LG Gram Style hands-on at CES 2023: An iridescent 16-inch laptop with a disappearing trackpad

Of all the new LG Gram laptops unveiled at CES 2023, the Gram Style is the most eye-catching. It features an iridescent finish on the lid and keyboard deck that, even under the garish convention center lights here in Las Vegas, managed to look pretty. Like the rest of the Gram line, the Style is an impressively thin and light laptop for its size, with the 16-inch model coming in at 1.2kg (2.7 pounds). In fact, it's so light that the bicep curls and front raises I did using the laptop didn't feel like any work at all (weird flex, I know).

Video transcript

CHERLYNN LOW: At CES 2023, LG is updating its Gram line of super thin and light laptops by not only just bumping them up to the latest Intel processors or giving them the specs bumps, it's also introducing new size variants, as well a new model altogether-- the LG Gram Style.

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And here at CES Unveiled, I took the 16-inch LG Gram Style out for a little spin. And this is, after all, one of the lightest laptops of this size around.

As a testament to how little this 16-inch notebook weighs, I was able to just do dumbbell front raises with the laptops and really just feel nothing. This didn't feel like a workout at all.

But, of course, a previous concern of the LG Gram laptops is that their build quality leaves a lot to be desired. And as I was lifting the 16-incher up, I definitely felt like the hinge and some parts of the frame were flexing just a little bit under my grip.

Now, with Style in its name, the new model or the new variant of the LG Gram line basically is a very eye-catching device. It's got an iridescent finish on the lid and on the keyboard deck. And it's got sort of a so-called hidden trackpad. It's really a disappearing trackpad, right? The whole expanse below the keyboard is-- it looks plain. It looks like there's no trackpad there. But when you drag your finger across it, and when you activate the trackpad area, lights come up to show you the outline of where the trackpad actually is.

And in terms of the tactile experience, there's no real sensation to tell you if there is actually a different area on that board to indicate where the trackpad is. That might not be great for anyone that doesn't rely on vision to tell where the trackpad is on their computers, so we'll have to see how this fares. But I will say that the effect of the iridescent finish in person is very pretty. This is also the first Gram laptop to use a glass design, and it surprisingly still remains very lightweight.

The Gram style also has anti-glare OLED screens that are not touch sensitive, and the 16-inch model specifically runs at 3200 by 2000 and has a 120 Hertz refresh rate. It also comes with Intel's 13th Generation Raptor Lake chips, as well as options for 256, 512 gig, or 1 terabyte SSDs.

They also come with support for LG's privacy guard feature, but we weren't able to see this feature in person-- something we'll have to just test out on our own. But based on previous experience, this was kind of a finicky software feature.

We don't yet know the price of the LG Gram Style or any of the new Gram laptops, because LG hasn't announced them yet. But the devices will launch globally in February. The company did also say that US pricing and availability will be announced later.

So for more news out of CES 2023, make sure to subscribe to Engadget.

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