LG Releases Gram 17 Laptop: An Ultra-Thin Notebook with a 17.3in Display | Hacker News Reader

LG Releases Gram 17 Laptop: An Ultra-Thin Notebook with a 17.3in Display

anandtech.com

168 pointsp1esk160 comments

What a nice collection of features ignored by other OEMs: wide range of screen choices (13.3, 14, 15.6, 17), USB C/A ports, headphone jack, 16:10 ratio, 72Wh battery, micro-SD, ethernet port.

Whiskey Lake is supposed to have hardware fixes for Meltdown and L1TF, which should boost performance and battery life.

(Edit: CPU for the 17" is Whiskey Lake, the others appear to be Kaby Lake Refresh, e.g. LG Gram 13.3: https://www.lg.com/us/support/products/documents/13Z980-A.AA...

No info on key travel)

Might there be a vPro configuration with a TPM, for running QubesOS?

I wasn’t aware that headphone jacks on laptops were a cause for celebration now. A sad state of affairs...

Perhaps not for celebration, but for giving attention so that they are not removed by someone thinking "No-one asks for headphone jacks today". It's easy to come to the conclusion that this is the direction we're moving towards, now that more and more phones come without it.

Phones and laptops are quite different in terms of form factor, use case case and therefore demand and limitation. I think the headphone jack is safe for now.

Headphones have been removed from iPad Pro, even though there is ample room in the case and an entire ecosystem of accessories which rely on the headphone jack.

So you believe that a reviewer or perhaps a random internet commenter making a statement for or against a feature such as a headphone socket "gives attention" which is picked up by a company as it works on the spec for subsequent models? How would that work? How would you know whether the person was going to buy one anyway, or wasn't an idiot - what if you get some people who like it and some who don't? Wouldn't you just stick with the status quo, or talk to people who know what they're talking about?

What major laptops actually sell without a headphone jack? Apple, killer of the 3.5mm jack, still ships with a 3.5mm jack on all MacBook models.

I have a current-gen macbook pro and a Google Pixel 1. I feel like I'm living in a great, but precarious period when I can charge my phone and my laptop with the same cable, and plug my headphones into either my laptop or my phone (while charging!). The phone is getting old though, and I'm hoping that when it dies, the replacement will have both USB-C charging and a headphone jack too. Is that too much to ask?

I have a Huawei phone and a ThinkPad, both of which can use USB-C charging. In fact, the Huawei charger does charge the ThinkPad albeit slowly. I love it!

I own a macbook pro 15 , which is a work laptop and it's horrendous. The keyboard has so less travel that it feels like the keys were pasted on top of the keyboard, the touchbar is annoying when you want to use the function keys while programming, it has 'zero' usb ports so when you need to plug in a HDD you need to hunt for an adapter. Same with you are in a meeting and want to connect hdmi/displayport off you go adapter hunting again.

I've got a 2018 13" Macbook Pro, and I also hate the keyboard and find it horrible to use - I have a $100 Asus netbook that has a better keyboard!

It's also the only Macbook I've ever owned, so with people always raving about how great Mackook keyboards are, I'm especially annoyed about it having such a terrible keyboard.

Why can't high end luxery items have adapter slots like the think pads of old..

What I'm really looking for is a H Series processor with a 14" screen. I want to replace my desktop with a laptop, hooked on to dual monitors. So I don't even need a Ultra HD screen. A laptop helps on the rare occasions I want to travel. But all the manufacturers seem to brand laptops with H Series processors as gaming machines and have a 15.6 inch screen minimum.

> on the rare occasions I want to travel

Then why not get the 15"?! I honestly don't understand why the 13-14" screen size exists. If you want something really portable it's got to be 12" or less. If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more...

(The only thing more nonsensical than this is the wide screen AR when we know a 4:3 ratio would always be superior. Yeah, power users will customize their UI to get rid of the crap wasting vertical screen space... but those very same power users will also want to see long batches of code or spreadsheet cells, or text, so they'd still crave for more vertical space.)

13-14" is perfect size for fitting into a normal backpack or satchel, whereas 15" is starting to get to the point where you need a specialist laptop bag.

I find this to be true as well. A ~13.5" machine packs easily and, is noticeably more useful to me than a 12".

And 12" is just a little too small for my preference, though not wholly unbearable.

My 15" and larger machines have been much harder to travel with easily. For productivity, I have usually preferred the 15"+ machines. If that were the only consideration, then I wouldn't think twice. But they have been a pain to haul.

