WEBVTT 00:00:00.190 --> 00:00:01.323 - Dare me to spin it? 00:00:03.500 --> 00:00:09.700 - Whoa. - [Jono] Whoa. - I do love me some LGs and today I've got three of them, 00:00:09.700 --> 00:00:13.890 a 14, a 16, and a 17-inch version 00:00:13.890 --> 00:00:17.660 of the LG Gram 2021 laptop. 00:00:17.660 --> 00:00:22.220 Now, which one do you guys want me to start with? The little one or the not-so-little one? 00:00:22.220 --> 00:00:24.373 - [Jono] The chungus. - The chungus? 00:00:25.260 --> 00:00:29.390 That's fine. That's fine, just fine. We're going full chungus here. 00:00:29.390 --> 00:00:32.690 So, the Gram 17 is not as light 00:00:32.690 --> 00:00:39.370 as the Gram 14, which is just one kilogram. This puppy is 1.35 kilos. 00:00:39.370 --> 00:00:43.170 But it does come with some key benefits 00:00:43.170 --> 00:00:47.750 including an 80-watt-hour battery instead of a 72-watt-hour battery, 00:00:47.750 --> 00:00:51.640 and a 2560 by 1600 screen 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:54.970 instead of a 1920 by 1200 screen. 00:00:54.970 --> 00:00:59.450 And I got to say, the first thing that stands out to me about this 00:00:59.450 --> 00:01:06.245 has got to be the finish. LG has glowed up the Gram, like, 00:01:06.245 --> 00:01:08.113 big-time here. 00:01:09.720 --> 00:01:14.270 Whoo. Now, I know this is just a black laptop, 00:01:14.270 --> 00:01:20.033 which isn't exactly an innovation, but the finish on it is really sleek. 00:01:20.950 --> 00:01:25.122 Let's just see if they've managed to make it not, you know, totally flexible, 00:01:25.122 --> 00:01:28.220 (laptop creaking) Hm, keeps improving. 00:01:28.220 --> 00:01:35.050 You know, it's always going to be a lightness first, ruggedness second kind of device, 00:01:35.340 --> 00:01:39.203 but that's actually not too shabby. 00:01:40.760 --> 00:01:45.560 Included in the box is a nice, compact power brick, I actually really like the rounded edges on it, 00:01:45.560 --> 00:01:50.410 makes it a little easier to slip in and out of your bag. And then over on the side here, there we go, 00:01:50.410 --> 00:01:53.980 we've got HDMI-to-USB Type-C ports, 00:01:53.980 --> 00:01:58.810 those are those Thunderbolt 4 as well as an audio jack. 00:01:58.810 --> 00:02:03.680 I'm just going to power it on real quick here, show off the dual USB Type-As as well 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:08.130 as a Kensington lock and Micro SD. And now let's talk about that power button for a second, 00:02:08.130 --> 00:02:13.170 that is not your ordinary button, we've seen this feature before, notably from ASUS. 00:02:13.170 --> 00:02:18.150 But it's a fingerprint sensing power button that does more than just detect your finger print 00:02:18.150 --> 00:02:22.770 when you get to the login screen and let you login. It actually caches your fingerprint ahead of time. 00:02:22.770 --> 00:02:25.830 So you power up the machine, it goes, "Oh that fingerprint, 00:02:25.830 --> 00:02:29.616 okay, I'ma hold on to this for a second." And then when you get to the Windows login in screen... 00:02:29.616 --> 00:02:32.640 (snapping) It will log you right in. Assuming of course that you have... 00:02:32.640 --> 00:02:35.744 - Welcome, I'm Cortana. - Pre-configured the thing. 00:02:35.744 --> 00:02:39.330 (laughing) Cortana, shut up, we don't care. 00:02:39.330 --> 00:02:44.480 - For all you plan to do. - Which is fine because the 2021 Grams also includes support 00:02:44.480 --> 00:02:49.640 for A-L-E-X-A if you're into that sort of thing, because Amazon doesn't have enough of your data yet. 00:02:49.640 --> 00:02:53.390 Let's go ahead and blow through the setup wizard and we'll talk about some of the other cool stuff. 00:02:53.390 --> 00:02:56.610 Boy that is a big screen. 00:02:56.610 --> 00:02:59.980 The touch pad is another big improvement 00:02:59.980 --> 00:03:04.850 over the last generation. This is actually, oh, look at that. (laughing) 00:03:04.850 --> 00:03:08.990 Jono happens to have a 2020 Gram, 00:03:08.990 --> 00:03:13.160 so you can see not only is it much larger on the 2021, 00:03:13.160 --> 00:03:16.960 I actually really prefer the more sharp corners compared 00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:22.640 to the super rounded corners on the last one and this color scheme just looks next gen. 