The case for choosing a laptop with a jumbo screen—one larger than 15 inches—has never been stronger. The much-improved LG Gram 17, with a gorgeous 17-inch QHD display, is exhibit number one. This $1,799.99 laptop is fresh for 2021 with an 11th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, a redesigned keyboard and touchpad, and a sleek black livery. Even better, it continues to stay below three pounds (2.98 pounds, to be precise). It’s unquestionably the best 17-inch laptop you can buy if you’re not a gamer or multimedia content creator.
The Screen’s the Thing
Once upon a time, it made little sense for mainstream users to consider the very biggest-screen laptops, because they were invariably heavy and bulky. Five or more years ago, a gaming rig with a 17-inch display and a reasonably powerful CPU and graphics card would set you back around $3,000 and weigh at least six pounds. But what if you don’t want all that processing power and expense? What if you just want a big display, and everything else is secondary?
Enter the Gram 17. When LG first introduced this unique ultraportable, there was little to recommend it other than an impressive screen and weight that seemed to defy the laws of physics. But the underwhelming 2019 model has ceded the stage to an all-new edition for 2021. The lightweight chassis and brilliant QHD screen remain, but LG got serious about the rest of the user experience. This means not only a better keyboard and touchpad, but also a better-looking laptop that boasts Intel’s latest silicon and incredible battery life.
From the outside, the Gram 17 doesn’t look particularly large. The thin-font Gram logo is embossed on the display lid in silver, while the rest of the lid is an uninterrupted expanse of black magnesium alloy. It looks much better than the gray exterior of the previous Gram 17 model, which featured curved edges—perhaps an attempt at retro styling, but mostly just stodgy-looking.
While the new Gram 17’s color scheme and lid are dramatically improved, the base of the laptop is nearly identical to last year’s. The edges taper slightly from back to front, although the base remains the same thickness throughout.
The Gram 17 measures 0.7 by 15 by 10.2 inches (HWD), which is in line with what you can expect from other non-gaming big-screen notebooks. At the top end of the price scale, the extravagant and ultra-powerful Dell XPS 17 measures 0.77 by 14.7 by 9.8 inches. The 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro, also extravagant and powerful, is 0.64 by 14.1 by 9.7 inches, and the budget-friendly Dell Inspiron 17 3000 is significantly bulkier, coming in at 0.98 by 16.4 by 11 inches.
No competing large laptop at any price can compare with the Gram 17’s astonishingly light weight, however. All of those models weigh at least four pounds, and 17-inch gaming rigs are heavier still: The affordable Asus TUF Gaming A17 is 5.7 pounds, while the HP Omen 17 is 7 pounds.
Nothing Flimsy About the Gram
The Gram might not weigh very much, but neither is it flimsy. LG says it’s passed MIL-STD 810G torture tests against road hazards like shock, vibration, rain, dust, and temperature and humidity extremes. The certification provides some reassurance that LG didn’t get chintzy to get below three pounds. But the Gram 17 also feels sturdy to the touch. There’s a bit of flex in the middle of the keyboard deck, but not more than you’ll find in bulkier competitors like the TUF Gaming A17.
Plenty of input and output options are peppered along the tapered edges of the Gram 17. These include two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, a headphone jack, and two USB-C ports that also support Thunderbolt 4 speeds. That’s a generous selection of USB ports, but it doesn’t stop there. LG also includes a microSD card reader and a full-size HDMI port. The external charger connects to one of the two USB-C ports.
Meanwhile, wireless connections include Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) with 2×2 MIMO support. Throughput was excellent in my testing; I consistently managed 40 to 50MBps downloads even with an extremely weak signal—just one bar of strength showing in the Windows Wi-Fi icon.
LG ships the Gram 17 with a one-year warranty for parts and labor. While the company offers extended service plans for some products, they’re not currently available for laptops.
Gorgeous QHD Display
If you’ve read this far and wondered why you haven’t yet encountered an appraisal of the Gram 17’s screen, you needn’t worry. The display is excellent, but that should be a given. After all, if screen quality isn’t your main concern, there’s little reason to buy a laptop with such a large one. In the past, LG took that perhaps a little too much to heart, with the display being pretty much the only thing to recommend the Gram 17.
With the 2021 model, the rest of the laptop has improved so much that other factors besides the screen are worth mentioning first. The screen is still the same brilliant QHD panel it was before, however. Its resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels fits between full HD and 4K. This Goldilocks pixel count is great for large-screen laptops, since it means crisp text and brilliant colors without the expense and increased power consumption of 3,840-by-2,160 resolution. The one downside is that you won’t get the full level of detail if you’re watching a 4K video.
The Gram 17’s display has a glossy finish, which helps the colors pop even more. LG rates it to display at least 95% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and indeed colors did look true to life in my testing. Its in-plane switching (IPS) technology means viewing angles are excellent. However, if you’d prefer a Gram 17 with an OLED display or even one with touch support, you’re out of luck. The laptop comes in only a single configuration.
At least the configuration is plenty powerful on the inside. Intel’s quad-core Core i7-1165G7 handles the processing demands. It combines a 2.8GHz base clock speed with Iris Xe integrated graphics, which means that multitasking and even some light gaming are well within the realm of possibility. There’s also a generous 16GB of memory and a roomy 1TB NVMe solid-state drive. Altogether, the spec loadout is perfectly becoming of an $1,800 ultraportable, which is even more impressive given the Gram 17’s other unique qualities.
