/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24924653/236780_Google_AntiTrust_Trial_Custom_Art_CVirginia__0003_1.png "Google’s counteroffer to the government trying to break it up is unbundling Android apps")
Choosing a laptop inevitably involves a matter of compromise. A lightweight, more portable device means a small screen and a cramped keyboard. A larger laptop provides room to stretch out and usually more power—at the expense of portability. What’s an on-the-go creative to do? Is there a best of both worlds out there somewhere?
Enter LG with its Gram Pro 17, and I wouldn’t dream of burying the lede on this one: At 18 millimeters thick and weighing just 2.8 pounds, it is the thinnest and lightest 17-inch laptop I’ve ever seen, and it’s not even close.
Some points of comparison to start, in case you think I’m being dramatic. The 17.3-inch Acer Nitro 17 I reviewed recently weighs a hefty 6.3 pounds and is 34 mm thick. Back in 2018, HP’s Omen X 17 tipped the scales at 9.9 pounds and a beastly 41 mm of girth—and it didn’t even have the courtesy to include an optical drive with it. The only machine that is even in the ballpark is the oddball HP Spectre Foldable. With its removable keyboard, it weighs 3.5 pounds and is 23 mm thick—though that’s hardly an apples-to-apples comparison.
That’s kind of the point. There is no comparison for this laptop and no meaningful point of reference. Unboxing it felt like someone was pulling a prank on me. Did a child’s plastic toy somehow get shipped to me instead of a Windows laptop? Where’s the usual 1-pound power brick? LG has been making iterative versions of this laptop since 2019, but even the older models don’t reach the featherweight status of this 2024 model.
Photograph: LG
Aside from being impossibly light and thin, what do you get with the new Gram Pro 17? An Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU is backed by 32 GB of RAM, a 2-terabyte solid-state drive (curiously configured as two logical disks), and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. That’s a fairly dated, lower-end graphics processor, which I’ll delve into in more detail soon. The bright IPS screen offers 2,460 X 1,600 pixels of resolution, but it isn’t a touchscreen (to keep things thin).
The port selection, arranged on both sides of the device with none on the back, is good but not quite great. You get two USB-A ports, two USB-C 4.0 ports, and a full-size HDMI. You’ll need one of the USB-C ports for charging with the included A/C adapter.
LG’s design here is understated, all matte-black, powder-coated with gentle curves at the corners and nothing in the way of flourishes outside of the “Gram” logo on top. There’s room for a (rather slim) numeric keypad to the right of the spacious keyboard, though key travel is necessarily restricted due to the extreme thinness of the device.
