LG's 14-inch 'Gram' laptop is the world's lightest
But don't believe the day-long battery life promises.
LG's big computing reveal for CES was a refreshed 14-inch "Gram" laptop. It's said to be the lightest in its class, weighing in at only 2.13 pounds (that's a sub-kilogram weigh-in). That, combined with the promise of between 21 and 24 hours of battery life, sounds like an incredible combination. Unfortunately, it may be too good to be true.
CNET notes that LG was using battery rundown tests from 2007, which assumed no WiFi use and was just generally less taxing than the sort of tests reviewers are likely to use today. That's almost definitely how LG got such great runtime. That said, the laptop still packs a 60Wh battery that's almost double the capacity of the company's older 14-inch Gram laptop. (That's also bigger than the 13-inch MacBook Pro's battery.) LG says it saw 17 hours on a charge during more realistic (read: modern) rundown tests, which is still pretty damn impressive.
Aside from that probably overrated battery life, the Gram is a stylish ultraportable, albeit one made mostly of plastic. It's not ... terrible, but my preferences skew toward metal builds. They feel more reassuringly solid. Yes, the Gram is light, but that comes with some flimsiness.
That said, despite some other super-thin-and-light laptops, the Gram's 14-inch IPS screen does still support touch. Under the hood, you get either an Intel Core i7 or i5 processor. There are also both USB 3.0 and USB-C ports, as well as HDMI out if you're looking to connect to projectors or bigger screens. Despite all those battery life statistics, LG isn't offering a launch date or price, but judging by the cost of both the last-gen 14-inch Gram and the 15-inch version when they landed in the US, you could expect to pay over $1,000 depending on the configuration.
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