> If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more...

I have a 14" T470P (2560x1440) and I do 'serious' work on it all the time, its more than adequate for when I want to work away from a desktop.

I went from 15 to 13 due to getting an amazing deal on mbp. Won't go back. Never thought I would like the 13 but its actually way better than a 15 for taking with. Plugged into monitor at home anyways.

put me in as another 15->13 (well 13.3") convert. the weight reduction is also a nice benefit.

> If you want something really portable it's got to be 12" or less. If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more

What about something semi-serious... like Photoshop or Illustrator which can take reasonable amount of resources, but far fewer than a video editor or an IDE. A 13" with a really good screen can handle this task well and doesn't need the added heft of a 15".

If it doesn't have to be portable why spend that much on a laptop at all? Why not get a desktop you can at least sensibly upgrade/fix etc?

There's no reason a 12" (and 13.3/14) laptop should be less powerful than a 15" or 17", though.

I'd buy that even if it adds one centimeter to the height (gasp ! Now I can have an RJ-45 port and more than one USB port ?!).

> There's no reason a 12" (and 13.3/14) laptop should be less powerful than a 15" or 17", though.

yes there is. area and volume inside the chassis increase a lot faster than the length of the diagonal. the limiting factors for performance are heat dissipation and power. a bigger chassis can evacuate heat faster and house a larger battery that can sustain high power use for longer.

But we'd get a larger chassis just by doubling the height, right ?

Gigabyte Aero 14

Too bad about the keyboard. That is the weakest part of the system. With that footprint I wish they'd have used a typical tenkeyless desktop layout, instead of the cramped and crippled numpad layout.

Not only are the arrow keys halved but no dedicated hone, end, page up/down keys.

I love the 16:10 dearly, but that keyboard is going to be maddening to anyone but the most casual media consumer. That is true of almost every laptop though, keyboards are typically afterthoughts.

Where do you see the ethernet port?

My 14" LG came with a Ethernet dongle to connect to the USB-C port. No ethernet port.

Nice pics, but the side view is telling: not nearly as thin as it appeared. One almost wonders if the designers designed it around the marketing pictures. Which in and of itself is a huge red flag. Maybe competitive with a 2012 MacBook Pro, maybe? But injection molded plastic and Windows. No thanks.

Calling Nano Carbon with Magnesium "injection molded plastic" is incredibly dishonest.

HN: The MacBook keyboards are terrible! Why doesn't Apple go back to the slightly-thicker 2015 design and keep the ports and keyboards the way they were?

Also HN: Any keyboard thicker than a MacBook air is pure crap.

Umm, what? I think the laptop is thin enough and the trackpad is large enough. They have managed to get a 17" laptop to the same weight as a 13" MacBook Pro, which is a huge achievement.

I know it might sound like a wild concept, but let's consider. Is it possible that there are multiple people, who have different opinions, even though they are expressing them on the same forum?

This laptop is 0.7 inches thick, while the latest Macbook air is 0.61 inches thick.

It's just 13% thicker. It's also 6% heavier, and has a much larger screen.

But the keyboard does not look good. And the effect of weight is not linear

I am much more interested in the Microsoft Go.

The Surface Go is 10" and this is 17". They are completely different markets, and one costs $1700 vs $400. I doubt that many people are considering both at the same time.

Surface go is okay, don’t expect to really do much and you’ll need to buy an upgrade key to pro if you want to even attempt to run docker and such. But it’s great for travel.

What are your requirements, that you're considering either this or a Go?

Very light, good keyboard, to be used daily for SSH.

The size is not really a factor, even if larger keyboard are usually more comfortable.

The best keyboard I ever found was on a small Thinkpad many years ago.

Since it appears that cost is not a concern, I'd recommend a ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Yeah, looked great until I saw the side [0]. Would be great if it had a larger trackpad, too. If it's actually plastic, that's a complete deal-breaker.

[0] https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13681/lg-gram-17-io.jpg

The article states it comes in a dark silver Carbon Magnesium alloy chassis.

It's thin enough

How much thinner could you make it without sacrificing the ports?

Perhaps GP refers to the looks rather than thinness.

Yep, the aesthetics appear a bit dated and it looks like there are plenty of gaps for dust, dirt, etc to collect. For the price tag, the specs are fine, but the chassis is terrible. I'd much rather buy something like a Razer Blade 17" if I required something that packed a punch and looked great.

