The LG gram-15Z960-A.AA52U1 ($1,099.99 as tested) is a midrange ultraportable notable for its record-setting light weight. Despite the 15-inch display, it weighs just over two pounds, lighter than many smaller laptops, without compromising the large screen or performance. There's a wide variety of connectivity options and battery life is good, but aspects of the design do suffer given the tight build. The overall construction is a bit flimsy, an issue we experienced with the smaller version of this laptop, the LG gram 14. The 15-inch version has more positives than the gram 14, and a better price, but the lackluster chassis and keyboard quality still hold the system back. The Razer Blade Stealth (QHD) remains our Editors' Choice for midrange ultraportables thanks to its premium build, strong feature set, and higher-quality screen for just $100 more.  

Design and Features
The LG gram line's calling card is its feather-light build, and the 15-inch version delivers on that front, just as the LG gram 14 does. The system measures 8.99 by 14.08 by 0.66 inches and weighs just 2.06 pounds. This is really impressive considering the 14-inch frame, and it feels more like you're holding a cardboard mock-up than a full-size Windows 10 PC. The chassis is made of magnesium alloy that feels more high-end than plastic, but allows for the lighter design. The metallic gold color looks good, and is complemented well by a silver LG logo adorning the lid.

To compare, the Razer Blade Stealth, with its 12.5-inch screen, weighs 2.8 pounds, and even the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air weighs 2.96 pounds. Other 15-inch laptops like the HP Spectre x360 15t, the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Pro, and the Dell XPS 15 Touch (9550) all weigh more than 4 pounds. All of that said, the featherweight design does come with some drawbacks. There's a good amount of flex on the keyboard deck, lid, and bottom, which makes the laptop feel a bit cheap. Still, that's necessary to get the weight so low, and may bother some users more than others.

The touchpad could be sturdier, and makes loud clicking noises, while the keys are flat with shallow travel and no backlighting. The Blade Stealth, meanwhile, has a fully backlit keyboard with individually backlit, customizable keys. The speakers on the gram 15 are internal, with no visible grilles, so the laptop doesn't get very loud. The speakers aren't too quiet if you need to play, say a video for a small group, and the quality doesn't degrade at full volume, but the sound certainly won't fill a room, and there's not very much bass.

The 15.6-inch IPS display bears full 1080p (1,920-by-1,080) resolution, and it looks sharp and vibrant. There's a very thin bezel on the top and sides, which is what helps the screen fit into the 14-inch frame, and the nearly edge-to-edge design makes it look even more appealing. It's a little reflective, but very clear even from wider angles, and sometimes a matte anti-reflection coating can really dull the picture, so this is preferable to me. The Asus ZenBook UX305CA also offers a Full HD screen, but at only a $700 price point, while the Razer Blade Stealth features a QHD display (2,560-by-1,440 resolution).

There's a 256GB solid-state drive on board for storage, which is pretty standard for this category. The ZenBook matches this amount, as does the Blade Stealth, while the 13-inch MacBook Air only offers 128GB of flash storage in its base configuration. Even more expensive ultraportables like the LG gram 14 and the Dell XPS 13 Touch also offer 256GB.

Despite the slim build, port selection is strong here. On the left side, there's the power jack, a USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port, and a USB-C port. On the right, you get a USB 2.0 port, another USB 3.0 port, an audio jack, and a microSD slot. The 720p webcam is located on the hinge under the screen, rather than above the display, which is becoming more common as manufacturers produce thinner bezels not thick enough to house webcams. The system features dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi with Bluetooth 4.0, and is covered by a one-year warranty.

Performance
Equipped with a 2.3GHz i5-6200U processor, 8GB of memory, and integrated Intel HD Graphics 520, performance doesn't suffer given the LG gram 15's build. On the PCMark 8 Work Conventional productivity test, the laptop scored 2,826 points. This is ahead of the Blade Stealth (2,764 points) and the ZenBook UX305CA (2,496), so it's a pretty good performer for daily operations and multitasking (the MacBook was unable to run these Windows-based tests). And to make things feel speedy, LG also includes a feature called Instant Boot, which lives up to its name. Even when turning the system on from a completely powered-off state, it was up and running in a matter of seconds.

The gram 15 fared pretty well on multimedia tests, too, finishing the Handbrake encoding test in 2 minutes 35 seconds, the Photoshop test in 5:07, and scoring 283 points on CineBench. Unlike the PCMark test, the Blade Stealth had the gram 15 beat all around, finishing each test a bit faster and scoring higher on CineBench, but the ZenBook was still slower. 

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Given the integrated graphics, and as with the comparable systems, 3D performance is not a strong point. The gram 15 scored 4,505 points on the 3DMark Cloud Gate test and 288 points on the more demanding 3DMark FireStrike Extreme. The Blade Stealth was notably higher (5,795 on CloudGate; 391 on Fire Strike Extreme), so it may be better suited to some 3D work, but heavy 3D processing is better left to systems with more powerful graphics. As for gaming, the gram and its competition can't reach a 30 frames per second (fps) frame rate on the Medium-quality settings Heaven and Valley gaming tests. That number is considered smoothly playable, so high-end graphics in new or demanding games is out of reach, with the gram 15 tapping out at 17fps on only Medium settings. Less visually intensive titles like Hearthstone or Minecraft can run at lower settings, though, if you want to do some casual gaming.

Battery life is crucial for ultraportables, and the gram 15 fares well in this regard, lasting 7 hours 55 minutes on our rundown test. This is slightly longer than the Blade Stealth (7:36), which is running a smaller, but more demanding display, and it finished behind the ZenBook (8:30). The MacBook Air holds the category-best result at 17:36.

Conclusion
The LG gram 15 is an incredibly light laptop with a top-notch 1080p display and good battery life. Its weight alone makes it noteworthy (I couldn't help but show it off around the office so my coworkers could marvel at its design), but it's also a good performer and offers solid connectivity. Build quality suffers as a result of aiming for such a low weight, as it did with the LG gram 14, but this system costs $1,100, not $1,400 like its smaller brother. The Razer Blade Stealth remains the Editors' Choice for midrange ultraportables due to its premium build, feature set, and higher resolution touch display, but the LG gram 15 is a pretty good bet if a super lightweight travel companion with a larger screen appeals to you.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.