LG Gram Style review (16-inch, 2023)

There’s three things that really stand out with the LG Gram Style, and two of them are really good. The first thing is just how light this laptop is. At just 2.76 pounds, this is the lightest laptop I’ve ever tested with a big 16-inch display. The second thing is its stunning design. The Gram Style has an iridescent finish that shifts colors in the light, and there’s a seamless touchpad that stays hidden until you touch it.

And now the third thing: price. The 16-inch version of this laptop starts at $1,799 and our review unit costs $1,999. That’s MacBook Pro M2 Pro territory, and the 13th gen Intel Core CPU inside this notebook trails Apple silicon and competing Windows machines.

However, the Gram Style’s beauty is more than skin deep. You get an expansive and vibrant OLED display, very good battery life and plenty of ports. As you’ll see in my full LG Gram Style review, this laptop doesn’t quite have the stuff to make our best laptop list, but it is one of the best Windows laptops for those who are looking to make a statement. 

LG Gram Style review: Release date and price

The LG Gram Style had a release date of March 20 and starts at $1,799 with a 13th gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. You also get a 16-inch OLED display. The model we tested bumps that up to 32GB of RAM for $1,999.

Also note that there’s a 14-inch version of the LG Gram Style that costs $1,499 and features a 13th gen Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. 

LG Gram Style review: Design

We need to talk about the LG Gram’s obscenely light weight. At 2.76 pounds, the LG Gram 16 is by far the lightest 16-inch laptop we’ve tested. By comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra weighs 3.9 pounds and the MacBook Pro 16-inch is 4.7 pounds, although to be fair those are much beefier content creator-grade machines. The 13-inch MacBook Air is only a wee bit lighter than the Gram Style at 2.7 pounds. 

I carried the LG Gram Style around in my backpack for a week and I barely noticed it was there, especially compared to my usual 3.5-pound MacBook Pro 14-inch. My only complaint with the design is that it just doesn’t feel that sturdy. For example, when I place the Gram Style down on a desk, the display wobbles back and forth, and there’s more flex to the chassis than I’d like when I hold it in both hands.

The Gram Style definitely stands out in a sea of look-alike Windows laptops. The Gorilla Glass 3 lid and deck are both iridescent, so the color shifts from a pearlescent white to pink to blue, depending on how the light reflects off the surface. It’s a very slick look, although if you’re using the laptop in direct sunlight the reflections can get distracting.

The other design highlight is the hidden touchpad. The haptic touchpad is illuminated by LEDs on the left and right, which disappear from view when you’re not using it. I thought I might find it off-putting that there’s no physical line separating the touchpad from the rest of the deck, but the pad is spacious enough that I never had to wonder if I was off target.

LG Gram Style review: Ports

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The Gram Style’s port selection isn’t skimpy, but it could be better. The left side houses a headphone jack and two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, and the right side has a full-size USB-A port and a microSD card slot.

The USB-A port has a flip-down door that I suppose helps save a bit of thickness in the design but just gets in the way. I think I’d prefer an extra millimeter in exchange for a fully exposed port.

LG Gram Style review: Display

LG knows how to make the best OLED TVs, so it’s not a surprise that the 3K, 16-inch OLED display on the Gram Style is one of the most stunning panels I’ve seen on a laptop.

For starters, I love that this screen is bright enough that I can use it outside in direct sunlight. While sitting in Bryant Park I could still easily make out the Tom’s Guide website, as well as respond to Slack messages. Another plus is the 120Hz refresh rate, which makes for swift scrolling when surfing the web overall smooth motion.

When watching the trailer for The Marvels, Brie Larson’s blue-and-red uniform popped off the screen. And it should with this much color reproduction. In our lab tests, the Gram Style’s panel reached 156% on the DCI-P3 test, compared to under 90% for the Samsung Galaxy Book Ultra and the MacBook Pro 16-inch.

When playing HDR content, the LG Gram Style reached 477 nits of brightness, which is good but trails the Galaxy Book 3 Ultra and is less than half the MacBook Pro 16-inch. The Gram Style’s typical brightness of 374 nits exceeds the Lenovo Yoga 9i (353 nits) and but is a bit behind the Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 (380 nits). 

LG Gram Style review: Keyboard and touchpad

The LG Gram Style started me off on the wrong foot with the position of its touchpad. It’s centered on the deck instead of being centered underneath the touchbar, so for the first couple of days I had to awkwardly shift my hands to the left before typing, but I got used to it. 

I’m also not a big fan of the number pad. I get lots of people like it, but I’d rather have more room for each key. The typing experience itself is just okay; the keys offer a good amount of travel but it feels somewhat hollow and trampoline-like compared to my MacBook Pro 14-inch. This might have to do with the overall super light weight of the system.

The touchpad is generously sized at 5.2 x 3.3 inches and generally worked well, whether I was scrolling, pinching to zoom or swiping up with three fingers to show all open apps. However, the palm rejection on this touchpad could be better, as my left hand accidentally caused the cursor to jump on occasion. And selecting text could be a challenge when commuting on a bumpy bus ride, something that’s never a problem on my MacBook Pro.