Looking at the Macbook in front of me & back to this laptop on my screen & the trackpad looks absolutely tiny. Large trackpads are good! Seems odd that it's so small.

I've used good and bad trackpads/keyboards/etc. over they years. No matter how good or bad they are, you always find a way to get used to them.

I wonder if its not the relative size that's throwing you off. Bigger keyboard = smaller-looking trackpad.

The MacBook Pro 2016+ shows that bigger isn't necessarily better when it comes to input devices.

Yeah, it's probably a function of it being a larger laptop. & it's, of course, subjective. I saw this typing on my 2016 MacBook Pro, & I personally love the giant trackpad.

I'd give bunches of money for a 17", 4k laptop with a great keyboard AND NO numberpad.

System76's come close, except for that pesky numberpad.

I work from home, portability isn't my top priority. I wouldn't mind a heavier laptop with a very thick base sitting on my lap because I use a laptop tray which prevents the heat from burning my legs. Otherwise I'm at my desk with the laptop on a vertical holder.

I do hate numberpad because I would never use it and it moves the touchpad to left of center.

> it moves the touchpad to left of center

What is it with PC laptops and off-centered trackpads and keyboards? I center center sit centered to the trackpad and look right, or sit centered to the screen and they awkwardly type to the left.

It depends on the point of view. Those off center trackpads are in fact positioned in the center in relation to the keyboard (without numpad) which make sense because when you are typing you have access to it with your thumbs and, because it's in the center, it's away from your palms, so it minimize possibility of accidental use when you're typing without using any sophisticated software solution. It may look stupid when you look at it but it's not so stupid when you start using it.

You missed the point. The point is, both the keyboard and trackpad aren't centered. Now you have two options:

1. Position yourself in the center of the keyboard and type straight -> This forces you to turn your head/eyes to see the middle of the screen.

2. Position yourself in the center of your screen and look straight -> This forces you to put your hands to the left.

Both are very awkward. A keyboard needs to be centered in front of the PC. Numpads screw that up.

It's an ergonomics nightmare. You use the keyboard infinitely more than you use that trackpad and a good, solid keyboard is the only advantage of using a laptop over a tablet these days. It makes no sense to compromise the primary functionality of the laptop for something that rarely gets used.

This. A non-centered keyboard, a non-centered trackpad and the lack of trackpad buttons makes this a no go for me.

Try a Dell XPS 15 9570. 15” but 4K. No number pad. I really like mine.

That or the Dell Precision 5520 or 5530. Just got one this week and it's so nice to have a 0.75" thick laptop that still has space for 32GB of RAM, two hard drives, discrete graphics and a Xeon processor. Not to mention the very nice 4k display.

This is what I ended up purchasing.

Both the 14" [0] and 13.3" [1] LG Gram models come without a number pad.

I only know this because my Uncle bought the LG Gram 17 specifically because it has a number pad! In his defense, he's a finance person and it makes the kind of work he does easier.

[0] https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-14Z980-AAAS7U1-ultra-slim-l...

[1] https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-13Z980-AAAS7U1-ultra-slim-l...

Where did your uncle buy it? Because it's not available yet in US.

I think the closest tenkeyless laptop to that is the newer ThinkPad X1 Extreme models. 15", all the high end goodies, pretty much best keyboard by far of any laptop - with no numpad.

Ideally I would love a 17" version with desktop standard tenkeyless layout, with track point, too. Having special proprietary layouts for laptop systems is abhorrent.

interesting. i avoid most laptops because they DONT have number pads :)

likewise. I just looked over at mine lovingly.

The trackpad is a little off center on this laptop, it looks like. Maybe 1cm? Could you really tell?

The trackpad is centered, keyboard is not.

Both are not centered

And the numberpad is really close to the main keys even when they have lots of space to separate them - or move the numpad to the right. Just because, since Apple, design is more important than actual functionality.

Anyone have a guess how well Linux would run on such a beast? How are the driver issues these days? Could I likely get by without manually compiling drivers and without putting magic incantations in config files?

I have a 14” 2018 LG Gram and I run Pop!_OS on it with minimal config. The only thing I did was leave 100% scaling, but put on 1.5x font size (via gnome-tweaks). Might be different on a 17”. Haven’t found any issues at all, however my uses are quite pedestrian. Almost just terminal, Pycharm, browsers. Printer and wifi are all fine.