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:25.873 See you later 2020 gram. Almost there. 00:03:27.010 --> 00:03:30.061 Hey, there we go. Do I have an option to not get started? 00:03:30.061 --> 00:03:34.580 (chuckling) Nope. That's this, you can adjust the color temperature of the display. 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:38.890 That's another key benefit LG is touting for the 2021 series Grams, 00:03:38.890 --> 00:03:42.680 it is 99% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. 00:03:42.680 --> 00:03:46.830 Pretty darn impressive. Now, what I want to know is, 00:03:46.830 --> 00:03:51.450 this looks like a 60 hertz display, but could that be perhaps turned up 00:03:51.450 --> 00:03:54.720 or are we just going to have to settle for color accurate? 00:03:54.720 --> 00:03:58.290 I do wish everything had high refresh rate. Nope, okay, that's fine. 00:03:58.290 --> 00:04:02.030 It's standard dynamic range and only 60 hertz refresh rate. 00:04:02.030 --> 00:04:05.820 One of the other key improvements, pun intended, is to the keyboard. 00:04:05.820 --> 00:04:08.960 So they've added another 0.1 millimeters of key travel 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:11.990 as well as flattened out the tops of the key caps 00:04:11.990 --> 00:04:16.260 instead of making them concave. I'm not a huge fan of concave key caps on a laptop 00:04:16.260 --> 00:04:21.340 so I personally consider this to be a good move. As for the layout, It is a touch cramped 00:04:21.340 --> 00:04:24.730 because LG has opted to include a number pad on the 17-inch model. 00:04:24.730 --> 00:04:29.680 But as we have a look at the smaller ones, you're going to see that that's not necessarily present. 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:33.590 When I say cramped, by the way, to be fair, I don't mean, you know, it doesn't have the right number of keys 00:04:33.590 --> 00:04:37.540 or anything like that I just find a couple of them like the enter and the backspace are a little bit easier 00:04:37.540 --> 00:04:40.960 to overshoot and accidentally go off the rails here. 00:04:40.960 --> 00:04:45.060 It's the kind of thing that if you were actual owner of this device, you would get used to. 00:04:45.060 --> 00:04:49.970 Uh-oh, you see this? A McAfee pop-up. 00:04:49.970 --> 00:04:54.400 Andy, there's McAfee on my machine. 00:04:54.400 --> 00:04:57.980 Oh yeah, there was also a DTS X Ultra icon here. 00:04:57.980 --> 00:05:02.120 So supposedly the two watt speakers in here 00:05:02.120 --> 00:05:07.120 are like DTS X surround or something. 00:05:07.350 --> 00:05:11.180 So why don't we go ahead and see how they sounded at least, 00:05:11.180 --> 00:05:14.430 even if we're not testing the DTS capabilities 00:05:14.430 --> 00:05:18.090 - NVIDIA's long awaited premium, mid range 00:05:18.090 --> 00:05:23.300 and pure architecture GPU, this-- - Yeah, it sounds super hollow, doesn't it? 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:29.760 - [Woman on laptop] XT provides high performing teams of developers to-- - I'm talking like, you know what I mean? 00:05:29.760 --> 00:05:33.570 Yeah. Wow, I can really feel the position 00:05:33.570 --> 00:05:37.500 of the speakers on this device. Normally you wanted to kind of sound to the user, 00:05:37.500 --> 00:05:42.510 like the person they're actually watching is speaking and the sound's coming out of the screen, 00:05:42.510 --> 00:05:46.200 but we do not get that effect at all 00:05:46.200 --> 00:05:50.760 with the downward firing speakers here. They sound like okay, 00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:54.140 but especially in a world where Apple's MacBooks exist 00:05:54.140 --> 00:05:59.930 and actually Dell's XPS lineup for that matter. It's a little bit tough to have speakers 00:05:59.930 --> 00:06:04.240 that are this far behind. Depending on which version of mobile mark you look at 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:09.840 LG rates this puppy for anywhere from 15 to 19 and a half hours of battery life. 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:13.610 And the last thing I want to check before we check out the 16-inch is, 00:06:13.610 --> 00:06:14.723 here we go, ready? 