LG Gram SuperSlim review: One of the thinnest, lightest, premium laptops ever

Ever since I laid my hands on my first LG Gram laptop, I’ve been a fan. These incredibly lightweight laptops wow me every time I pick them up, not only because of their size but also their solid performance and great displays. The brand-new LG Gram SuperSlim builds on this legacy, and it brings two major improvements.

First, it’s the thinnest laptop LG has made. While they’ve always been super light, thinness hasn’t usually been a priority for LG. This is a truly thin laptop that’s easy to take anywhere. It’s also one of the first Gram laptops with an OLED display, and that alone makes it exciting. Top it off with the newest 13th-generation Intel processors and other high-end specs, and you have something special here.

There are some downsides, though, like how it still has a 16:9 display in an age where basically every premium laptop is using at least 16:10 panels. Plus, the keyboard isn’t anything to write (or type) home about. It’s also too expensive for what it offers.

LG Gram SuperSlim: Pricing and availability

The LG Gram SuperSlim was first announced along with the rest of the Gram lineup for 2023. It was initially called LG Gram Ultraslim, but when it launched in late April, it came with new branding. It’s now available from LG directly, as well as other retailers such as Amazon and B&H. There’s also a Best Buy listing that isn’t functional just yet.

Pricing for the LG Gram SuperSlim starts at $1,700, which makes this a pretty expensive laptop and one that has a lot to prove to be worth the asking price. The unit I got is a higher-end configuration with 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, and it goes for $2,000. It comes in one color, called Neptune Blue, which looks like dark gray. It does have a subtle blue hue to it, which becomes more apparent depending on the lighting and the viewing angle.

Design: Crazy light, and now crazy thin

The LG Gram lineup has always been known for being extremely light thanks to the magnesium alloy chassis the company has been using for years. Magnesium is great because it delivers the same durability as aluminum while being much thinner, and it’s a very effective way to shave off some weight. That does come with a downside in that magnesium doesn’t feel as sturdy as aluminum. It feels a lot like plastic, and that holds true with the Gram SuperSlim, even if it still meets MIL-STD-810H standards for durability. That being said, I wouldn’t say it feels overly cheap, just unexceptional.

Despite being very light, LG Gram laptops haven’t been known for being thin, and that’s changed with the Gram SuperSlim. It comes in at a mere 0.43 inches, or under 11mm, of thickness (in comparison, the standard LG Gram 15 is 17.5mm thick), making it the thinnest laptop LG has ever made, and one of the thinnest laptops in general.

In terms of the actual weight, the LG Gram SuperSlim comes in at just 2.18 pounds, which is super light for a 15-inch laptop. The Gram 15 weighs 2.51 pounds, and that’s already very light for that size.

One notable sacrifice that comes with this kind of thin design is the ports. I’m the kind of person that still appreciates having USB Type-A ports on a laptop, but LG has completely forgone this. The Gram SuperSlim has two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side of the laptop, and a USB4 40Gbps port without Thunderbolt certification on the right. The right side also includes a headphone jack.

LG does include an adapter in the box that transforms a USB-C port into RJ45 Ethernet, which I find interesting. It’s not the first port I find myself wanting, but I appreciate any extras.

Keyboard and touchpad: Fine, but not exceptional

One area where the LG Gram SuperSlim falls a little flat is the keyboard. I don’t think it’s terrible, but I do notice it’s a distinct downgrade from Lenovo laptops, which have some of my favorite keyboards. The keys don’t have a lot of tension or travel, so they don’t feel super comfortable to type on. I’ve gotten used to it as I’ve spent more time with it, so in the end, it was serviceable. It’s just not a top-tier laptop keyboard like what you’d get with HP or Lenovo.

LG also opted to use a nearly full-size layout, including a number pad and arrow keys in an inverted T layout. I always appreciate having those things on a laptop, especially since they’ve become so rare.

