Gadgetory

welcome back to hadron box today we're looking at the LG gram which falls into my favorite category of laptops high-end slim and light machines now this latest version of the LG gram has been around for a few months now and you might have already seen some reviews of the flagship 15-inch model however when LG asked if I was interested in reviewing the ground I put in a specific request to get the smaller 13-inch entry-level model after all a lot of buyers interested in the cheaper configurations and the 13-inch variant sounded more compelling to me most of the hardware here won't come as a surprise we're looking at an Intel Core i5 8250 new processor and this is actually the first time I've looked at Intel's 8th gen quad core Core i5 for laptops though of course you can configure the system up to a core i7 8550 you if you'd like there's also 8 gig of ram a 256 gig SSD a 13 inch 1080p display and an enormous 72 watt hour battery all of this will set you back a touch under $1000 or thereabouts through Amazon but the cave feature of the Graham really isn't the internal hardware which is quite similar to a lot of other laptops at this price point instead the major selling point is its portability particularly its weight the LG Graham 13 weighs just 965 grams well below the typical 1.2 to 1.4 kilograms for a laptop of this size and class and it's immediately noticeable this is by far the lightest laptop I've held with this level of hardware inside so if you're keen on portability that Graham is a standout option the weight is really where the grams portability comes from the overall dimensions and footprint are pretty similar to other laptops with LG opting for slim but not invisible bezels around the display luckily this approach to bezels has meant the webcam can remain above the display so no nostril vision like you'd get with the Dell XPS 13 at 15 millimeters thick it's not amazingly thin either but around the same mark as other laptops and the thickness does allow the laptop to include a full-sized HDMI port and two full-sized USB ports speaking of other ports you also get a USB 3.0 type C and a microsd card slot along with the proprietary charging port it's disappointing the gram doesn't include Thunderbolt 3 on the 13-inch models that feature is restricted to the larger 15-inch variant and also would have been nice if it charged the USB see I'm not sure why LG opted for a micro SD card slot over a full SD card slot either as micro SD isn't nearly as useful as USB on a laptop like this anyway with such a light laptop you're probably wondering about build quality the entire chassis is constructed from a magnesium alloy similar to Microsoft Surface devices however it doesn't feel quite as texturally magnificent as other premium metal builds in this nor a visual interest to the design for better or worse for the most part it's a simple functional design and for many buyers that would be perfectly fine as the durability LG does take the laptop passes the MAL STD 810g test suite with shocks up to 20 G's and drops from over 1.2 meters there's bit of flex to the keyboard area but no more than a typical ultraportable the real area of weakness I found was a significant amount of flex to the display assembly it just feels weak and floozie in that area which is a by-product of the weight reduction luckily I don't think it's a big issue unless you enjoy it bending the display in your spare time and even though there's a touchscreen on this particular laptop it doesn't make a huge impact the keyboard and trackpad are both a standard affair for a laptop nothing overly amazing but no glaring issue either each key has a solid if slightly rubbery response with an ultrabook level travel distance not quite as quicky as my favorite HP laptops but I typed a lengthy document on this laptop the other day and had no problem with the response or layout the trackpad is large enough very responsive and the sensitivity level to be honest is perfect for a power user like me if you love to use your laptop's built-in speakers though I'd steal well clear of the ground the speakers are not good at all and the bottom firing design tends to get blocked when using laptop on your lap probably another area that was compromised when what needed to be cut however there is a fingerprint reader integrated to the power button and it works really well I wish more laptops included fingerprint readers I think they're quite handy the display it's a fairly typical ultra portable panel it's a 13.3 inch IPS LCD with the resolution of 1920 by 1080 and a basic 60 Hertz refresh my review unit came with the touchscreen however the base model on Amazon does not the touch model is slightly more expensive and will feature a slightly reduced battery life due to the digitizer display performance is decent with the peak brightness of 311 nits contrast ratio of 1032 1 and acceptable viewing angles LG seems to have calibrated the panel to a reasonable standard though it's not perfect achieving a CCT average of 66 13k a grayscale averaged l28 of 3.2 to an average delta is between 2.5 and 3.0 across the saturation and color checker tests Delta is below 1.0 a dead accurate and anything below 2.0 is very good the Graham is just outside these metrics and it's certainly better than other laptops I've looked at if you want to calibrate the LG Graham 13 S display using software like spectra Cal's Calment 5 you can achieve very solid results with no impact of brightness or contrast ratio I push Delta is below 1.0 across the board improve the gamut and tightened up the temperature response that's about as good as you could hope for this sort of display and through maintaining 98% srgb coverage images still look fantastic if you have an LG Graham 13 and you want the ICC profile I generated for this laptops display that's available over on our patreon page do note there is some variance between displays and my profile won't necessarily be as accurate on other units but it's usually better than nothing the only real downside I found to the display is uniformity and even then we're only talking about a Delta II deviance of about 3.0 along the bottom edge there is no clear backlight bleed issue it's just a small amount of unevenness in the backlighting not a big deal and in general I'm pretty impressed with the display to be honest let's move on to performance like a lot of base model ultra portable configurations the LG Graham starts with an Intel Core i5 8250 you an 8 gig of ddr4 2400 in a dual channel configuration we haven't spent a lot of time with the 8250 you in the past so it would be good to see how it compares to the core i7 a 550 you