 17 For?

This would be a great pick for people who really want a large screen on their next Windows laptop. Seventeen inches means the windows of all of your favorite apps are large and highly visible. And a screen this big is a great way to stream video on the go. It’s perhaps not the best pick if you’re looking for a pure business travel companion, if only because such a large screen may be a little tricky to maneuver if you’re crammed into the average airline seat.

But if you need something powerful yet light with a spacious display, it’s hard to go wrong here.

How Consumer Reports Tests Laptops

There are almost 200 laptops and Chromebooks in our ratings, with dozens of models added every year. These models are refreshed constantly, ensuring that only currently available laptops are presented to CR members.

Our experts run a series of tests to check things like how fast the laptop is able to carry out tasks like opening apps, bouncing between web pages, and processing spreadsheets. We have two separate battery tests to get a better understanding of what you can expect under different loads: One test plays back a 4K video until the battery is fully depleted, and the other tests cycles through several websites until the battery is fully depleted. Having both numbers should give you a more comprehensive idea of what real-world battery life looks like.



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