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Tuesday, August 18, 2020

The Best Laptop Battery Life Yet? #Helpful Post


The Best Laptop Battery Life Yet? #Helpful Post

Hey guys, this is Austin.
And this laptop might have some of
the best battery life in the world.
So this is the Gram 13,
and big shout-out to LG for sponsoring this video.
So not only is this supposed to have good battery life,
but it's also a very lightweight laptop.
So that Gram name isn't just for show.
This guys weighs around a kilogram,
or just over two pounds.

So inside the box, we get the laptop itself,
with a very handy little g to pick it up.
Ooh!
That was meaty.
Wow, that is actually really weirdly light.
Continuing on, we actually have a lot of accessories.
Starting with a USB-C to Ethernet adapter?
Really?
So even though this is a 13 inch laptop,
it's actually almost closer
to an 11 inch laptop in footprint.
As I shall demonstrate with this totally random,
generic, no-name 11 inch laptop.
Man, I feel like I'm gonna keep saying this,
but this is so lightweight.
So what's cool is, even though,

it almost feels like it's plastic,
this is actually magnesium.
Or rather, it's a nano carbon magnesium alloy.
Ken made me put this on, by the way.
He thought it would be funny.
For such a thin laptop, there are actually
quite a few ports.
So on the left side, you'll find that there's
a charging port, USB-3, HDMI, as well as USB-C.
And if you flip it over, you'll find there's
one more USB-3 port, a headphone jack,
as well as a microSD card slot.
I just like doing this.
It's just so lightweight.
It feels like, I don't know,
it just feels like there's something missing.
But it's just a really lightweight laptop.
I think the build quality is actually something
that's really jumping out to me about the Gram.
So if you guys saw my friend What's Inside
when they took at look at the Gram,
they actually put this thing through a lot of abuse.
And LG claims they can handle something like
400 pounds of pressure without breaking.
The screen is flexible so it doesn't actually break.
It's, for something so lightweight,
more durable than you would think.
Inside, the Gram 13 is powered by a dual-core i5-7200U,
which is based on Kaby Lake,
so it's pretty much as new as it gets,
eight gigabytes of memory, as well as a 256 gigabyte SSD.

The speakers are interesting.
So they are kind of on the bottom,
but they actually project sideways.
So while they're maybe not quite as loud as I would like,
they actually don't sound that bad.
What's cool about having that full USB-C port,
is that with a single cable,
we can attach the Gram to a 4K monitor,
and not only are we going to get that 4K video signal,
we can also get charging to the laptop,
as well as extra data via the USB ports on the monitor.
So first impressions of the Gram are pretty solid.
But what I really want to put to the test,
is that battery life.

See ya, Jimmy.
- I'm gonna keep this for the weekend.
- So the first thing that jumps out to me
about using the Gram, especially as I travel,
is that weight.
So after using a giant laptop
for the last year and a half or so,
having something that's so light and so portable
actually does make a difference.
My bag feels like it weighs a lot less.
But of course, the biggest part of the Gram
is that battery life.
So, it has been nearly four days
since I took this off the charger,
and let's see what the battery life is like.
So, open it up here.
Right now we're at 48%.
That is not bad.
Now, I have not used this thing lightly.
So on top of being in standby for four days,
I watched about three hours of Netflix,
some YouTube, answered some emails, did some web browsing,
and this has absolutely held up.
Now I will say that you should turn battery saver on,
that definitely does give you a fair bit extra battery life.
But with a laptop like this, it kind of makes you
use it differently.
So I was able to use the Gram one-handed
with the touchscreen.
Mind you, it's not maybe the most comfortable way
of using a laptop in the world.
But having something that's so lightweight
with a touchscreen actually does work out pretty well.
Performance is pretty snappy.
So with that Kaby Lake Core i5 processor,
it easily handles any kind of basic usage,
and even more moderate stuff like Photoshop runs no problem.
Now you won't want to do a lot of heavy gaming,
or especially video editing on this guy,
but for pretty much 98% of what I do every day,
it's completely fine.
With a laptop like this, the inputs really do matter.
And I don't really have any complaints about the Gram.
So the keyboard itself is nicely spaced,
it has plenty of key travel, and as an upgrade
from the previous Gram, it's fully backlit this time.
The track pad is also pretty decent.
So my only slight complaint is that it's maybe
not quite as accurate as I'd like.
But for the most part it's completely fine.
And I ended up opting for the slightly upgraded
version of the Gram with the touchscreen,
which definitely makes a big difference.
I really do feel like Windows 10 laptops
should all have touchscreens at this point.
Speaking of, that screen is on-point.
So don't let that 1080p resolution fool you.
It really is more than enough for a 13 inch display,
especially when you consider that the high-resolution
screens usually do hurt battery life.
More importantly, it's got a really solid IPS panel,
so color, contrast, especially viewing angles are nice.
It gets reasonably bright, even when you're outside.
And because it has such thin bezels,
it makes the overall laptop size a lot smaller
than it otherwise would be.
The only issue with the small bezel,
is that it puts the webcam on the bottom of the screen,
which gives you a great view of the inside of your nose.
One cool part about upgrading to the touchscreen model
is that it does come with a fingerprint reader.
This is again something that I find I'm using
all the time on laptops.
It's so nice to be able to use Windows Hello
to drop your finger on the touch pad,
and immediately log in.
It is really nice to be able to take a laptop
on a full-weekend trip and not even think
about taking the power adapter.
So what do you guys think about the LG Gram?
Let me know in the comments below,
and I will catch you in the next one.


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