The new LG gram SuperSlim 15.6" is beautifully crafted but comes at a price

LG’s Gram SuperSlim laptop is exactly what it says it is; light and thin. Unfortunately, its size and weight are what sets it apart rather than its performance. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on whether you value portability more than performance. The laptop is firmly competing against the likes of the 15.3-inch Apple MacBook Air and it has the price tag to show that. Alongside its minimal weight and great OLED screen, the laptop’s battery life delivers great performance.

We took this LG laptop for a spin, using it for graphic design tasks, photo-editing and everyday office tasks. Find our favourite laptops for graphic design tasks, photo-editing and everyday office tasks to help you choose which laptop is best for you. Scroll down for our full LG gram SuperSlim review alongside a range of benchmarks to judge its performance.

LG gram SuperSlim 15.6" review: Key specs

LG gram SuperSlim 15.6" review: Design and display

The LG gram SuperSlim is, you guessed it, light and thin. Its 10.9mm paper-thin size makes it only ever so slightly thinner than the MacBook Air, arguably its biggest competitor. The spec it has managed to significantly surpass the Air, is in the weight category, weighing in at only 990g, a full 520g lighter. When I first picked it up out of the box I nearly threw it up at the ceiling, not realising my own strength. I don’t know how LG has managed it but they have. This is even more impressive considering they’ve managed to fit a modestly performing full high-definition webcam in there.

The upside of these specs is that it is immensely portable. Creatives with no fixed abode will have no problem travelling around with it, even wondering if it's in their bag at times. The downside is that it does feel a little flimsy. I had to be really careful with moving it around my office and into my bag. The screen also visibly ‘twists’ if put under even a little bit of pressure. If I had the laptop for any length of time then I would fear that I would break the screen away from the main laptop or damage the display itself. This device is better suited to being left on a desk but then it loses its greatest benefit.

The display is a full 15.6 inches which is great for working both at home and out and about. The display looks good, with vibrant colours, thanks to its OLED AGLR technology. Its brightness makes working even in bright conditions possible. This quality display is perfect for almost every type of user including gamers, designers and 3D creators. The resolution is 1920x1080 and 16:9 aspect ratio which is a little disappointing. The MacBook Air boasts  2880x1864 which is significantly greater and delivers better results.

Moving away from the display, if you’re after great audio then you’ll have to look elsewhere. The pair of 2-watt speakers produce exactly what you don’t want, tinny sound. There is little depth or bass to the sound so you’ll want to plug in separate speakers or headphones for better output. This could have been overcome by inserting quad speakers but LG has made cuts to design and performance in search of the ridiculously light and thin build.

LG gram SuperSlim 15.6" review: Features

The LG gram SuperSlim comes with an incredible OLED display that has an anti-glare low reflection (AGLR) panel. The display is one of the highlights of an otherwise mediocre-performing laptop, especially in the graphics department. It produces incredible clarity, contrast and brightness even in some of the most demanding of situations. Other than the aforementioned resolution (1920x1080px), I have no issues with the display.

At the top of this beautiful display is an HD webcam and a face scanner – two big positives for any worker nowadays. The face scanner means users can get access to their device quickly without having to worry about passwords. This was performed without issue during testing. The HD webcam delivers average results but is likely to be sufficient for those who only want to use it for video calls. The camera really struggled with high-contrast environments and blowing out any highlights. The colour replication isn’t too bad but skin tones are most definitely on the red side.

The Gram SuperSlim only offers USB Type-C connectivity. It does this with one charging port and two Thunderbolt 4 and USB Type-C ports. They really have gone minimalist on this front and I’m not a fan. Creatives will have to invest in a hub or docking station to maximise connectivity, which considering the price of the laptop is an unwelcome cost.

LG gram SuperSlim 15.6" review: Performance

During the Cinebench 2024 benchmark tests, the LG gram SuperSlim performed pretty averagely. Its single-core score came in at 95 and its multi-core score at 302. For the single core this is very similar to the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-core 16 threads at 3.8GHz. The multi-core test of this competitor performed nearly three times better than the LG though. Most notably, it doesn’t even perform as well as the M1 chip that has 8 cores at 2.5GHz. This is shown to be true during GeekBench 6 tests where the LG scored 2242 for the CPU single-core and 10,183 for the CPU multi-core. This is comparable to the Apple M1 chip but not as good as the latest M2 chip.

The integrated graphics card didn’t match the minimum requirements for the Cinebench GPU test. The GPU OpenCL score came in at 16,181. This machine won’t deliver if you’re a 3D artist or needing a significant amount of power for processing tasks.

During our Handbrake test, the LG gram SuperSlim transcoded a 10-minute 34-second 4K video to 1080p in 9 minutes and 30 seconds. The ASUS TUF Gaming F15 carried out the same test in less than half the time, 4 minutes and 30 seconds, while the Acer Aspire 5 did it in 15 minutes 15 seconds. The LG is a mid-performance laptop that lacks the power to excel in any of the mode demanding disciplines such as gaming, graphic design and 3D rendering.

LG gram SuperSlim 15.6" review: Battery life

The LG gram SuperSlim boasts a 60Wh high-capacity battery which produces over 10 hours of YouTube playback and totals around 15 hours total battery life when performing low-intensity tasks such as web browsing and web apps. This is great news for mobile creatives who don’t want the hassle of taking their battery around everywhere with them.

LG gram SuperSlim 15.6" review: Price

The LG gram SuperSlim retails at £1,799.98 but is discounted to £1,399.97 at the time of writing. The discount brings it to the exact price of the MacBook Air 15-inch and the Dell XPS 15 – SuperSlim’s two main competitors.

Should I buy the LG gram SuperSlim 15.6"?

The LG gram SuperSlim has a lot to commend it. I really like the size, weight and display. It’s super portable and the 15.6-inch display does an incredible job of colour replication and delivering the required brightness in bright spaces. The battery life is also great which makes this device perfect for creatives requiring portability. Unfortunately, there is a significant lack of processing power and no dedicated graphics card to make it usable for designers needing that extra power.

The two biggest competitors for the SuperSlim are the Dell XPS 15 and the 15-inch MacBook Air. In our review of the MacBook Air we find it to offer incredible performance with the ultra-fast M2 chip and a bigger, beautiful display. The Air has it all, and considering the price, it’s hard to find a reason to choose the SuperSlim over the Air.

If weight and portability are at the top of your list, and you don’t mind sacrificing some performance then this laptop will serve you well.