LG Gram Style review: Performance

On paper, the LG Gram Style should have plenty of muscle for nearly any task. You get a 13th-gen Intel Core i7 P series processor, a hefty 32GB of RAM (16GB is standard) and a 1TB NVMe SSD. However, the performance in some of our tests fell short of other Windows laptops with similar specs.

Anecdotally, I found the Gram Style capable of juggling my everyday workload. I had a few Chrome browser windows open with over a dozen tabs each, Slack running and Spotify playing the background. With the exception of a minor stutter now and then switching between Chrome and Slack, the Gram Style delivered fairly smooth performance.

LG Gram Style review: Performance test results

The Gram Style held up well in Geekbench, which measures overall performance. It scored 2,305 on single-core and 9,469 on multi-core, beating the Galaxy Book 3 Pro but falling a bit behind the Lenovo Yoga 9i on multi-core. The Style’s SSD also proved fairly speedy, notching 1,631 Mbps on our file transfer test, surpassing the Samsung and finishing just behind the Yoga. 

Just don’t expect the Gram Style to be a great partner if you’re a creative pro. And that’s a problem when you’re paying $1,799 to $1,999 for a laptop. On our Handbrake test, which involves transcoding a 4K video to 1080p using the Handbrake app, the Gram Style took a leisurely 11 minutes and 41 seconds. The Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 with the same CPU took just 7:59, and the Lenovo Yoga 9i finished in 9:45.

As you’d expect, the MacBook Pro M2 Pro 14-inch is in another league with its M2 Pro, taking only 4:02.

The Gram Style also fell behind the pack in graphics and gaming tests. Its 3DMark Time Spy result of 1,593 trailed both Samsung and Lenovo by a wide margin, and it couldn’t crack 30 frames per second on our not-very-demanding Civ VI gaming test.

LG Gram Style review: Battery life 

While its computing prowess could be better, the LG Gram Style has impressive staying power. On the Tom’s Guide battery test, which involves surfing the web over Wi-Fi on 150 nits of screen brightness, the Style lasted 10 hours and 54 minutes with its display set to 60Hz mode. This is way better than the 7:46 runtime turned in by the 13-inch Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360. The Gram Style also beats the 10:24 turned in by the latest 14-inch Lenovo Yoga 9i.

Among 16-inch laptops, the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra lasted only 9:02 in 60Hz mode, but it also has a much more powerful RTX 4050 GPU. The MacBook Pro 16-inch is the king with its nearly 19 hours of endurance, if you’re willing to spend at least $2,499. (Note that we did not include these laptops in the performance section because they are priced much higher than the LG Style.)

LG Gram Style review: Heat

Maybe this is part of the reason why the Gram Style can’t offer the sustained performance we’d expect given the CPU. It’s cooling isn’t super. 

On our heat test, which involves playing a full-screen video for 15 minutes, the LG Gram Style reached 102.5 degrees on the underside of the system. We consider anything above 95 degrees uncomfortable. By comparison, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 hit 92.5 degrees in its hottest spot and the Yoga 9i reached 94.1 degrees on the bottom. 

The touchpad on the Gram Style stayed cool at 77.5 degrees, but the spot between the G and H keys was somewhat warm at 91 degrees.

LG Gram Style review: Audio

The LG Gram Style pumps out decent sound for a two-speaker, 5-watt system, but the audio isn’t that impressive despite built-in Dolby Atmos support. Kurt Cobain’s vocals sounded muddy on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” when I streamed it on Spotify, though SZA’s Kill Bill popped a bit more and didn’t distort at high volume.

If you’re looking for robust bass, though, look elsewhere, and the sound could get muffled if you have the Gram Style in your lap. That’s because the speakers are on the bottom of the chassis. 

LG Gram Style review: Webcam

The LG Gram Style features a 1080p webcam, but I’m not impressed with the picture quality. In my testing using Google Meet, I noticed a lot of noise and graininess in the image, and my colleague Mike commented that I looked a bit washed out as well. At least the sound quality was good, thanks to the dual mics.

LG Gram Style review: Verdict

The LG Gram Style is the kind of laptop that makes you go “wow” when you pick it up. No 16-inch laptop should be this light, and yet it is. But this is also the kind of system that makes you go “hmmm” when you see the price. 

Yes, the sheer portability here is amazing, and I also really like the vibrant OLED display, long battery life and eye-catching iridescent design. However, the Gram Style simply isn’t as powerful as other laptops we’ve tested with the same Core i7 processor, and ironically its sleek profile likely prevents it from achieving better cooling and therefore peak performance. I also wish the display didn’t wobble and that the overall build quality felt sturdier.

If you can live with a smaller display, the 14-inch Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 offers more speed in a versatile 2-in-1 design. And if you don’t want Windows 11 the MacBook Pro 14-inch blows the Gram Style away in terms of sheer muscle and battery life. But if you like the idea of owning the lightest possible big-screen laptop, the Gram Style is worth a look.