LG Gram 17 (17Z90Q) Review

The Contradiction You Can Carry: LG Gram 17 (17Z90Q) Review

The world of laptops is a relentless exercise in compromise. Power costs you battery life. A big screen costs you portability. At least, that was the rule. For years, the LG Gram line has existed to defy that last convention, and the LG Gram 17 (17Z90Q) feels like the concept perfected. It presents a simple, almost absurd proposition: a sprawling 17-inch display in a body that weighs less than most 14-inch notebooks. It’s a machine that, on paper, shouldn’t exist, yet here it is, promising a no-compromise mobile workspace. But does this featherlight giant hold up to the demands of a power user?

Design: Engineering Over Aesthetics

Picking up the Gram 17 for the first time is a genuinely jarring experience. Your brain sees a large-footprint laptop and prepares for a certain heft that simply isn’t there. At just under 3 pounds (1.35 kg), it feels impossibly light. LG achieves this through a magnesium-alloy chassis that delivers impressive strength for its weight, backed by MIL-STD-810G durability testing. However, this is where the Gram’s most divisive trait appears. The material, while durable, lacks the dense, metallic rigidity of an aluminum unibody competitor. There is a noticeable flex on the lid and across the keyboard deck if you press down. It never feels fragile, but it does lack that premium, solid-block feel some users crave. The design itself is minimalist to a fault—a clean, dark gray slab with a simple “gram” logo. It’s professional and unassuming, designed to blend in rather than stand out.

Performance That Punches Its Weight

Tucked inside this impossibly thin frame is Intel’s 12th Gen Core i7-1260P processor, a significant leap forward that balances high-performance cores with efficiency cores. For everyday productivity—endless browser tabs, massive spreadsheets, video calls, and streaming—the 17Z90Q is an absolute powerhouse. It’s snappy, responsive, and handles complex multitasking without breaking a sweat.

The real game-changer for this model, however, is the optional NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2050 discrete GPU. While most ultrabooks rely on integrated graphics, this addition transforms the Gram 17 from a pure productivity machine into a capable creative companion. It’s not built for high-end AAA gaming, but it provides a crucial boost for photo editing in Lightroom, accelerating timelines in Premiere Pro, and handling light CAD work. The trade-off for this power in such a thin chassis is thermal management. Under sustained, heavy loads, the fans will spin up and you may see some performance throttling. This isn’t a mobile workstation for rendering 3D films, but for the bursty workloads typical of most professionals, it delivers beautifully.

The Main Attraction: That Glorious Screen

The performance is strong, but the display is the star. The 17-inch WQXGA (2560×1600) IPS panel is simply stunning. Its 16:10 aspect ratio provides a massive canvas for work, giving you significantly more vertical real estate than a traditional 16:9 screen. This is a dream for writers, programmers, and anyone who lives in spreadsheets. Colors are vibrant and accurate, covering 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut, and the anti-glare coating does an excellent job of taming reflections.

This massive screen is paired with a surprisingly comfortable keyboard that includes a full number pad—a rarity that finance and data-entry professionals will love. The key travel is a bit shallow, but the typing experience is otherwise solid. Below it sits a huge, precise trackpad that makes navigation a breeze. Topping it off is a fantastic port selection that shames most of the competition, offering two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A 3.2 ports, a full-size HDMI, a microSD card reader, and a headphone jack. This is a machine built for utility, not just minimalism.

The Verdict: A Master of Its Niche

The LG Gram 17 (17Z90Q) is an exceptional laptop, but it’s not for everyone. Its value proposition is laser-focused on a single, compelling idea: delivering the largest possible screen in the lightest possible package. If your priority is the rock-solid feel of machined aluminum or top-tier, sustained performance for heavy rendering, there are better-suited (and much heavier) options.

However, if you are a mobile professional, a student, or a creative who has always dreamed of having a desktop-sized screen without the associated back pain, this machine is in a class of its own. It’s for the user who values screen real estate and portability above all else. The addition of a capable 12th-gen Intel CPU and an optional discrete GPU finally gives this featherlight chassis the power it deserves, creating a uniquely versatile tool that redefines what a large-screen laptop can be.

Where to Buy:

Check it out on Amazon