LG Gram 16 2-in-1 review: insanely thin, insanely gorgeous

LG Gram 16 2-in-1 (2024)

MSRP $2,100.00

“The LG Gram 16 2-in-1 is one of the best portable 16-inch laptops you can buy.”

Pros

• Incredibly thin and light
• Attractive aesthetic
• OLED screen is surprisingly bright
• Sold productivity performance
• Good battery life

Cons

• Expensive
• A bit bendable
• Mechanical touchpad disappoints

With all the talk of Microsoft Copilot+ and Windows on Arm, it’s easy to forget that most laptops today are still powered by Intel’s Meteor Lake chipset. And they’re viable laptops, particularly if you need a machine that doesn’t yet equip Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite. The LG Gram 16 2-in-1 is one such laptop, offering a large display in a very portable package.

And when I say “portable,” I mean it. The LG Gram 16 2-in-1 is incredibly thin and light while packing in a gorgeous 16-inch high-res OLED display. It’s meant for people who want a lot of screen real estate but don’t want to carry around a thick and heavy laptop. In that respect, the LG Gram 16 2-in-1 delivers, although it had some important flaws to consider before you go out and buy it.

Specs and configurations

LG offers two configurations of the Gram 16 2-in-1. The first costs $1,500 and includes an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 16.0-inch 3K OLED display. For an additional $600, you can upgrade to 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD.

Those are premium prices, and you’re likely paying an extra for the exceedingly thin and light design. The HP Spectre x360 16, the Gram 16 2-in-1’s most logical competitor, is much thicker and faster, and it starts at $1,600 ($1,110 on sale) with the same chipset and RAM but with a 512GB SSD and a 16.0-inch IPS display. You’ll pay $1,815 ($1,315 on sale) for exactly the same configuration.

At the high end, the Spectre is $2,335 ($1,835 on sale), which includes a faster Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU. So, if you can catch the HP when it’s on sale, you’ll pay a few hundred dollars less depending on the configuration and you’ll get a faster laptop. While not a 2-in-1, the MacBook Air 15 is also a reasonable comparison and it’s similarly priced.

Design

LG’s Gram lineup is aimed at being incredibly thin and light, and the Gram 16 2-in-1 fits the bill. Even though it equips a spectacular 16-inch OLED touch display, it’s just 0.51 inches at its thickest point and 0.49 inches at its thinnest. It weighs 3.08 pounds, less than some 14-inch laptops. By comparison, the HP Spectre x360 16 is 0.78 inches thick and weighs 4.3 pounds, making it much less comfortable to use in tablet mode. The MacBook Air 15, a clamshell, is just 0.45 inches thick and weighs 3.3 pounds, making it feel denser in hand.

Speaking of the feel, the Gram 16 2-in-1 is made of magnesium, a lightweight alloy that’s strong but tends to be more flexible. You can tell when comparing it to the all-aluminum designs of the Spectre and MacBook Air, with the chassis, keyboard deck, and lid being a lot more bendable. I won’t say it’s a poorly built laptop, because it’s not. It’s just not the best choice for those who like rigid laptops.

Note that the lid opens smoothly with one hand, even with such a light chassis, but it’s unusually wobbly. That contributes to it being a little unstable in tent mode, and the lid moves too much in clamshell and media modes.

Aesthetically, the Gram 16 2-in-1 is attractive, with an all-black color scheme and just enough contours on the edges to avoid being nondescript. The MacBook Air 15 has a blockier look with Apple’s meticulous design, and the Spectre x360 15 is a touch more ostentatious. None of these laptops stands out in a way that would make the aesthetic a decision-maker.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is a lot like Apple’s Magic keyboard in that it has very shallow keys with plenty of key spacing and large keycaps. I found the switches to be snappy and precise, and unless you just don’t like shallow keyboards, you’ll like this one. The Spectre x360 16’s keyboard has deeper travel, which might appeal to some people more than the Gram 16 2-in-1’s.

