LG Gram 14 Laptop Launched at CES 2017; Claimed to Give 24 Hours of Battery Life

LG has launched its new Gram 14 laptop at CES 2017 and the device has already attracted a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons. The South Korean company claimed at the launch that the new Gram 14 laptop offers a battery life of around 24 hours, which was not only a significant improvement over predecessor but an unprecedented claim overall. However, the benchmark test used by the company for this claim has turned out to be a 10-year old measurement tool.

As CNET points out, the MobileMark 2007 benchmark tool used by LG already faced criticism around eight years ago. The tool's results presume that users will be using the laptop without Wi-Fi and set the screen brightness to a very low level, as per the report. Considering that the requirements have changed drastically over the years, the LG Gram 14 is extremely unlikely to last even 20 hours with latest benchmark tools.

LG's new Gram 14 laptop weighs around 980 grams, exactly the same as its predecessor, but now comes with a touchscreen variant. The laptop features a 14-inch full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) IPS display and is powered by Intel's latest Kaby Lake processors. It comes with up to 16GB of RAM and houses up to 512GB of SSD storage. In terms of connectivity, it features two USB 3.0 ports, a USB type-C port, a microSD card slot, an HDMI port, and Wi-Fi 802.11ac. The laptop is claimed to feature fast charging and comes with a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello support.

Even though the claim made by the company might not hold in real-world usage, it is safe to assume that it will still offer a much better battery life than its predecessor. In fact, a more recent MobileMark benchmark tool for 2014 says that the battery on the LG Gram 14 will be able to last for around 17 hours, as per a report by The Verge. LG says that it was able to improve the battery life by weight loss in its material design, thanks to use of carbon magnesium alloy, and a new display technology that allows for the new 60Whr battery to truly shine, as per the report.

The new Gram 14 laptop has been priced by the company at KRW 1,420,000 (roughly Rs. 80,900) in South Korea, but LG has kept mum on the details for pricing and availability outside its home country. It will be made available in Snow White and Metal Pink colours.