LG is no stranger to crashing through expectations around laptop weight at a given screen size. (Its LG Gram 17, at just under 3 pounds for a 17-inch laptop, is eternally mind-blowing.) With its CES 2023 efforts, though, tack on another cool outlier: the 2023 LG Gram Ultraslim. We were able to go hands-on with that and another slick LG Gram laptop at the show in Las Vegas.
The Skinny On LG's Ultraslim
This laptop, based on the latest 13th Gen Core ("Raptor Lake") laptop chips, essentially feels like a pad of paper. At 2.2 pounds, it makes even a MacBook Air feel a bit portly. The thing is, though, a 13-inch MacBook Air is far from being a 15.6-inch-screen laptop; LG's model is one, however.
At its thickest point, the Ultra-Slim measures just a few whiskers shy of 0.5 inch thick, which puts it among the very thinnest machines, period, that you can buy. (It tapers to 0.43 inch at its thinnest point.) The thickest bits are along the edges, where the laptop hosts its ports. (The only ones you get are USB Type-C, not Type-A, but that's a near-given nowadays in the thinnest machines.) The unit can be equipped with up to 1TB of SSD storage and 32GB of RAM.
I held the machine (even tossed it a bit, as you can see in the video above), and the sheer lightness is hard to overstate. The thing is, at a lesser screen size it would still be impressive, but at 15.6 inches, it's downright uncanny. Adding to that feeling is that the chassis doesn't exhibit any plasticky flex; you'd expect it to feel cheap, and it doesn't.
That's not all that boggled my mind about this machine: The panel is OLED, too. Now, granted, it's a 1080p screen, which is merely "meh" for the 15.6-inch size. But it looks great, and given the brilliant nature of the screen and the easy carry weight, this just became something like the perfect trade-show laptop. (Disclosure: Being at CES myself as I write this, and carrying around a much heavier 15-incher that shall remain nameless, I may be biased.) In a scenario like that, or any one in which you need to haul your machine around all day, conscious of its weight, the Gram Ultraslim won't mandate a sacrifice in screen size or having to put up with a cramped keyboard. Bravo, LG.
Also Meet the LG Gram Style
The Style is a different animal than the Ultraslim. Fashioned to be more of a machine for strenuous productivity work or light content creation, it's not the super-thin wisp that the other model is. This machine is more about finish and outside design.
The lower half of the keyboard deck is a sheer strip of a pearlescent material that looks like a plain expanse. Run a finger over it with the laptop powered up, though, and the outlines of the laptop's touchpad appear, showing the active area. The come-and-go touch pad also employs a haptic-feedback system that gives you an idea of when you've clicked.
The lid also gets the pearly treatment, and under the right light, you can see the sheen and how it changes as you tilt the chassis.
The Gram Style is also getting 13th Gen Core processors. I got to look at the 16-inch-panel version, and LG will also offer a 14-inch version. While this model has the striking coating that sets it apart from the rest of the Gram line, if you're more of a laptop-color purist, know that LG is also refreshing its existing line of classic-clamshell 14-inch, 15-inch, 16-inch, and 17-inch Grams with 13th Gen Core chips, along with two sizes of its Gram 2-in-1 convertible.
Pricing had not yet been shared with us for the Ultraslim and Style when we posted this, but the laptops should debut worldwide in February with US availability coming later. Stay tuned for reviews of both units as samples come online.