They’ve been around but convertible or 2-in-1 laptops aren’t popular today because they’re usually bulky and heavy. One exception is the new LG gram Pro 2in1 16, which packs in a large 16-inch touchscreen without the heft.
Part of LG’s latest slim-and-light laptop range called gram, it weighs just under 1.4kg. This is only slightly more than many much smaller 13-inch laptops, which usually tip the scales at just over 1kg.
In the hand, the new LG laptop’s slim 12.4mm chassis also makes it feel easy to carry around, much like a large but skinny file you might carry between meetings. Unsurprisingly, LG advertises the gram Pro 2in1 16 as the world’s lightest in its class.
It certainly wins on first impressions. The surface is largely fingerprint-free and offers a slight bit of friction (so the laptop doesn’t slip from your grasp). The bezels on the screen are not the slimmest around but they are slim enough to avoid being clunky, in keeping with the svelte design.
Okay, it’s obvious why you’d like a large 16-inch screen. With it, you can fire up two windows side by side and do your work more productively. You can also use the bigger screen with (a pretty high 2,880 x 1,800 resolution) to display a large, complex Excel spreadsheet.
Why go for a 2-in-1, though? Though it might feel a little unwieldy to flip a large 16-inch laptop screen over into “tent” mode for use as a tablet, the LG laptop offers a great OLED display for watching movies, editing photos or exploring maps.
In either mode, you get the large display without the weight penalty you’d usually associate with larger laptops. What also works for the LG laptop is a display that supports variable refresh rates from 48Hz to 120Hz.
This means you get smooth, sharp motion when you move your mouse around or play fast-paced games but the settings can be automatically dialled down to save power when the screen is showing static text, for example.
I also like it that LG has included a stylus with the laptop. Though not as fancy as an Apple stylus when it comes to drawing beautiful pictures, the pen is useful when you wish to take notes, say, in Microsoft OneNote.
It also handily snaps onto the side to get juiced up. Just remember to stow it away in case you accidentally drop it while moving the laptop around.
What about performance? In the engine room, the LG gram Pro 2in1 16 packs the latest Intel Core Ultra 7 255H chip, which is part of the new Arrow Lake-H family processors aimed at high performance for laptops. Also in the laptop are an ample 32GB of DDR5 memory and 1TB of solid-state storage.
For everyday tasks, the LG machine did well in our tests, like other laptops packing the Intel Arrow Lake-H chips. You can expect this to run your common office productivity tasks without a glitch for a good few years.
With the Geekbench benchmark test, the LG gram Pro 2in1 16 scored 2,741 for single-core performance and 15,520 for multi-core performance.
These numbers are close to an MSI laptop with a faster Core 9 Ultra chip that I had tested just two months ago. This means the LG machine performs well with its processor.
With the PCMark 10, a test that simulates everyday tasks like video calls and office productivity, the LG machine came back with a score of 7,433. Surprisingly, this is slightly higher than the MSI laptop with a faster processor. Again, it’s good from the LG laptop.
What about AI tasks such as generating images or summarising meetings, which people expect their laptops to do more of now?
Notably, the LG gram Pro 2in1 16’s Intel processor doesn’t have a neural processor that is beefy enough to run Microsoft’s Windows Copilot+ AI features. That said, it’s no slouch in real-world tests on AI performance.
Running the Geekbench AI benchmark test, which measures performance in tasks such as image recognition and text classification, the LG machine came back with good results.
Using the OpenVino AI framework that favours Intel chips, the LG laptop’s CPU performed well in Geekbench AI. It recorded 4,466 for single-precision score, 3,685 for half-precision score and 10,641 for quantised score.
Even when using another AI framework (ONNX), the LG gram Pro 2in1 16 did well, coming back with 4,284 for single-precision score, 1,657 for half-precision score and 7,192 for quantised score.
In most of these instances with different AI frameworks, the LG laptop scored better than the MSI laptop with a faster Intel CPU, which shows its AI capabilities are no slouch.
What about the occasional game you want to fire up? This isn’t a gaming machine but the built-in graphics should do a decent job here, as long as you don’t crank up the graphics to the max.
With 3DMark, which simulates many of today’s games, the LG gram Pro 2in1 16 scored 4,146 for the Time Spy subtest. This is slightly lower than on the MSI laptop, though typically ahead of thin-and-light portable PCs.
When it comes to usability, having a large chassis has its benefits. The keys on the keyboard are nicely spaced out, though the key travel is still somewhat shallow. You also get a number pad – good news if you use that.
What I must commend LG for is the quiet operation. Here, the larger space lets it squeeze in two cooling fans instead of one and the result is low noise even when things spin up to run demanding tasks.
The bottom of the metal chassis also feels pretty cool to touch because the heat dissipates more effectively over a larger surface. Yes, you can place this laptop on your lap without worrying.
Speaking of space, I also like the full-sized ports on either side of the laptop. The HDMI and USB-A ports, along with two small USB-C ports, are handy if you have different devices to plug in.
On the whole, there’s really little to complain about. The LG gram Pro 2in1 16 is a well designed and powerful large-screen 2-in-1 laptop that offers the flexibility of a tablet without the heft.
It’s not cheap at S$3,499 in Singapore, but it does pack in a lot for that price. If you do more than fire e-mails on the road and want a large screen for tasks like Excel or photo editing, the LG gram Pro 2in1 16, or possibly its regular laptop variant, is something worth considering.