00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:20.980 Not bad. Does it do it when it's fully turned off? 00:06:20.980 --> 00:06:22.203 I would like to know. 00:06:25.070 --> 00:06:28.750 Did it do it? It did do it. 00:06:28.750 --> 00:06:33.800 So one disadvantage to fingerprint compared to a facial sensor is that it does mean 00:06:33.800 --> 00:06:39.300 that you can't just like open up your laptop and have it come to life, 00:06:39.300 --> 00:06:44.550 but it's pretty okay. Today's ShortCircuit is brought to you by BLUblox. 00:06:44.550 --> 00:06:47.740 They create high quality lenses for daytime, nighttime 00:06:47.740 --> 00:06:51.160 and for color therapy. Unlike other types of blue light glasses, 00:06:51.160 --> 00:06:56.170 BLUblox's are evidence backed and made under optics laboratory conditions in Australia, 00:06:56.170 --> 00:07:01.640 and they've got over 40 hip frames and come in prescription, non-prescription and readers 00:07:01.640 --> 00:07:06.680 so they've got you covered pretty much, no matter what you need. For every pair of BLUblox glasses purchased, 00:07:06.680 --> 00:07:10.990 they donate a pair of reading glasses to someone in need when in partnership with RestoringVision. 00:07:10.990 --> 00:07:14.810 So all you got to do is head to BLUblox.com/ShortCircuit, 00:07:14.810 --> 00:07:18.493 and just click the link below to make sure that you get 20% off. 00:07:22.300 --> 00:07:27.150 Now let's shift our attention to the 16-inch. 00:07:27.150 --> 00:07:30.270 This is a more conventional Gram kind of finish, 00:07:30.270 --> 00:07:34.610 but you know what? It's a little bit kind of a cooler color 00:07:34.610 --> 00:07:38.580 than I'm accustomed to seeing. This looks really sharp as well. 00:07:38.580 --> 00:07:41.790 So you see how much room there is for air flow back there? 00:07:41.790 --> 00:07:46.500 Kind of crazy. Just like the 14 and 17, the grand 16-inch is equipped 00:07:46.500 --> 00:07:51.590 with an 11th Gen Intel processor. And if you've got a core i5 or a core i7, 00:07:51.590 --> 00:07:56.070 that means it comes with Xe graphics. Now, one thing I was a little disappointed to see, 00:07:56.070 --> 00:08:02.650 where did my fix-it kit go? Is that it appears that though they got a speed boost 00:08:02.810 --> 00:08:07.810 going to LPDDR4X memory at 40 to 66 megahertz, 00:08:08.050 --> 00:08:11.530 which is fantastic for performance, 00:08:11.530 --> 00:08:18.160 it appears as though the memory on these machines is not upgradable in any way. 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:22.610 So let's go ahead and pop it open in order to verify. 00:08:22.610 --> 00:08:29.140 Oh wow. You can really see like how skinny 00:08:30.090 --> 00:08:35.380 the material it's made out of is. Like, it's kind of amazing by the time they assemble 00:08:35.380 --> 00:08:39.050 this whole thing that it's rigid at all, you know? 00:08:39.050 --> 00:08:42.670 - [Jono] That's a really attractive battery. - Yeah, I know, they really stepped up 00:08:42.670 --> 00:08:47.543 their battery packaging game. So that's the 80-watt-hour that's in the 16 and 17-inch. 00:08:48.570 --> 00:08:55.038 And... That's the soldered system memory. 00:08:55.038 --> 00:08:59.700 Ugh, that means that whether you go eight gigs or 16 gigs, 00:08:59.700 --> 00:09:03.243 you are stuck with it forever. 00:09:04.300 --> 00:09:07.440 I would like to see a 32 gig option in that case 00:09:07.440 --> 00:09:13.030 and what I'd really like to see, especially given that they have so much space in here 00:09:13.030 --> 00:09:16.920 is a SODIMM memory slot although admittedly, 00:09:16.920 --> 00:09:21.210 it would add extra weight. Simple single heat pipe cooler 00:09:21.210 --> 00:09:24.960 with the exhaust right back here. And this is nice though, 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:30.960 at least they've got dual M.2 expansion slots. So both of these are NBME capable 00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:35.550 and this one's actually SATA capable as well. It's always so crazy to me the lengths 00:09:35.550 --> 00:09:40.350 that LG will go in these grants to save some weight, like look at this, having the motherboard, 00:09:40.350 --> 00:09:45.980 look at this, look at the size of this motherboard, that's it, right? So there's your CPU, memory, storage, 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:50.420 It's basically all there. And then they go all the way over here with the little skinny ribbon. 