LG Gram 16 (2022) review: a brilliant big-screen lightweight laptop

The LG Gram 16 is back again for 2022, ready to take its place on our best laptops list – as with previous versions of the laptop, LG has tried to pack as much power and quality as possible inside a super-light chassis (which is the thinking behind the Gram in the name).

In terms of grams, this laptop weighs less than 1200 of them. It's incredibly lightweight considering its sporting a 16-inch screen, and if this doesn't meet your needs exactly then LG has also launched new 14-, 15- and 17-inch and 2-in-1 Gram models this year.

Our comprehensive LG Gram 16 review will provide you all the info you need to decide if this is the best lightweight laptop for you. Remember there's plenty of choice right now, so also check out our guides to the best laptops for students as well as the best laptop bags.

LG Gram 16: price and availability

The LG Gram 16 is out now and available to buy in the UK and the US, at an almost identical price: around £/$1,350 for the model we've reviewed here (check the widgets on this page for the most up-to-date online deals). In the UK, you can pick up the laptop from retailers including Amazon and Currys.

LG Gram 16 review: design and screen

There's no doubt that the LG Gram 16 is a fine-looking laptop to gaze at, with its grey matte finish and clean lines. It manages to be understated without looking plain or boring, and in terms of aesthetic finish you can tell it's a premium bit of kit. We like the subtle Gram logo on the back of the laptop lid, while the chassis feels really well built too. We even like the style and spacing of the keys on the keyboard.

The laptop measures 354.5 x 242.1 x 16.8mm, and weighs 1.199kg. With a 16-inch screen, it's never going to be the most compact of portable computers, but it really does feel exceptionally light – you can pick it up and carry it with one hand, no problem at all. It's also tough, and has actually been given a military-grade rating for durability, so you don't feel as if you need to be especially careful with it.

The 16-inch IPS LCD screen impresses, with reasonably thin bezel surrounds and plenty of vibrancy and brightness. It runs at a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels across a 16:10 aspect ratio (which is good for websites and documents), and we're fans of the anti-glare technology that LG has built into it. It's definitely in the top bracket of screens that we've seen recently, and befits a laptop at this price. This isn't a touchscreen though, so bear that in mind if that feature is important to you.

Along the sides of the laptop, LG has managed to squeeze in a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 1 Type-A ports, and two USB 4 Gen 3 x 2 Type-C ports that support Power Delivery, DisplayPort output, and the Thunderbolt 4 spec. It's a decent selection for a laptop that's this thin and light, and there's also a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD card slot. The laptop supports the latest Wi-Fi 6E standard, and there's a 1080p webcam built into the top bezel above the monitor that supports Windows Hello face recognition for faster logins.

LG Gram 16 review: specs and performance

The unit we were given to review was fitted with a 12th-gen Intel Core i7-1260P processor, 16GB of RAM, integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, and 1TB of SSD storage (this is the 16Z90Q model, if you're comparing them online). As long as you're not doing any demanding gaming, or any intensive video editing work, that's a really good spec: enough to easily handle all the day-to-day computing tasks that most people will be concerning themselves with.

If benchmarks are important to you, the LG Gram 16 scores 4,866 on the standard PC Mark 10 benchmark, which is about average for an office laptop. We happily used the LG Gram 16 for a few days for our usual computing tasks, from photo editing to web browsing to movie streaming, and we didn't notice anything in the way of stutter or lag – everything ran smoothly and fluidly, and apps and menus opened up in a snap.

The laptop stays nice and quiet while in use, although it can get a bit warm at times underneath – you might not always be able to actually use this laptop on your lap, but that won't be a problem for too many people. The Gram's fans will whir into action for more demanding tasks and casual gaming, but not to a volume level that's distracting. In general, thermal flow seems to be well managed, which is what you want from a laptop that goes on the move with you.

Windows 11 is another reason to choose this laptop: Microsoft's operating system continues to get new features and updates over time. As well as offering face recognition for logging in, the Gram also has presence detection, and will automatically lock the screen when you move away from your desk.

The laptop doesn't offer the best typing and trackpad we've ever experienced, but it's up there: LG has squeezed in a full keyboard and number pad here, and thanks to the soft, matte keys your fingers tend to glide across to the letters, numbers and special characters that you need. The actual travel and click of the keys is a little on the abrupt side, but it's by no means a serious problem.

The trackpad is that it's nice and big and really responsive too – we're talking about a premium-level component here. There are no distinct buttons on it, and it definitely has a MacBook Pro-esque feel to it. Taking everything into consideration, this is a near-perfect productivity machine: assuming that it meets your needs in terms of size and design, it ticks all of the other boxes.

In our one-hour video streaming test (run with the display brightness set to maximum and the volume set low), the battery level dropped by 11 percent, suggesting around 9-10 hours of movie-watching in total. In more general use the battery holds up, and you can easily get through a full working day without any worry. As long as you're not going on a week's holiday without your power cable, you'll be fine.

There are two 1.5W speakers built into the LG Gram 16, with DTS X Ultra support, and they're perfectly adequate for the purposes of watching movies or listening to music: the sound they produce is fuller and richer than you might expect, though of course they can't match the quality of dedicated speakers (especially with the physical limitations of the thin and lightweight chassis).

LG Gram 16 review: verdict

The LG Gram 16 is going to be of interest to anyone in the market for a sleek, professional Windows 11 laptop, and it ticks a lot of boxes when it comes to performance, battery life and build quality. While the price is more than some people are going to want to spend on their next laptop upgrade, we feel as though LG gives you enough back in return.

It's the combination of a large 16-inch screen and a really low weight that's the key selling point here. As on previous LG Gram laptops, you can have the best of both worlds. It's quite an engineering achievement in that regard, although of course there's not much LG can do about the size given the 16-inch screen – so you'll still need a fairly big bag for it.

The thinness and the lightness of the laptop mean that there's no room for advanced cooling or any kind of discrete GPU. Nevertheless, performance is more than good enough for regular computing tasks. If you're serious about playing high-end games then you're going to be looking in a completely different laptop category anyway, and we found the Gram to be snappy and responsive in the applications that we used.

Overall, the LG Gram 16 is absolutely one of the best lightweight laptops on the market at the moment, and is likely to appeal to a broad swathe of consumers.

Also consider

As we mentioned right at the start, the LG Gram 2022 is available in other sizes, if the 16-inch version doesn't quite do it for you. For everyday computing on a large-ish laptop screen, there's also the consistently excellent Dell XPS 15: unlike the LG model, it has an OLED screen for even better colours and contrast. It's not quite as lightweight as the LG Gram 16, but it's still impressive in terms of its portability.

If portability is of paramount importance to you, then it might be worth considering the MacBook Air as an alternative to this laptop. You'll get macOS rather than Windows of course, which may or may not suit you, but the Apple M2 chip offers fantastic performance with a low power draw (and therefore excellent battery life). The screen size is smaller than on the LG Gram 16 though, measuring 13.6 inches from corner to corner.