My feelings are a bit more positive on the touchpad. It’s a comfortable size, and my fingers glide across it pretty smoothly My main complaint is that it could have been a lot bigger considering how much space there is around it. I haven’t found it to be cramped, but bigger is generally better.

One thing I’d like to shout out is that the touchpad is centered on the laptop, rather than being aligned to the spacebar. A lot of laptops that have number pads push the touchpad to the side so that it aligns at the center of the spacebar on the keyboard, and it can take some getting used to. I prefer this approach.

Display: The LG Gram SuperSlim finally gives us OLED

LG has always packed good displays into its Gram laptops, usually touting 99% coverage of DCI-P3. But with the Gram SuperSlim, the company is bringing OLED to the lineup, and it’s a more than welcome addition. However, this is a 15.6-inch panel with Full HD resolution (1920×1080), which is one aspect that’s kind of disappointing. Personally, I find Full HD to still be more than sharp enough for most use cases at this size, but the option for Quad HD would’ve been great, especially considering this laptop’s expensive price tag.

That being said, the display looks great as it is. OLED panels are self-emissive, which means each pixel has its own source of light. This allows the screen to produce more vibrant colors and true blacks since the light for each pixel can just be turned off on demand. Colors look fantastic on this display and all the images I’ve looked at are exceptionally vibrant.

Since it’s OLED, LG touts 100% coverage of DCI-P3, and based on my tests, it matches that. In fact, it covers 100% of sRGB and DCI-P3, and 97% of Adobe RGB, so it’s almost perfect. It’s easily the best display I’ve tested.

As for brightness and contrast, it goes up to 400 nits in SDR mode, which my tests corroborated. It actually exceeded it slightly. LG does mention VESA DisplayHDR 500 True Black certification, so in HDR mode, it should be able to hit 500 nits. That 13920:1 contrast ratio is also something you’ll only see in an OLED display, IPS panels can’t get anywhere close to that.

I did notice it took some getting used to reading on this display. There appears to be some sort of fringing around the edges of letters, which is a common phenomenon with many laptops with OLED panels due to a compatibility issue with Microsoft’s ClearType subpixel rendering technology for fonts. However, over time, I got used to it and didn’t notice it anymore. Some people are more susceptible to this kind of issue than others.

To help with that, LG also has a feature built into the Smart Assistant app that’s meant to make text clearer on OLED displays. This works by making dark parts of the image darker, thus enhancing the contrast, but it affects everything, and it makes the screen appear unnaturally dark, so I ended up turning it off. I found the screen to be just as easy to read.

One potentially unintended benefit of this feature is improved battery life since making the image darker means the pixels are being dimmed and using less power. I noticed a drop in battery life since disabling the feature.

Above that display is a 1080p webcam, which is nice to have for video calls. Of course, this won’t compete with an external webcam like the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra, but it’s a step up from the 720p cameras that used to be on every laptop. Plus, it supports Windows Hello facial recognition, and I will never not love that.

Performance: LG doesn’t let you make bad choices

One positive trend LG has been sticking to for its more recent laptops is not allowing consumers to make bad purchasing decisions. Sometimes you’ll see a premium laptop that starts with 8GB of RAM and maybe even a 128GB SSD. Heck, until the Surface Pro 8, Microsoft’s premium tablets started with a Core i3 processor, which is far from a premium experience.

LG doesn’t do that. The Gram SuperSlim exclusively (at least for now) comes with an Intel Core i7-1360P with 12 cores and 16 threads for great day-to-day performance. It also comes with at least 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. My model specifically comes with 32GB of RAM and a massive 2TB SSD. No matter what configuration you get, you’re getting premium-level performance, which is a smart decision.

That performance is mostly what you’d expect. The LG Gram SuperSlim has never really failed me, and I was able to push it pretty hard, running Photoshop and other (lighter) image editing software, sometimes while also being on a video call. When multitasking heavily across three displays, things can feel a bit jittery, but there’s only so much you can ask for. Looking at benchmarks, it performs fairly close to other 13th-generation laptops, except when running on battery in balanced mode.