The touchpad is a disappointment. First, it’s too small. There’s room for a much bigger version. Second, it’s mechanical, and more premium laptops are including haptic touchpads that are more precise, quieter, and offer additional functionality. Both the MacBook Air 15 and the Spectre x360 16 have much better touchpads.

Connectivity and webcam

Connectivity is good for a very thin and light laptop, with a mix of modern and legacy ports. The one thing missing is an SD card reader, which creators won’t like. Given the lovely display, I can see this as a good laptop for evaluating photos and video, even if it’s not the fastest for processing them. Wireless connectivity is one generation behind, but it won’t be obsolete for quite some time.

The webcam runs at 1080p, which equals the MacBook Air’s, but is well behind the Spectre’s 9MP webcam. It had good enough image quality and supports Microsoft’s Studio Effects software via the Intel Meteor Lake Neural Processing Unit. But, it won’t equal Microsoft Copilot+ PCs in this regard. While called an “AI PC,” there aren’t many on-device AI features to talk about. The infrared camera works well for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition.

Performance

Most 16-inch laptops are intended for creators, and so they pack in more powerful components than the LG Gram 16 2-in-1. While the 28-watt Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chipset with 16 cores (six Performance, either Efficient, and two Low Power Efficient) and 22 threads is fast enough for CPU-intensive tasks, the integrated Intel Arc graphics aren’t fast enough to speed up tasks like video encoding.

For those, you need a discrete graphics card, which the Spectre x360 16 offers — albeit, the entry-level RTX 4050. The MacBook Air 15 uses Apple’s M3 chipset, which is about as fast as the Core Ultra 7 155H but has optimizations that make it faster in creative tasks.

Ultimately, the Gram 16 2-in-1 is plenty fast for people who want a large display for multitasking productivity workflows, and for media consumers who appreciate expansive OLED panels. It’s not going to please creators, but no extremely thin-and-light laptop is likely to do so.

Gaming isn’t really an option, other than running older titles at lower graphics settings. I included the MacBook Air 13 M3 as a proxy for the 15-inch model, and both are likely to perform the same.

Battery life

LG’s Gram laptops tend to get good battery life, but I was suspicious given just 77 watt-hours of battery capacity — not a lot for a 16-inch laptop — and a power-hungry high-res OLED display. I wasn’t expecting much.

However, I saw 9.5 hours in our web browsing test and 12.25 hours in our video looping test. Those are good results for an Intel Meteor Lake laptop and long enough to promise close to a full day when running typical productivity tasks. Some other 16-inch laptops get much worse battery life even with much larger batteries. So, I’ll consider this a win for the Gram 16 2-in-1.

Display and audio

Along with its incredibly thin and light chassis, the Gram 16 2-in-1’s best attribute is the expansive 16-inch display. It’s barely sharp enough at 3K (2880 x 1800), but it runs at a fast 120Hz and it’s brilliant out of the box with bright colors and inky blacks.

My colorimeter agreed. The OLED panel is brighter than most OLEDs I’ve tested, coming in at 489 nits (way above our 300 nit baseline). Its contrast is nearly infinite and measures at a spectacular 27,810:1. The combination of that kind of brightness and contrast makes for some impressive HDR. The colors are wide too at 100% of sRGB, 96% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3, and color accuracy was excellent with a Delta-E of 0.85. It just doesn’t get much better than this.

Overall, everyone will love this display. It’s large, beautiful, and great for productivity, creativity, and media consumption.

A very good laptop for media and multitasking

The Gram 16 2-in-1 has its flaws. It’s a bit bendable, which might bother some people, and it doesn’t offer the kind of graphics performance that many people looking at 16-inch laptops need to meet their demanding creativity workflows.

But, it’s fast enough for hardcore productivity users, it’s incredibly thin and light and so very portable, and the large display is awesome for both getting work done and watching quality content. It’s a bit pricey, but it’s easy enough to recommend.