00:09:50.420 --> 00:09:53.423 Okay, so there's your daughterboard to handle your USB. 00:09:54.380 --> 00:09:59.760 Wireless is over here as well. And then you've got these gaps, see this? 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:03.120 You've actually got gaps in the PCB again, probably to save weight. 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:06.940 It could also be cooling related since it's right next to the M.2s. 00:10:06.940 --> 00:10:10.790 And then Thunderbolt is handled over here along with HDMI. 00:10:10.790 --> 00:10:14.760 Oh. Probably should have powered that off 00:10:14.760 --> 00:10:18.061 before I opened it. - [Jono] Oh my God, it's on? 00:10:18.061 --> 00:10:23.960 (laughing) - Now it's time to check out the 14-inch. 00:10:23.960 --> 00:10:27.240 Okay, only 72 watt hour battery and yet 00:10:27.240 --> 00:10:31.180 somehow it ends up with very similar rated battery life 00:10:31.180 --> 00:10:37.130 to the other two and a big part of that is because it does have a smaller, lower resolution display. 00:10:37.130 --> 00:10:40.410 Of course, when you step down to a 14-inch device, 00:10:40.410 --> 00:10:43.740 you don't need as much resolution because the pixel density 00:10:43.740 --> 00:10:47.660 is still going to be quite solid. On the subject of solid, 00:10:47.660 --> 00:10:52.660 given that this is the only still sub kilogram LG Gram, 00:10:53.030 --> 00:10:57.437 that is actually not too shabby at all. Like I'm putting... 00:10:57.437 --> 00:11:01.233 You can see I'm putting a lot of force on this thing here. How's the screen? 00:11:04.090 --> 00:11:09.000 Especially now that we've seen the individual layers and the material and like how flimsy they are 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:13.130 it's kind of amazing that it's as solid as it is. 00:11:13.130 --> 00:11:17.260 In terms of IO, it's identical to the others, so Thunderbolt 4 is still included, 00:11:17.260 --> 00:11:24.550 full-Sized HDMI, full-size USB and of course it's crazy, crazy light. 00:11:24.550 --> 00:11:28.330 The touch pad is not as large as the other two, but for a 14-inch notebook, 00:11:28.330 --> 00:11:31.850 I would say that this is a very generous sized touch pad. 00:11:31.850 --> 00:11:36.440 And as for the keyboard, I'm actually expecting to prefer this one, 00:11:36.440 --> 00:11:41.510 because one of the things that bothers me about larger laptops with a number pad off to the side 00:11:41.510 --> 00:11:45.800 is that it kind of makes it so that centered in front of the device, 00:11:45.800 --> 00:11:51.140 you know, where the touch pad is right in front of you, you have to go over here in order to type, 00:11:51.140 --> 00:11:54.263 and I find it a little uncomfortable, so let's see. 00:11:55.910 --> 00:11:59.130 That feels, that feels pretty darn good. 00:11:59.130 --> 00:12:04.510 Wait a second, what is lock button? Oh, okay, turns the webcam and mic off. 00:12:04.510 --> 00:12:09.220 Okay, they've comes so far since the original Gram where they couldn't even manage to put a backlight 00:12:09.220 --> 00:12:14.370 in the keyboard and keep it under the weight limit. Nowadays, I mean, it's got all the creature comforts. 00:12:14.370 --> 00:12:17.600 It's got Thunderbolt, it's got a high-speed processor, 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:23.380 it's got adequate cooling, great battery life. I mean, there's a reason that these LG Grams 00:12:23.380 --> 00:12:28.000 never last long on the inventory shelf, people always snatch them up for internal use 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:31.475 just because it's just kind of what you need 00:12:31.475 --> 00:12:36.050 and nothing else. And I really love the new finishes for this year. 00:12:36.050 --> 00:12:41.740 So that's it, that's our first look at the LG Gram 2021 lineup. 00:12:41.740 --> 00:12:45.430 The one thing we don't is a refresh of the two in one, 00:12:45.430 --> 00:12:51.500 which was actually my favorite from last time around. So that was the foldy touchscreen one, but who knows? 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:56.630 Maybe LG will send over one of those when they are good and ready. 00:12:56.630 --> 00:13:02.157 And when you're good and ready, make sure you subscribe to ShortCircuit so you don't miss more videos just like this one.