LG Gram 2-in-1 review: A convertible laptop with plenty to like

Convertible laptops usually come with more compromises than the LG Gram 2-in-1 does.

Despite having a 14-inch screen, the LG Gram 2-in-1 (model 14T990) is lighter than most 13-inch notebooks. It spares you the thick display bezels and performance drawbacks that often apply to laptops with 360-degree rotating screens. It doesn’t even suffer from weak battery life or limited ports.

These qualities literally come at a high price, though, with the LG Gram 2-in-1 retailing for $1,500. While that’s reasonable for a laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor and 512GB of storage, you can’t configure cheaper models by cutting back on storage or CPU speeds.

There are a few design drawbacks. The keyboard runs shallow, and the speakers are some of the worst you’ll find on a high-end laptop. If you can look past those shortcomings, the LG Gram 2-in-1 provides a great combination of screen size, portability, and battery life that just may be worth the premium price.

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best laptops. Go to that story for information on comepeting products and how we tested.  

LG Gram 2-in-1: Price, specs, ports

As of now, LG offers only one version of the Gram 2-in-1, with an Intel Core i7-8565U processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 512GB solid state drive, and a 14-inch 1080p display. A fingerprint reader is embedded in the power button, and the webcam is a standard 720p resolution with no Windows Hello face recognition.

Jared Newman / IDG

For inputs and outputs, the LG Gram 2-in-1 has two USB-A ports (one on each side). There’s also a single USB-C port, and it’s not Thunderbolt 3-compatible. Although you can use USB-C for charging, the Gram ships with a proprietary charger, which isn’t as nice as having a pair of USB-C ports and a universal charger. On the plus side, the Gram has a full-sized HDMI output, MicroSD card…