The prettiest laptop of the decade might be the one by the LG Gram Style
The LG Gram Style: A Smart, Light-Bright, and Haptic-Light Ultra-Low-Energy Laptop
The LG Gram Style should be entered. This, as the name implies, might be the first LG laptop I’ve ever seen that I’d really consider calling “stylish.” It’s unbelievably thin, it’s mind-blowingly light, and it’s covered in a lustrous color-changing finish. My hands-on time with this device was in LG’s very dimly lit booth at CES 2023, but it was certainly one of the most unique-looking laptops I’ve had the opportunity to try so far this year.
This isn’t a laptop that will work for everyone. It might turn heads at the coffee shop. And it’s a bold new look for an established line, which is always fun to watch unfold.
The finish is the first thing to talk about. It’s iridescent, changing color depending on lighting and viewing angle. In LG’s words, the laptops “shine and shift dynamically; moving and changing depending on the light and angle.”
I checked the Style out in January, and it looks what I would call silvery-white most of the time. As the light changes, it can look from blue to orange. (Look, I’m not an artist — we’re all doing our best here, and the showroom where I saw the device wasn’t particularly well lit.) The other funky thing about it is that it has a non-delineated haptic trackpad that’s illuminated by LEDs. While I don’t think it’s useful, it looks very cool. The lights do not come up until after you click, so they do not actually help you find the touchpad, but it does look very cool.
That luster extends to the bottom part of the Style’s keyboard deck, which is one smooth surface — there is no touchpad visible. There is a touchpad under there, in the location where you’d expect a touchpad to be, but it’s haptic and hidden.
We’re seeing more and more of these types of trackpads on laptops this year, and they generally help companies get them thinner (which remains a major draw of the Gram line). Dell’s XPS 13 Plus also had a hidden touchpad last year, and I had mixed results with it. In general, my right hand (I’m right-handed) knew where to click from experience without needing the touchpad delineated, but my less experienced left hand had misclicks here and there when it needed to sub in.
What the Gram Style does have (that the XPS 13 Plus didn’t) is LEDs around the touchpad that illuminate after you touch the area. They stay on for what can’t be more than a few seconds after you click, and then they disappear. So, I mean, that’s better than nothing, but still doesn’t help you find the thing when you need to click it. The lights are pretty. I don’t know why there wasn’t an option to leave them on.
Oh, and this thing is so light. It is one of those things that messes with you when you pick it up. You can fool me into thinking that this was an empty body at 2.2 pounds. That is reassurance that the Style is still a part of the Gram line, despite its various quirks.
One other hot tip: There are even wilder designs coming. Attendees were able to cast their vote for their favorite patterned Gram Style lid, which was displayed at the booth with a bunch of other purple, pink, and polka dots. The representatives claim the company can market the winner. I voted for the purple one, so I hope that one wins. Stay tuned.
As companies attempt to market established premium lines to younger audiences, we are seeing more of things like cute LEDs and jazzed-up finishes.
The ThinkPad Z-series, announced in 2022, brought a number of distinctly non-Thinkpad colors and designs to the ThinkPad line, while the more power user-oriented Dell XPS 13 Plus threw out the function and physical keys and instead used both LEDs and Haptics. This year, a number of companies are angling major products around an elusive hyper-mobile, style-conscious, remote freelance professional. HP’s Dragonfly Pro (including an RGB Chromebook and a Windows PC with a dedicated tech support button) is a recent example.
