LG Gram 2021 announced: 14, 16 and 17

Just watched the LG Korea launch event for Gram 2021, the entire event was in Korean and a Korean pop star was interacting with LG officials. Here are the many changes/improvements which i could decipher from the event:

1. The LG Gram series now contains 14, 16 and 17 inches. Sorry no 15 inch, i was not able to understand korean where they said Gram 16 replaces Gram 15.

2. The 14, 16 and 17 inch version have 16:10 displays.

3. There will be three colours: The usual Grey, Matte Black and Glossy White.

4. They mostly spent all the time discussing the new Gram 16, 16: 10 display, 2560x1600 resolution, DCI-P3 99 per cent.

5. The touchpad is 55% larger for Gram 16 vs Gram 15 2020.

6. The keyboard has been improved and the key travel is now 1.65 mm compared to 1.5 mm of 2020 Gram.

7. 80 Wh battery, 72Wh for Gram 14

8. Improved speakers by 50-60 per cent, loud volume.

9. New and improved cooling.

10. USB C charger is bundled.

11. Ports layout is changed: Left side has HDMI, Two USB type C and 3.5 mm jack. Right side has two type A, Micro SD and Kensington Lock.

12. No more bundled Ethernet adaptor.

13: RAM is soldered, no empty RAM slot

14. Intel Tiger Lake with Intel Evo branding/program.

 

LG Gram 16 page is up: https://www.lge.co.kr/lgekor/product/pc/notebook/productDetail.do?prdId=EPRD.361681

It shows all three colour options for Gram 16 but the worrying thing is it only shows empty slot for SSD and On-Board LPDDR4x 4266 MHz RAM. Soldered RAM and no empty RAM slot

 

LG gram 17 page : https://www.lge.co.kr/lgekor/product/pc/notebook/productDetail.do?cateId=2170&prdId=EPRD.361628

Same thing here too, three colours, On-Board RAM soldered RAM, no empty RAM slot, extra slot for SSD expansion. The Touchpad is larger by 17 per cent compared to 2020 Gram 17.

Improved keyboard 1.65 mm vs 1.5 mm and 2560X1600 DCI-P3 display. 11th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7 processor

 

Here is the new Gram 14: https://www.lge.co.kr/lgekor/product/pc/notebook/productDetail.do?cateId=2170&prdId=EPRD.361697

16:10 display, 1920x1080, DCI-P3 99 per cent, 72Wh battery. On-Board soldered RAM, no empty ram slot. SSD extra slot available.

 

The only part of this that I am interested in is

Hopefully they got it right this time, even though they improved it last year over the one I have it was still sub par.

 

A guy in Korea has dismantled the engineering sample of the 2021 Gram 16, enable auto translate-english subtitles to get some idea:



The copper cooling pipes are thicker, fan is bigger and more vents are used in 2021 Gram. Also the paint used for white colour is thicker. Looks like the new colours are better options.

 

The heat pipe, heat sink and fan look effectively identical, there is no appreciable improvement there it doesn't seem. Slimmest of margins at best. The huge change is the vents on the bottom, hopefully those drastically improve airflow.

 

I'm curious whether the second M.2 slot is still only 2-lane (as in the 2020 models), or whether it's now a full 4-lane (like the first M.2 slot).

I'm disappointed by the move to soldered-RAM only. 16GB max RAM is a low ceiling for some users, especially those who plan to run virtual machines. But the rest sounds promising.

By the way, according to an LG press release for virtual CES 2021, there will be a Gram 16 variant with a touchscreen, a stylus, and a 360° hinge. It will weigh around 2/3 lb. more than the non-touchscreen variant and I didn't see any mention of DCI-P3 99% ... but it will be available in green! ;-) I'm guessing it could be very appealing to some classes of users. Here's a link to the press release, which has a table of specs for the new models:

https://www.lgnewsroom.com/2021/01/...10-aspect-ratio-screens-and-sleek-new-design/

 

As far as I know it was the early 2019 model that had the secondary NVMe slot at PCIe 2x (I have one, it is true it's 2x..) but the 2020 and forward models have two 4xPCIe NVMe slots

 

Are you sure about that? I have a 2020 Gram 17 (that I mostly love), and I remember grumbling about the second M.2 slot having only 2 lanes when I researched it. Unfortunately, I can't for the life of me find my source for that info. It's possible that it was misinformation due to Amazon's unfortunate penchant for inaccurate product titles and for mixing Q&As and reviews for different products and different model years. (Only a week ago I saw an Amazon listing for a "2021 LG Gram 17," all of whose specs were for the 2020 model.) Also, I haven't cracked open the chassis yet, so I can't check the slot 2 label (NVMe×4 vs. NVMe×2), and I obviously haven't populated the slot yet, so I can't run diagnostics on it. (I do plan on populating it soon, however, with a dedicated Linux drive.)

Off Topic: By far the biggest usability improvement I made to my Gram 17 was to remap the numeric keypad. I've never used numeric keypads for their intended purpose, so I "cannibalized" the keys on the Gram to create dedicated Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute/Unmute, Pause/Resume, and Next Track (+Shift = Previous Track) keys, as well as a classic full-height inverted-T arrow-key cluster, a classic Home/End stack, and a classic PageUp/PageDn stack. I find the remapped keys much easier to use than the Gram's default keys and Fn-key combos. (I used AutoHotkey, which as a non-coder I didn't have a lot of fun learning, but there are simpler remapping utilities out there.)