LG takes on Apple’s Macbook Air with super light Gram Series

LG is known for lots of good things — chief among them being televisions and wonderful G-series smartphones. Laptops? Not so much. But now LG is trying to entice us with its new Windows 10-equipped laptops, called the LG Gram Series.

While this series has been around outside the US before, it’s the first time LG is formally selling inside the US. And as a bonus, it’s coming as a Microsoft 'Signature Series' meaning no bloat whatsoever — just pure Windows 10. But the name also refers to its amazing light weight at just over two pounds, which is even lighter than the smallest Macbook Air.

To achieve that minuscule amount of weight, LG had to make a few design sacrifices, the biggest being the plastic shell all the hardware is incased in. After the shock of how light this laptop is fades away, you then start to notice the creaking plastic — from the keyboard to the screen bezel — and a few other missing features, like a backlit keyboard or SD card reader. LG may not be known for laptops but their displays are some of the best in the world and that's true with the Gram series. The 1080p IPS LCD looks stunning on this laptop, even significantly better than Macbook Air's Retina displays. The Gram also has the other laptop accoutrements like an HDMI output, microSD card reader, a microUSB port and two USB 3.0 ports.

Although Apple's Macbook and LG's Gram laptops differ in many ways, on price they're pretty similar. For the 13-inch model, you're looking at an Intel Core i5 processor, 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM for $900. The supersized 14-inch model comes in anywhere from $1,000-$1,400, whether you choose 128GB/Core i5 or 256GB Core i7. The only downside with these impressive specs is that they're not the newly released Skylake processors but are instead Intel's 5th generation Broadwell chips.

But overall, the LG Gram laptops feel like a pure travel machine, something ultra light that's also ultra capable to handle most tasks within its reported seven-and-ahalf hours of battery life.