Indeed, running PCMark 10 on battery power yielded much lower results compared to other laptops, even those with AMD processors, which are typically more affected by running on battery. Even more strange, I haven’t noticed a huge impact in real-life performance while on battery power, so this score seems like some kind of anomaly. LG tells me there’s no specific power management setting being applied that could justify this, so I’m not sure what could have caused it. The point is, real-life performance should be fine despite these scores.

As for battery life, it radically depends on your usage, as you’d probably expect. The best I got was 8 hours and 7 minutes on my first day with it, before I had installed a lot of my demanding programs (such as Photoshop) and made other changes to the setup. I still had the “Make OLED characters clearer” feature (mentioned in the display section) turned on. The least I got was 4 hours and 36 minutes, and that was with everything fully set up, the aforementioned feature disabled, and with a lot of video calls and some Photoshop use. As usual, brightness was set to 30%, battery saver was kicking in at 20% battery, and the power mode was set to Balanced for all tests.

I also ran my usual YouTube video playback test, with brightness and volume set at 50% and battery saver disabled. The LG Gram SuperSlim lasted 11 hours, 9 minutes, and 13 seconds.

Software: LG has a bunch of preinstalled apps

I don’t usually consider preinstalled software to be a big consideration with laptops because a lot of them come with similar tools that not everyone needs. However, there are a few things worth highlighting with the LG Gram SuperSlim.

The first is LG Glance by Mirametrix. It used to be very common in Lenovo laptops, but it seems like LG has taken that over in recent years. Glance uses your camera to detect when you’re looking at your PC or not in front of it, and it can respond accordingly. For example, if you look away from your screen, it can blur its contents, so other people next to you can’t catch you off guard and look at what you’re doing. It can also use this to play and pause media playback automatically, among other things.

Another app that comes preinstalled is PCmover Professional, which is supposed to make it easier to move files and apps from your old PC to your new one. You can use a wireless or wired connection for the transfer, but you can also create a transfer file or hard drive to move your files over in a more traditional way.

There’s also LG Security Guard, another app meant to protect your computer from prying eyes while you’re away from it, as well as LG Smart Assistant, which lets you tweak various settings, such as USB-C always-on charging, display color settings (including the feature to improve readability on OLED panels I mentioned before), and so on.

I generally prefer less software to be included with a laptop, and it definitely feels like some of the features across these different apps serve similar purposes, but it’s not a big deal.

Should you buy the LG Gram SuperSlim?

You should buy the LG Gram SuperSlim if:

• You want an extremely thin, light laptop that still has a large display
• You’re looking for a great screen for watching movies and videos
• Your work mostly requires reading, researching, and typing

You should NOT buy the LG Gram SuperSlim if:

• You don’t need the lightest laptop around
• You need top-tier performance for video editing and content creation
• You can spend a little extra on the Gram Style

​​​​​​​I’m constantly blown away by how thin and light the LG Gram SuperSlim manages to be, and I love how easy it is to carry around. The OLED display also looks fantastic no matter what I’m doing, and the performance is great overall. Battery life is also solid considering how hard I’ve pushed it. However, I think it’s hard to justify the price tag LG has put on it.

At $1,700, getting a Full HD 60Hz display with a 16:9 aspect ratio feels very out of touch, and it’s a weird choice even in LG’s own lineup. You can spend just $100 more to get a 16-inch 16:10 display with 3200×2000 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate with the LG Gram Style. You’ll be giving up some portability, but it’s still far from a heavy laptop.

The LG Gram SuperSlim ends up in a somewhat awkward position within LG’s lineup, but that’s not to say it’s a bad laptop. It brings a lot of benefits, and if portability is your number one priority, it’s a fantastic choice. It takes up the mantle of last year’s Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro, seeing as that company decided to forgo the lightweight design with its 2023 laptops.