I ran ElementaryOS on it but then I ran into a few things: 1) troubles getting audio out on HDMI instead of internal speakers (look Mom, no dongles!), 2) video in Chrome browser is broken, 3) some sort of high pitch, very loud tone at startup each time after updating system software.

On Pop, I’m really happy with it. 14” is incredibly light and battery lasts all day for me. Keyboard is good - Ctrl button on outside left where it should be.

Huh. Pop and elementary are both Ubuntu based. I wonder why they gave such different experiences. Do they vary kernel builds by that much?

Doesn't Elementary uses the LTS version of Ubuntu? That may explain differences in hardware support since it would use an older kernel.

I think that the team at System 76 includes some additional hardware drivers and tweaks that might provide a wider range of compatibility.

I'd guess reasonably well. Graphics card would work fine out of the box, Wi-Fi would work well (but probably requires Intel's nonfree driver). Probably the only issues would be the fingerprint reader (which don't seem to be particularly well-supported under Linux) and the screen DPI (1600p at 17" might be a little small for 1X and a little large for 2X, and fractional scaling under Linux is a bit messy).

I have long given up on Linux on laptops, rather stick with virtual machines, or WSL nowadays.

Even my netbook which was sold with Ubuntu Linux has been a mixed experience.

Same. The biggest issue I've had with linux on laptops is hidpi scaling problems. I always run into problems where some apps scale properly and others don't, or weird issues like the mouse cursor changing sizes depending on what window I'm hovering over.

Trackpads are pretty hit-or-miss too, but some machines like the XPS 9370 feel ok.

I recently switched to virtualbox on a macOS host and I've been much happier with how the linux desktop experience feels.

Would love to see the 16:10 ratio come back in vogue. For the web and with so many productivity apps having a ribbon UI, a little extra vertical real estate makes a huge difference.

Some Chromebooks/Pixels and the MS SurfaceBook have 3:2 for that reason, even better.

But why stop there? For predominant web/doc/code usage, I'd dream of having a 1x1 screen laptop! Imagine the Dell XPS 13, same width of screen and keyboard, now bigger vertically to match the width. It'd be physically smaller than a 17" 16:9 machine, yet have more vertical space.

Why not just go all the way to 3:2 like the surface laptop? It's better for anything but full screen video.

> It's better for anything but full screen video.

Not better for having two windows side by side. Considering that we're talking about 17" laptop here, that isn't especially far fetched use case.

Looks amazing, I also miss my massive MacBook Pro's size. But the 17-inch screen only has the same resolution as my 13-inch MacBook Pro, like so many PC laptops. If it had an equivalent DPI, it'd be very compelling.

And for some reason it's totally normal to increase the phone screen size. I don't understand..

OK, for the first time since 2003, I'm tempted to get a non-Apple laptop.

I loved both of my 17" MacBook Pros (2003 and 2007, both of which still work). But Apple doesn't care about big screens and proper keyboards anymore, so this is very attractive to me.

Things to keep in mind with LG. And I am NOT a Mac user ("BTW I use Arch"), but I have owned a Mac in the past (2010 Macbook Air). I am NOT trying to talk you out of this, but you should go into this understanding the trade-offs you will make.

- The build quality will not be like what you are used to. The entire chassic will flex and the keyboard will feel more like a trampoline than the keyboard on your Mac.

- Customer support will be useless, just write that off now.

- Keyboard layout might be a little bizarre, I have not looked at this one. [Ed: just looked, wow thats bizarre. Tiny keys, weird arrows, num pad is strange. Just take a good look before you pull the trigger. Not saying its bad, just ... odd. OK maybe bad.]

- Webcam will probably be worse than you are used to

- Trackpad will be light years behind your Mac both in feel and how it performs. Apple just has this figured out and no one else can touch it. Might still be "good" just wont be "Apple good".

- Quality control will be really poor compared to Apple, you might have dead pixels in the display or other build quality or QA issues.

- Prepare to spend the first 15 minutes peeling off stickers and the glue from them.

- You will probably want to just wipe it and re-install Windows or install Linux vs "de-crapwaring" it. No idea what Linux support will be like and I would be hesitant to be the first one to buy one to find out. And this is from someone who runs Linux exclusively.

Are you saying this from your first hand, recent experience using LG Gram laptop on every day basis?

Sad but true. I can see my 2013 MBP being my first and last Mac. I'm not spending that sort of money to lose the escape key/function keys.

