LG gram 16 (2024) Laptop Review

This laptop is available in Snow White, Charcoal Gray, or Obsidian Black colorways. See the bottom of the laptop.

The LG gram 16's build quality is a bit of a mixed bag. Despite using the same magnesium alloy as the LG gram Pro 16 (2024), this laptop feels much less sturdy than its Pro counterpart. The chassis exhibits noticeable twisting and bending, even when the lid is closed, and its keyboard deck bends when you push down on it. On the bright side, the laptop feels well-balanced, especially for such a lightweight model, and the finish feels durable. The feet are also firmly attached to the bottom of the chassis. The dark color does pick up a lot of fingerprints, though; this likely won't be as noticeable on the gray or white models.

Unfortunately, our model came with two defects. First, the screen is noticeably warped, bowing out from the deck of the chassis when the lid is closed. Second, there's an assembly issue resulting in gaping between the webcam and the display assembly.

The LG gram 16 has an outstanding hinge. It's easy to open, even with one hand, feels smooth when adjusting its position, and exhibits little to no wobble when moving the device or during intensive typing.

The LG gram 16's serviceability is bad. Accessing the internals requires some effort. To gain access to all the screws, you need to remove the feet using a pry tool, as they're firmly attached to the chassis with adhesive; the feet on the LG gram Pro 16 (2024) didn't use adhesive. Disassembly is straightforward after removing the feet. Simply remove nine Philips screws, and use a pry tool to remove the bottom panel of the laptop. Both storage slots support M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

You can access the online manual on LG's website.

• Documentation
• 65W USB-C power adapter and cord

The LG gram 16 is available with the following displays: 

• 16" IPS 2560 x 1600 60Hz (matte, 350cd/m², 99% DCI P3)
• 16" IPS 2560 x 1600 60Hz (touch, matte, 320 cd/m², 99% DCI P3)
• 16" IPS 2560 x 1600 144Hz (matte, 400 cd/m², 99% DCI P3)

All displays look very sharp and provide plenty of space for split-screen multitasking. Their 16:10 aspect ratio is great for productivity tasks like reading articles or web browsing, as the extra vertical real estate allows you to see more information at once.

The 60Hz non-touch display has a very slow response time, resulting in noticeable ghosting behind fast-moving objects. The 60Hz touch display will likely perform the same, as it has the same refresh rate. Neither of the 60Hz panels supports variable refresh rate technologies to minimize screen tearing while gaming. By contrast, the 144Hz display has a high refresh rate to provide a more responsive desktop experience. While LG advertises the 144Hz panel as supporting VRR, note that this is LG’s Various Refresh Rate, not a variable refresh rate technology like FreeSync or G-Sync. LG's various refresh rate is a power-conservation feature similar to Windows' Dynamic Refresh Rate and Apple's ProMotion. This means it can change the refresh rate (between 33Hz and 144Hz) depending on what you're doing and if you have the laptop plugged in.

The 60Hz non-touch display's contrast is decent and within the typical range for most IPS panels. That said, IPS panels have lower contrast ratios compared to VA or OLED display technologies. As a result, blacks look gray in dim settings. All displays will have similar contrast ratios. Check out the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 (2024) if you want a similar laptop with an OLED display.

The 60Hz non-touch display gets bright enough for use in most indoor environments. It'll struggle in very bright environments, though, like outdoors. The touchscreen display will perform slightly worse as it has a lower advertised peak brightness of 320 cd/m², while the 144Hz panel will perform somewhat better and is even suitable for some outdoor use, as it has an advertised brightness of 400 cd/m². The screen gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which helps reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark. All panels should perform similarly for minimum brightness.

The 60Hz non-touch display has good reflection handling. Its matte coating mostly diffuses direct light source across the screen. Viewing bright content is almost entirely reflection free; the brighter 144Hz screen will have no problem with with reflections during bright color content, whereas the dimmer touchscreen display will perform slightly worse. Dark color content is hard to see on all screens.

The 60Hz non-touch display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out relatively quickly as you move to the side, so you need to be directly in front of the screen when using the screen for color-critical work. All panels will perform similarly.

The QHD+ IPS non-touch display's vertical viewing angle is okay. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image dims and washes when viewing from above and below, so you need to look at the screen straight on to see an accurate image. All panels will perform similarly.