Keyboard, Touchpad, Webcam, Speakers
Large-screen laptop tradition dictates that the keyboard should offer full-size keys and a dedicated numeric keypad; after all, there’s plenty of room on the oversize base to accommodate them. While some laptops like the XPS 17 and MacBook Pro 16 have departed from this tradition recently, the Gram 17 sticks with it. The improved keyboard offers a satisfying travel distance and pleasingly sturdy key switches. The white labels use a large, thick font and stand out well against the black keys.
The power button, located in the upper right corner of the keyboard, has a built-in fingerprint reader. You can use it with Windows Hello to log into your Windows account without typing a password or PIN. The 720p webcam shoots decent video in brightly lit rooms, but lacks IR sensors for face-recognition logins.
Audio quality is one of the few negative aspects of the Gram 17. The two stereo speakers are rated for 2 watts each, and while volume is adequate, the output sounds tinny and distorted. While watching one scene from an action movie, I found there to be little bass output, and none worth straining to hear. You’ll likely want to keep your headphones connected while you use the Gram 17.
Plenty of Performance for Everyday Tasks
With a latest-generation Core i7 processor and 16GB of memory, our Gram 17 review unit made short work of every task I asked it to perform, from installing apps to browsing the internet with more than a dozen browser tabs open. Even better, the cooling fan never spooled up to a distracting level in my testing. The fan was audible, but never annoyingly so.
That said, the Gram 17 isn’t actually in the performance vanguard of jumbo laptops. Since so many 15-inch and larger notebooks are designed for gamers or content creators, even some less expensive ones can outperform the Gram 17 when outfitted with the right components. And since the screen’s the thing, when it comes to benchmark results I’ve relaxed our usual policy of only comparing the performance of laptops with similar prices. (See more about how we test laptops.)
In the chart below, you’ll find the basic specs of the competing systems, which include the Dell XPS 17 and Inspiron 17 3000, MacBook Pro 16, and Asus TUF Gaming A17 mentioned earlier. Remember, even though prices vary widely (as does performance, as you’ll see), the Gram 17 is by far the lightest laptop of the bunch.
Starting with UL’s PCMark 10 suite, we see that the Gram 17 comfortably surpasses the 4,000-point mark that indicates excellent performance for everyday tasks, even if it’s somewhat behind the Asus and XPS 17. The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing.
The same is true of the PCMark 8 subtest that we use to assess the speed of PCs’ boot drives. All five laptops here have speedy SSDs and all perform superbly.
Content creation workflows like transcoding a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake are where we really see the differences between the Gram 17’s performance and that of its competitors. The LG proved around three times slower in this task than the Apple, Asus, and XPS 17. That’s to be expected, since those machines have enough room to provide cooling for much more capable CPUs and Handbrake scales very well with additional processing cores and threads.
The same is true of Cinebench, a CPU-intensive 3D rendering test.
When it came to image editing using Adobe Photoshop, the results were clustered closer together and the Gram 17 actually tied the Dell XPS 17 for first place. Our Photoshop test involves applying a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image, stressing the storage subsystem, RAM, and GPU so it’s not as dependent on CPU strength as Cinebench and Handbrake.
Good for Light Gaming, Excellent Battery Life
The Gram 17 is rare among laptops with 17-inch screens in that it’s not a gaming rig or workstation. While its Iris Xe integrated graphics are competent to handle simple games like Minecraft or browser-based favorites, they can’t compare to the beefy AMD or Nvidia GPUs that power most of the Gram’s competitors.
As a result, the Gram 17 did relatively poorly in our 3DMark and Superposition gaming simulations. While an average of 44 frames per second in the Superposition 720p benchmark is respectable for light-duty gaming, hardcore gamers should look elsewhere.
Battery life is an obvious high point for the Gram 17. It lasted almost 19 and a half hours in our video rundown, which involves playing a locally stored 720p movie at 50% screen brightness with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned off until the battery is exhausted. Jumbo gaming rigs like the Asus rarely last for more than 10 hours in this test. While the MacBook Pro is certainly a battery life contender, it can’t quite match the LG’s impressive stamina.
The Gram 17 benefits from an extraordinarily efficient battery configuration. The lithium-ion battery weighs just 0.62 pound and manages to deliver 80 watt-hours from just two cells. Most other laptops with batteries of similar capacity use more cells (six are common) and are heavier. The XPS 17 comes with either a 3-cell, 56WHr battery that weighs 0.6 pound or a 6-cell, 97WHr pack that weighs 0.85 pound.
A Big-Screen Contender
The Gram 17’s obvious strengths are its massive screen and super-light carry weight. Those two features alone are enough to lure many buyers, and in previous incarnations, LG saw fit to contend on them alone, letting stodgy styling and an uncomfortable keyboard slip by.
With these issues addressed, the 2021 Gram 17 is a much improved and nearly complete package. The only big-screen buyers who might want to look elsewhere are gamers and content creators, who are better served by the excellent Dell XPS 17 or deluxe gaming rigs such as the Alienware m17.
Not only is the Gram 17 light, but it’s also pleasing to the touch and easy on the eyes. The massive screen is complemented by a comfortable keyboard and touchpad. Throw in a reasonable asking price and more than enough power for everyday office tasks, and you easily have an Editors’ Choice winner for general-use, giant screen laptops.