I was at Fry's electronics about 30 minutes ago to just wander around and look at stuff. These Gram laptops caught my eye but after holding them in my hand, I was really disappointed. They didn't feel dense... like they were light but also felt low quality. The materials didn't feel sturdy. They feel nerf. The nicest PC hardware I saw was from Microsoft or Samsung.

When I got my 14", I thought the same thing, but it might be due to how light it is. LG boast military grade durability if that means anything. I've carried mine in a duffle-bag for the past year and no problems at all. I'm pretty rough with my laptops. I've broken 2 macbooks previously (HDMI port, logic board).

Well, it is a 3 pound laptop in a gargantuan 17-inch form factor. At that weight class, I wouldn't expect it to feel particularly solid.

There are so many laptops available today, but NONE of them provides real 7-row keyboard ... one of the reasons I still use 2011 ThinkPad laptops - for the convenience of having INS/DEL HOME/END PGUP/PGDN top-right layout really keyboard layout.

Look for the Thinkpad 25th anniversary edition, it has a 7 row keyboard with more modern (t470) guts but expensive af

I knew that one, but it was 5000 pieces limited production and its no longer available.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser...

... and besides that one no other modern laptop has 'real' keyboard.

I keep hoping they bring that back for an X1 Extreme successor. That is where that keyboard truly belonged.

And discontinued.

You can release the best possible hardware on a laptop and I'm still going to pass because of Windows 10.

Windows 10 is easily the worst edition of Windows I've ever used. It forces you to update and breaks the entire damn machine at every go

No one forces you to run windows on this machine.

The software I use (music production) works only on Mac and Windows. No Linux support

So why are you passing on the laptop, if particular software in this case is the issue?

What do you think of Ardour? I'm classically a Logic/Ableton person but Ardour is really well-polished for FOSS.

I am on the same boat. I need to use Linux to code but my Music Production affairs happen on the Windows side of it.

Linux desktop is in a pretty good shape (not perfect) these days. I encourage you to give Pop_OS & ElementaryOS a try on a live disk.

Bullshit. Windows 10 is the best Windows ever made. Never had a problem with it, and the updates are generally great. They had one recent one that went bad for a small number of users. None of our machines had any problems.

My Ubuntu desktop and my Ubuntu server in comparison are constantly having problems, especially when I upgrade the distro to the next version.

>Bullshit. Windows 10 is the best Windows ever made. Never had a problem with it, and the updates are generally great. They had one recent one that went bad for a small number of users. None of our machines had any problems.

Pulled updates because of files being deleted, network drives not working after updates, updates installing without user confirmation on reboot forcing people to wait for Windows to get done. Automatically re-installing games into the start menu even on "Professional" version of Windows 10. Start menu searching that is inconsistent and slow. Invasive privacy settings that have a tendency to "accidentally" reset themselves after updates.

This is all well documented on the web, feel free to do some searching. I cannot fathom how anyone can believe Windows 10 is the best version of Windows.

>My Ubuntu desktop and my Ubuntu server in comparison are constantly having problems, especially when I upgrade the distro to the next version.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-forced-downloads-we...

And besides the forced upgrades, the amount of issues people had with Windows 7 to 10 upgrades might have been the worst I've seen of any version of Windows.

We got a contrarian!

Seriously tho, I have 16 machines I use. Running everything from amigaos to ubuntu studio, win10, and mac. Windows 10 is by far the least responsive, and tqkes more time updating and fixing drivers than the rest combined. Sure, I use music interfaces, latency is my devil, but even ignoring that weakness, Windows 10 is both the worst OS I run, and only better than ME and Vista even in the microsoft world.

All that space and they couldn't be bothered to put in full-sized arrow keys.

It's weird and frustrating to see how laptop manufacturers always make basic mistakes like this. My favorite was placing ports so that you can't have an USB thumb drive and the charger at the same time.

I guess the manufacturing pipeline really don't allow for prototypes, so by the time someone is using the device, they've already made twenty million of them and it's too late to change the design.

Apple doesn't do full-size arrow keys so we won't either

– actual quote from design meeting

I love a lot of things in my LG gram 14 inch, except the poor speakers (my mobile phone has a better one) and the fact that I can't use it outside in the sun.

If only it had an MX150 or a Ryzen 2700U in there for some graphics goodness.

Is there still a demand for larger screened laptops these days? I use a relatively compact machine (13 inch rMBP) which certainly isn't the largest device on the block, but I still struggle to use it on an airplane tray table. What's the appeal of a thin-and-light 17 incher?