The 60Hz non-touch display's accuracy is bad out of the box. The white balance inaccuracies are significant across most brightness levels, resulting in a blue tint. The color temperature is also cool, further contributing to the bluish appearance. As a result of the display's wide color gamut, colors tend to be oversaturated; some people might like this oversaturated look but know it isn't accurate. As for the gamma curve, it's quite far from the target; it's far too low in bright scenes, making them too bright, and it's too high in most dark scenes (except the very darkest), resulting in an image that's too dark.

The LG Smart Assistant app has a few display-related settings meant to optimize the display's performance. Of note is a toggle for Color Temperature Auto Adjustment, which purportedly optimizes the color temperature for the particular display panel, and a Professional Mode, which supposedly lets users access a wider color gamut for content creation work. Neither toggle positively impacts the out-of-the-box color accuracy; rather, they make the display's color temperature even colder than before, deepening the already bluish tint. Here are the color accuracy results and grayscale measurements with the Color Temperature Auto Adjustment setting enabled, as well as the color accuracy results and grayscale measurements using the Professional Mode.

The 60Hz non-touch display's color gamut is outstanding. It has full sRGB and DCI P3 coverage, making it suitable for both SDR and HDR media consumption and content creation. Its Adobe RGB coverage is excellent, though it may not be good enough for professional print photography. All displays should perform similarly as they have the same color gamut.

All displays are likely flicker free.

The LG gram 16 has a good keyboard. It offers a full-sized keyboard, including a numpad, and fits well on the 16-inch chassis. Some may find the typing experience tiring, particularly if they aren't used to such a big keyboard. The keys feel a bit heavy, and there's a fair bit of travel, which can take some getting used to. The keys provide good tactile feedback and have a quiet, albeit satisfying, sound. There's one zone of white backlighting with minimum or maximum brightness settings, or you can turn it off. The backlighting could be brighter to help see the legends through the keycaps.

The LG gram 16 has an excellent touchpad. It's large, smooth, and responsive to all movements and gestures. Palm rejection is okay for the most part, though you might get a few unintentional triggers once in a while. The buttons feel tactile but only work in the bottom half of the touchpad.

The LG gram 16's speakers don't get particularly loud, and there's an obvious lack of bass, particularly when listening to music. Vocal clarity is okay, but because these speakers are quite quiet, dialogue can still be difficult to understand. On the bright side, there's virtually no compression or distortion, even at maximum volume.

The LG gram 16 inch's webcam is decent. Fine details are generally clear, but the image is over-exposed resulting in a bit of a washed out appearance. There's also some noise in the image. While voices sound loud and clear over the microphone, there's significant white noise that detracts from the overall sound quality.

The LG gram 16 has a fantastic port selection. Both USB-A ports support USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps. The two USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed and two 4k @ 60Hz displays), USB 3.2 Gen 2, and Power Delivery. The latter lets you fast charge the laptop and other PD-compatible devices connected to the port.

The LG gram 16's wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211. Wi-Fi 6E gives you access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous wireless standards; however, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features. If you're looking to upgrade your router for these newer standards, check out our recommendations for the best Wi-Fi routers.

The LG gram 16 is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (14 cores, 18 Threads, up to 4.5 GHz, 18MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16 cores, 22 Threads, up to 4.8 GHz, 24MB Cache)

These are high-performance CPUs from Intel's Meteor Lake family. Like Intel's 14th Gen CPUs, they have a hybrid architecture comprising performance and efficiency cores. However, they have two additional low-power E-cores (LP-E) to further improve efficiency and an NPU (Neural Processing Units) to speed up A.I. tasks, like background-blurring on video calls and image generation in photo editing apps. Generally, these CPUs can handle light productivity tasks and more intensive workloads, like programming, video editing, and 3D graphics. However, these chips aren't the fastest Intel has to offer, as they fall quite a bit behind the 14th Gen HX CPUs, like the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024)'s Intel Core i9-14900HX. Regarding core composition, the Core Ultra 5 has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (4P+8E+2LP-E), while the Core Ultra 7 has six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (6P+8E+2LP-E). Both CPUs have the same Neural Processing Units (NPU).

For more information, see Intel's product brief on their Meteor Lake CPUs.

The LG gram 16 is available with the following two integrated GPUs, which depend upon the memory configuration:

• Intel Arc Graphics
• Intel Graphics (on models with 8GB of RAM)

Both models are low-power graphics processors designed for general productivity tasks like web browsing or video playback. They aren't suitable for intensive workloads like gaming or 3D rendering.

