Gadgetory

- Hey guys, this is Austin. Last time we built an entire setup inside a backpack, so today we're back here with a minimalist desk setup featuring the one and only LG Gram, and of course, as always, huge shout out to LG for being awesome enough to sponsor this video. Unlike last time, today we're using the full-sized 17-inch Gram. Now we did briefly check this out at CES, but the idea is that you're getting all of the benefits of the standard Gram, just with a much, much larger screen. This is a surprisingly thin laptop, though. At less than three pounds, it's less than half the weight of a lot of gaming laptops I've been taking a look at lately. You see this right now? This is me holding it in one hand. I would not do that with a thiccc boi laptop. Don't ask what a thiccc boi laptop is, (laughing) by the way. That means it's properly portable. I mean, you can take your Ken videos on the go. So the laptop has always had a nice display. The Grams have had usually good 1080p panels, but this guy steps it up to a full 2560x1600 resolution, which not only gives you a lot of screen real estate, but importantly you get in that portable package. I know I kind of keep reiterating this, but that's the main reason why you would go with something like the 17-inch Gram. It really is the main reason why this exists over something that's one of the smaller options. It's just such a unique value proposition. The specs are all very similar to other LG Gram models. This guy has that same 72-watt hour battery for pretty much all day battery life. You've got the quad-core i7 processor, 16 gigs of RAM as well as a 512-gig SSD. And importantly, this guy does have a full Thunderbolt 3 port. Now that's important because as you'll be seeing in a second, we can do a lot of stuff with that, but it also enables some additional usage beyond just purely charging it or using something like USB-C. However, because it has such a large display, we also have a lot of functionality to get real work done. Like Photoshop. And that's real work if you're Ken Bolido. So I asked Ken, could you please give me a cool Photoshop file to demo the Gram with, and what he does is he gives me a 1.9-gigabyte file which apparently is every thumbnail he's ever made all in one, like, what, how many layers is it? - [Ken] 90. (heavy sighing) - All right, well, actually, you lied, Ken. There's 83 files here. I'm just gonna start disabling things. What is all under, oh wow, you've got, like, a lot of different things here. What is, oh, that's a This Is thumb, okay. I'm gonna be a little bit fair. This is obviously not the way to make thumbnails, but what this is is a pretty good representation of a very heavy Photoshop file that if you're doing a lot of layers and adjustments and stuff that something like this could totally handle. You know what, I actually kinda like what I look at here, because this has got that big 17-inch screen. Can we just make this the minimal setup? Like, is this just it? Like, the end? Is that minimal enough? Fine. (sighing) Let's go actually do the real setup. So this is what Ken and I have cooked up for the setup. It looks pretty clean, but there is some pretty cool stuff here. First of all is the monitor. This is the brand-new LG 5K UltraWide. Now to be fair, with a 17-inch screen, you don't really need an extra display. However, because we have the desk space for it, I feel like it's always nice to have a little bit of extra screen real estate. The panel itself is top-notch. With a 5120x2160 resolution, not only is it a 21:9 UltraWide, but almost more importantly than that, it is a very accurate display. So not only do you have the full DCI-P3 color space, but it also supports HDR 600, which is really important because when you're working with stuff like photo and video editing, you want your screen to actually look color-accurate, and that's something you definitely get, albeit at a little bit of a price. (laughing) it has HDMI as well as DisplayPort, but right now we're taking advantage of the Thunderbolt port. Now this is really nice because with that single cable, the Gram not only display a 5K output, but we also have a couple of extra USB ports on the monitor and it has a full 85 watts of power delivery, which is more than enough for the Gram as well as most other fairly powerful laptops. What really pushes it over the top is the graphics card. This is the AORUS RTX 2070 gaming box. We've got a ton of use out of the older RX 580 eGPUs. What's cool about this is that of course it is an external graphics card, it supports Thunderbolt 3, but the best part is, it now has those sweet, sweet RTX graphics. Again, with a single Thunderbolt cable, we are powering the Gram, but instead this time we're running it directly to our external GPU which is then going out via DisplayPort to our monitor. And not only is this giving us a ton of extra graphics horsepower, but it also enables some fun new things, like gaming. I guess like getting real work done, but, uh, gaming! So while we should be working, if you want to, say, I don't know, play a game or two like Apex, it actually is totally playable here. Now of course that is because we have Thunderbolt and the RTX 2070, I'm running this way, but (laughing) playing at the full native res of the monitor, 2560x1600, mostly on Medium settings, we're actually getting a good, like, 50 frames per second, and that's on the internal display. We'll actually be a little bit higher if we were, say, using an external monitor. Dude, Thunderbolt's the best, man. I mean, sure, of course you can use this to be productive and get work done, or you can play games. For the keyboard, I like using the one built into the Gram. Not only does it have a nice feel, but it also is backlit. On the mouse side of things, though, we have the Logitech MX Master. This is the go-to mouse for a lot of people, though. Not only does it support Bluetooth as well as connecting via USB dongle, but on top of that you've got a ton of extra functions like some cool extra buttons, and it is a very ergonomic mouse. We also picked out this little retro steampunk lamp, as well as we have our Nixie tube clock that we unboxed on an episode of Mystery Tech a little while ago, but mostly the coolest part of this whole setup is the LIFX Beam, and these are a bunch of strip things that you can attach. They're all magnet, actually, are they magnetic? - Yes. - I dunno, I just think they look cool. They're fully RGB-addressable. One of the nice things is you can kind of do them in any kind of orientation. They come with the little corner pieces so you can kind of build a little bit of a setup here, although I think the L with the monitor, I think it looks nice. You be the judge, did Ken get these on straight? So that is our minimalist setup. As always, links to everything including the LG Gram will be in the description, and since you're bored on YouTube right now anyway, why don't you go check out our second channel, This Is. Not only do I make videos over there every Monday, but Linus and Ken have also made videos on it, and they're much better than mine. Although I probably shouldn't say that on camera. They're almost as good as mine.