99.9% of people DON'T do work on airplanes or trains. Even on most coffeeshop tables you have room for a compact 17"... And you always want more screen, right?

Have you been on the NY<->DC amtrak recently? Or NY<->Boston? Everyone has their laptop out. I wish there was a laptop designed to fit neatly in the tray instead of being slightly too big and being tilted due to the lip of the tray.

Separately, have you been to a NYC coffee shop recently? Few folks have 15" displays, but two people can just about fit. The 17"-ers take up the full table, and it feels like they're bringing a "rig".

> two people can just about fit

if you're the one with the 15", and the person near it's a 12" or 10", there's enough room. lots of people will be satisfied with 12" so if you're the 15" you'll be in the win. get a 12" if you want room in trains, probably. 14" is a weird compromise. you either need a proper office or table or you don't. and 17" will always be rare enough that 2 people with 17" landing on the same table will never happen. I mean, you get a 17" inch machine especially so you can beam a "fuck off, keep the distance" to people around you... :P

> if you want room in trains, probably. 14"

I'm suggesting an "Amtrak laptop" that fits precisely and snugly in the fold-out trays that they give you, regardless of screen size.

IME doing any real work on a 13" screen just sucks. It's not good for gaming or movies either.

> I still struggle to use it on an airplane tray table.

... it's a LAPtop. Why bother with the airplane tray when it's thin and light enough to use on your lap?

> What's the appeal of a thin-and-light 17 incher?

Most mainstream customers don't need a powerful CPU/GPU (see success of MacBook Air). All they want is thin, light and a big beautiful screen.

The neck angle of putting a laptop in my lap on a plane is unusable.

yes with an 11" notebook the angle would be a pain but with a 17" screen it's quite usable

I worked my way through grad school with a 17 inch macbook pro. I would work in between classes by sitting in a chair in the lounge, putting the laptop on my lap and working. The height of the arms of this one chair was perfectly level with the top of the laptop. The angle of the chair back put the screen straight ahead in my vision. The ergonomics were almost as good as working at a desk.

Ikea doesn't sell that chair anymore and apple doesn't sell that laptop anymore. sigh

> All they want is thin, light and a big beautiful screen.

I disagree with the thin part. I have yet to see anyone care whether a laptop is 1" or .7". This is a pointless marketing ploy, invented by Jobs. Yes, lightness matters. But we have seen (and I actually owned one) incredibly light laptops mostly from Japan well before Jobs invented the thin craze.

> I have yet to see anyone care whether a laptop is 1" or .7".

Careful there. I didn't say mainstream customers care about having the 'thinnest' laptop. I agree that a distinction between 1" or 0.7" is pointless. They do care about having a 'thin' laptop. It's largely marketing but also partly ergonomics, especially at the 17" size to reduce volume

I really don't understand the weight issue, I don't mind a heavy laptop at all. Make it twice as heavy or even heavier if I can get more battery out of it. Thinness though is extremely important. It determines the bulk of the whole machine and in what situations I can bring it.

Noise, performance and battery life are really important too, so there are bound to be a lot of compromises. But I really do value thinness.

Most mobile use of laptops is in contexts other than airplanes. (thankfully, from climate change POV)

Contractors who have to drag their laptops to work and home each day but want desktop-class machines.

it looks great! definitely a good offering from LG, with the exception of a few small things:

* at 17" I'd like more memory available than 16gb

* same for more than 512gb of disk

* pretty small trackpad for all that space, make use of it!

I'd be very interested to see how well it sells - I know a few people that swear by 17" laptops, and was sad to see apple exit that market (for them, 13" is easily a large enough laptop for me)

The big negative for me is lack of Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt provides so many future options (eg external gpu, etc) that I refuse to purchase a premium laptop without Thunderbolt support.

with the igpu and such a nice screen its a shame TB isn't an option. This seems otherwise perfect for work-on-the-go and plugging into a eGPU at home in the evenings.

No thunderbolt ... can’t have it as I need to access egpu for computation from Time to time.

Cloud?

Damn, I miss my old “lunch tray” 17” MBP...

I never heard a good reason for cancelling that model. Presumably with modern hardware they could be much more portable now. Imagine how much battery life they could get if they had a 17” with one of the low power cpus and just fit it with the largest battery they could?