You can configure the LG gram 16 with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can configure the LG gram Pro with 256GB, 512GB, 1TB or 2TB of storage. The SSD is user-replaceable. There are two slots; both support M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

The LG gram 16 has an outstanding score in Geekbench 5. Its Intel Core Ultra 7 155H performs well in various workloads and can easily handle general productivity tasks like web browsing, text processing, and video playback. You can run more intensive, multi-threaded applications.

In order to exemplify real-world performance, we've run all of our benchmarks using the laptop's Performance mode rather than the default Balanced mode to provide users with a better sense of the laptop's full potential. As a result, the results are not directly comparable to those of our other reviews, which test laptops in their default out-of-the-box settings. Nevertheless, even when using the Performance mode, the iGPU still underperforms compared to models with the same hardware. In practice, the iGPU isn't suitable for intensive workloads; it's designed for general productivity tasks like web browsing and video playback.

The LG gram 16's Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU scores well in the Cinebench R23 benchmarks. It can handle fairly intensive, multi-threaded applications. The Core Ultra 5 125H is slower and only suitable for general productivity tasks.

While you can do 3D graphics work in Blender on the LG gram 16, it's best to get a laptop with a discrete graphics card if this kind of application comprises the majority of your workflow. Even models with an entry-level NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 will provide a smoother experience and render images in significantly less time than using the CPU.

The Basemark GPU score is middling on the LG Gram 16's Intel Arc integrated GPU. This implementation offers performance on par with AMD's Radeon 780M, but it's significantly slower than Apple's base M3 SoC and doesn't even come close to the performance of an entry-level discrete GPU like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650. You can play some light, older games, but only with low graphical settings.

Web browsing and video playback benchmarks use the default Balanced performance mode, while the gaming battery life results use the Performance mode. Models with a 144Hz display will likely have shorter battery life. 

We encountered an issue with our unit. The system reports the incorrect time after draining the battery, indicating that the unit may have a defective or dead CMOS battery.

The integrated graphics on all models of the LG gram 16 aren't powerful enough to provide a playable experience in Borderlands 3 and other similar AAA titles. While you can nearly achieve 60 fps on the lowest settings in Borderlands 3, there are far too many stutters and frametime spikes to enjoy the gameplay.

Civilization VI is playable on models with Intel Arc graphics and Intel graphics using medium to low settings. Although there are stutters, they don't make it impossible to enjoy a slow-paced strategy game like this.

Counter-Strike 2 and other competitive FPS titles aren't playable on any variant of this laptop. Even though you can achieve over 60 fps on low settings, there are frequent stutters that prevent you from having the responsive experience that FPS games demand.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider and other similarly demanding titles aren't playable on any variant of the LG gram 16. The gameplay is extremely choppy, even with the lowest graphical settings.

You can change the fan profile via the LG Smart Assistant app. All testing was done using the default Normal profile. While the fans are moderately noisy under load, they aren't distracting. The keyboard gets a little warm under load, but despite the hotspot being at the top of the keyboard, it isn't uncomfortable to use. The bottom of the laptop doesn't get much hotter under load, measuring just 42.2 °C (108 °F).

This test was run using the laptop's Performance mode.

The LG gram 16 has many pre-installed applications, including:

• Dolby Access: Lets you set up and trial Dolby Atmos for Windows.
• Intel Unison: Lets you connect your smartphone to the laptop, allowing you to send and receive messages, view photos on your smartphone, and transfer files, similar to the MyPhone app.
• LG Glance by Mirametrix: Software application that adds attention-sensing capability. When enabled, it can automatically lock your computer when you walk away, pause a video or blur the content when you aren't directly looking at the screen, or move windows from one screen to another.
• LG gram Link: Lets you link your smartphone with the PC. You can use it to transfer files, use your smartphone as a second display, or mirror your phone's content.
• LG On Screen Display 3: Adds an overlay that informs of any changes, like whether Caps Lock is on or off.
• LG PC manuals: User manual.
• LG Security Guard: Monitors suspicious activities when the user is away from the laptop.
• LG Smart Assistant 2.0: Lets you change the fan and power settings, enable dark mode, toggle USB-C offline charging, and enable AI noise canceling.
• LG Update & Recovery: Checks for software and driver updates and backs up data so it can be recovered in case of a problem.
• McAfee: Anti-virus software.

The LG gram 16 2024 has a facial recognition IR camera. You can use it to log into Windows, authorize Windows Store purchases, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.