found in appetit configurations like most of Intel's hnk be like refresh line the age review features four cores and eight threads constraints are typically a 15 watt TDP while manufacturers can choose the TDP configuration LG 13 since it the default 15 what these four cores have a base clock of 1.6 gigahertz and a boost of 3.4 gigahertz no matter the core usage this is in contrast to the 8550 that features a slightly higher 1.8 gigahertz base clock but a boost that varies from 3.7 all core to 4.0 give hertz in single and dual core workloads it's quite clear looking just at these specs of the 8550 holds a decent clock speed advantage in short single core tasks the other main difference is in cache where the 8250 features 6 megabytes instead of 8 megabytes like with the core i7 range the integrated GPU is still in tells you HD 620 with 24 execution units and clock speed of eleven hundred megahertz just fifty megahertz lower than the core i7s so how does the Core i5 8250 you differ from the core i7 8550 you and is it worth paying the extra money to get the cry 7 model well let's take a look at the performance difference first looking at 16 different productivity benchmarks the i-5 8250 u is on average 15% slower than the core i7 8550 you in this case the 15 watt configuration found in the razor blade stealth in some tests like Excel and premiere the deficit is as large as 26% and in other tests like PC mark that difference is a single-digit percentage for those that prefer percentage gains the 8550 u is 19% faster than the 8250 u on average though again there is a variance among test lengths and core utilization right now the price difference between the core i5 and core i7 models of the LJ gram 13 is a hundred and fifty dollars or 14% more for the core i7 model considering you get 19% more performance on average that sounds like a pretty good deal unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a configuration that delivers more than eight gig of ram or more than a 256gb SSD bizarrely you can only get sixteen gig of ram and a 512 gig SSD out of the box with the 15-inch model both the 14 and 13 inch units are left out however the 13 inch cry 7 model does come with eight gig of soldered ram and a freedom slot making a 16 gig dual channel configuration possible if you're willing to upgrade a laptop yourself the core i5 model like the one I have to review has four gigs soldered at another four gig in that dim slot so a nice extinct configuration is a bit harder luckily you can upgrade the SSD with all units oh and before I forget let's take a look at how the gram 13 stacks up compared to older CPUs which are probably what most buyers will be upgrading from the Wi-Fi of 8250 new model I review provides a handy twenty-two percent average performance upgrade on the core i5 7200 you know that gain can be as high as 72 percent in heavily multi-threaded workloads compared to a core i7 7500 you you get about 18 percent more performance though again that's high in multi-threaded tasks as for the 85 50 you variant well we didn't test that model specifically but we do know the 85 refused approximately 31 percent faster than the i7 7500 you on average with gains closer to the 50 percent mark in all core workloads either way you look at it the core i7 8550 you or the core i5 8250 you will provide a ton more power than seventh gen or all the CPUs the one main downside the system performance is the SSD the 256 gig unit included with the gram 13 is just as sad as Samsung PM 871 drive with performance capped around the 500 megabyte per second mark for sequential transfers the best laptops like the Dell XPS 13 use an nvme drive with performance in the gigabyte per second range where is this SATA Drive you're not getting anything like that considering you can't get a configuration with more than 256 gig of storage anyway it could be worth swapping it out yourself if you're keen on the grams of the strengths the grounder 13 it does have an active cooler for the CPU however I was quite impressed with it under the full load of a handbrake x264 encoder the cooler is quiet producing just 34 DBA from 50 centimeters away the surface temperatures are also kept in check I recorded 43 degrees Celsius in the upper middle of the keyboard and 36 degrees on the underside one of the areas I was most interested in is battery life with a 72 watt hour battery inside the 38 Morel the Graham 13 is loaded with more battery capacity than most competing laptops which typically top out around the 50 to 60 watt hour mark the touchscreen included with my review net will sip a bit more power than the base model without touch however I was still expecting very good results from the Graham and across the battery test I ran the delivered battery life was either at or near the top of the charts in every test delivering some of the best results I've seen from the past couple of generations of laptops I've tested despite the quad-core CPU inside the Graham even does well in battery tests that are more CPU intensive which is great news for those that want to run power-hungry workloads off the charger all up there's many reasons to be impressed with the 13-inch Graham it provides a highly portable design great performance especially if you get the core i7 model excellent battery life and a very good display if you want a system that simply provides portability performance and stamina the Graham could be the exact laptop you're after however and this is the case with almost every laptop out there the Graham is not perfect while the areas I just mentioned our strengths these laptops feature set is bare-bones it's missing Thunderbolt 3 and a full sized SD card slot and you aren't getting a fast nvme SSD while the laptop is upgradable out of the box configurations are limited to just eight gig of ram and a 256 gig SSD I don't think these things will be crucial emissions for a lot of prospective buyers but if you want the complete package you might want to look elsewhere as for pricing you can get the base core i5 Morel for around $1000 and the core i7 model for around 1250 though the flat top isn't officially available in Australia the core i7 model is the best value and both models are cheaper than equivalently configured laptops from major competitors I still really like the Zenbook 13 UX 331 un due to its discrete GPU but the Grande 13 is undoubtedly a more portable option that's it for this review if you're after more in-depth performance information there's a ton more graphs available in the text box review so go check that out consider supporting us on patreon if you like how laptop testing and I'll catch you in the next one you