The practical limit for battery capacity is 100 Wh; beyond that you need airline approval to travel with it. Apple's 17" Unibody MBP had a 95 Wh battery, and when that was discontinued the 15" rMBP offered 95 or 99.5 Wh until the Touchbar was added. If Apple were to reintroduce a 17" model, it could only offer 19% higher battery capacity than the current 15", which means it probably couldn't offer any better battery life.

I'd rather just see the 15" rMBP get a bit thicker so that it can have more variety of I/O and stay at the ceiling for battery capacity.

The practical limit for battery capacity is 100 Wh; beyond that you need airline approval to travel with it.

Does that also apply if it’s two batteries, both physically removable, from the outside? Just curious. SWMBO and I travel with can lights for diving, big batteries but none individually over the limit.

Yeah, it’s per battery. I usually carry two nearly 100wh battery banks. Never a problem. I imagine 100wh limit is what they’ve determined they can contain if it catches fire. I believe they also offer exemptions for slightly more with airline approval.

Seems to be you can carry max 15 devices with built-in 100Wh battery and 20 extra 100Wh batteries. Larger batteries require approval.

https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/dgr/Documents/passenger-...

Btw, newer Lenovo T4x0 models have a very nice dual-battery configuration, which allows you to swap the battery without shutting down.

apple could never "regress" to user replaceable batteries unless ive retires/is replaced.their design culture would not allow it

It is Apple, so they weren't selling well so they dropped it.

...which is what I’d do if I ran the company. Wouldn’t you?

(Ex-MBP 17”-er here.)

By that logic, the iPhone is on its way out and the SE back into production.

How did you reach that conclusion? The large phones sell better than the small phones.

As it happens, I’m also an SE owner who is devastated that it has been discontinued. I love my small phone, but it seems that I’m in a minority.

Numerous articles discussing the new models vastly underperforming estimates and expected sales volumes. Meanwhile, when the SE launched it sold very well. I think they’d have a similar success with an SE2 given those two factors and the age of the SE. I doubt the factors that led people to purchase the SE have changed toward the negative in that time.

Your statement implies that you believe that Apple are making larger phones which don’t sell as well, and that they know that smaller phones would sell in greater volume but are choosing not to do that.

This is patently absurd.

It looks bulky and unwieldy, and Apple doesn't want their logo on anything that unsexy.

I had the first 17" Powerbook G4. I miss it so much. My favorite laptop ever. Even better than my Thinkpad 600e and 600x.

> Meanwhile, the laptop weighs 1.33 kilograms

What?! The last 17" laptop I had the misfortune to be lumbered with was an HP Zbook 17. I don't recall exactly, but it was easily at least 4kg and about 1.75 inches thick!

I'm astonished they've got this so light and thin - will definitely be considering one when it's time for an upgrade, as I much prefer a larger screen for coding!

I wonder if the keyboard is like the newer macbooks. And of course the best way to ruin a display is to make it glossy, which they did.

No, the keyboard is not like the newer macbooks. Quite normal.

For the XPS 15, the choice is either: matte and non-touch; or glossy and touch enabled.

I was told touch screens are always glossy.

ThinkPad touchscreens are semi-matte.

I kind of like a glossy screen.

Apple is their own worst enemy. 3d Touch, Touchbars, horrible keyboards, etc drive their material cost up and no one cares or uses these "features. It seems OSX is the main attraction to their hardware these days; as it turns out a lot a lot of manufacturers can get hardware "right".

Hopefully this is the beginning of large screen laptop resurgence.

Has anyone really extensively used an LG Gram as a daily? Does it hold up well over time? The last thing I want is to have something break and wait 2 months for a warranty repair...

I have one, older generation. Holding up pretty well. The casing scratches really easily though

Just been looking at the 13"/14" models as I'm not that interested in a 17" screen, disappointed to see (unless I'm mistaken) that there doesn't seem to be a way of upgrading the RAM to > 8GB

Looks great but with many thin laptops especially 17 in models they look like i can just bend them in half. This looks no different or am I missing something?

I wouldn't mind this as a Macbook. I kind of miss the old 17" Macbooks.

19 hour battery life means what, 6 in real world use? Companies shouldn't be allowed to exaggerate this number every single machine they build.

God that thing looks like holy hell to type on.

I cannot believe this. All this space available and no separate PgUp/PgDn keys?

Under three pounds? Not bad! Does the ram go up or is it fixed at 16GB?

Useless on an airplane tray table.

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