Gadgetory

you know what guys I noticed that while technology progress is some things that we wish remained around are left behind just take a look at the trend of notebooks these days they are much more powerful than they ever we're and they can now be amazingly portable but something as simple as battery life has an improved over the past few years look laptops have evolved significantly over the past decade my first one when I arrived to Canada was about eight years ago and it was this HP g60 I loved it and looking at it right now brings back some memories it took me through high school and it's what got me started to think about tech and pursuing it as a career I've even edited a few videos on it but none of you guys will ever see that but sadly like any other piece of tech this trusty old HP started to show its age and eventually the display gave up on me but it still works as a machine although you have to connect it to an external display like I said it's amazing to see how technology progresses and here is an excellent example of that this is the new LG Graham 15 just look at this thing when the G 60 was around people would have thought the Graham came from something out of Star Trek they'd be blown away that this is an actual laptop and even now I find it hard not to stare at what LG has created so let's take a look at the Graham 15 but first a message from our sponsor the pure bass 600 is now available with a tempered glass panel with an easy mount a couple of pure wings two fans one of which is 140 millimeters with three modular interior drive caddies along with dual SSD brackets have nothing to hide whether be quiet pure bass is 600 with the Graham 15 LG really did flex some engineering muscle it's just point 6 inches thick or thin if you'd like to say it that way but what's unique about this machine is how light it is weighing in at just under two and a half pounds you wouldn't even notice if it's in your backpack that's a lot different than my original nine and a half pound HP which felt like a brick no matter how I carried it other than the lightweight design this little notebooks other selling point is it's supposedly amazing battery life LG claims that with a custom 60 watt hour battery that uses carbon nanotube technology the Graham will run for about 24 hours while being used for basic tasks like word processing and website housing and ultra thin and light laptop with that kind of battery life would be amazing but let's just see how well that plays now let's talk pricing the fully expected machine is expensive at $1700 with dual core quad right KB Lake i7 that's actually the same processor as the gigabyte bricks that we reviewed a little while ago it also comes with 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 512 gigabyte SATA based SSD we lowered to your gram is less powerful but it's also more affordable at $1200 with better battery life plus 14 and 13 inch models are also available with the same larger 61 hour battery giving users a lot of options with the price as low as $1,000 for the 13 inch I 5 gram if you take the higher tier model and compared to something like the Dell XPS 15 that almost matches the size of the gram they have different priorities so the Dell focuses on performance rather than giving you an ultra lightweight body and crazy battery life like the Graham actually one of the closest alternatives is likely lenovo's current x1 carbon that goes for a lot more money but it's also backed by amazing build quality while being thin the gram does not compromise on port selection on the right you get a Kensington lock USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports a headphone jack and oddly a micro SD card reader I'm pretty sure most of you would appreciate a full-size card slot so LG please fix that in the next revision switching over to the left side there's power N and extra USB 3.0 port a full size HDMI port and a USB type-c port which does not support Thunderbolt you get all the essentials of a basic laptop without needing to carry any dongles like what you do with Apple's offerings Plus as a bonus LG does include a USB type-c to rj45 LAN port adapter so I'm pretty sure that would come in handy during travel what's also interesting about the Grand 15 is that they've managed to fit a 15.6 inch IPS display inside a 14 inch form factor which not only reduces the overall footprint of an average 15 inch laptop but you're getting the exact same screen real estate without losing resolution and those bezels hold those bezels they're almost non-existent especially when you're watching videos or even while casually browsing the web unfortunately the bezel size compromises the webcam placement which is really at an odd location because like you can see it points up at my nose now given the grams has an IPS panel viewing angles and contrast ratio are great but not the best that I've come across it also doesn't get too bright especially when you're taking this on daylight conditions it's probably not the best this is also a touchscreen although I couldn't really take advantage of that feature simply because the screen wobbled every time I tap on a window speaking of design the Graham looks beautiful the whole body is crafted of magnesium alloy which contributes to the light weight without sacrificing durability but I'd like to challenge that claim to me the chassis doesn't feel as durable as an all aluminum construction and it's also not cheap to produce there are barely any signs of flex on the palm rest area and the keyboard which is awesome however the lid could pose some problems since it really did bow when I tried flexing it the keyboard includes a full size numpad which could be useful if you work with a lot of numbers and the keys exited great tactile feedback so typing in general was a pleasant experience then again keyboard feedback is a very personal thing so let's just say I really like this one they've also made it backlit with a two step brightness adjustment and on essentially thin chassis that's pretty amazing following up with the trackpad it's almost perfect but not quite there yet like the ones found on the surface book or the XPS 15 the surface is really smooth for finger navigation and the primary left and right buttons are integrated at the bottom tracking for the most part was accurate I did not notice stutters or lag so you can comfortably get work done without an external Mouse also the screen can be opened with just a single hand and while it's not a super exciting feature it's really hard to find laptops these days that do that other than the mac books or the razor blade so with all the features out of the way what was it like using the Graham 15 well after a few weeks of getting acquainted with it there were absolutely no problems with script editing and media consumption performance was just as expected the ultra-low voltage processor won't render 4k videos or perform heavily demanding tasks but the system was really responsive sure you can definitely get away with some like Photoshop work and maybe a little bit of video editing at 1080p but be aware of your limitations also the system was dead quiet under idle situations and the fence do ramp up slightly under load but too-loud after temperatures the gram ran surprisingly cool over my course of testing other than running a few benchmarks it really did get warm slightly to the touch but it's nothing to be worried about now just for fun I put the gram up against my old HP to see what nearly eight years of progress looks like and the results are really amazing even with such a thin and light design new technology kicks some serious butt I mean look these results were expected but it's still incredible to see it firsthand battery life is actually something I need to take a little while to discuss since it's one of Graham's primary marketing points without it hitting a long amount of time without recharging there's really no use of spending $1,700 right with LG's previous grand notebooks the reviews were not that positive when it came to battery life but since the capacity has gone from just over 31 hours to 61 hours and of course the power efficient cable eight processors helped as well so did all of those changes make a difference I'd say so I was averaging a little more than 11 hours performing casual work and while consuming content the notebook dipped a little below nine hours still that's a lot of juice to get you throughout the day but it definitely isn't all-day battery life like what LG is claiming was I impressed though definitely this is the longest battery I've gotten out of any notebook so far one thing I was a little concerned about was the power connector it looks fragile and it requires a little more force to plug in that I'm used to so I'd be extra careful with that but on a positive side the power brick is super portable and easy to toss into a backpack or carrying case the speakers are not the best they're located at the bottom with a slide cut out facing the surface which kills clarity in the vocals if you're listening to music or even watching movies base is completely non-existent and so I'd highly recommend getting a good pair of headphones for the best listening experience and thankfully the onboard audio jack has a really good DAC to drive mid-range headphones like my HD 598 so should you get the Graham 15 from LG it really depends on your demands it's not for every power user and it's super expensive for people who are just looking to browse the web it's somewhere between giving you the best of both worlds that is performance and battery life if you're looking for a thin and light ultra book that can get you through out the day with excellent battery life the is a noble to get the battery life is one of the best I've seen on a Windows notebook and you're not losing a lot on performance either personally I find that there's better value spent on something like the Dell XPS 15 because it has the specs to justify its price tag but for an on Google user who doesn't require a lot of processing power like video editing or anything that is super intensive the Graham would be a perfect fit and that's what I'm going to end this review I'd love to hear your thoughts on the LG Graham 15 you know would you spend $1,700 on this notebook or our Danny alternatives that you might be interested in like the Dell XPS 15 or the Dell XPS 13 let us know in the comments down below I'm Eva with hurricane axe thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one