2 days Ago By David Richards
LG Electronics previous Gram notebooks were expensive and lacked a touch screen when the initial models were launched in Australia, now the South Korean appliance and TV Company is having another crack at trying to make it in the notebook market by jumping on the AI notebook bandwagon. The Company who captures data on their customers and then sells it has announced a refresh to its Gram Pro lineup, as well as launched a budget-friendly Gram Book in an effort to grow sales. According to the latest IDC research LG is struggling with Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Apple and MSI all outselling LG in the notebook market.
Even retailers such as Harvey Norman and The Good Guys have dropped LG Notebooks which were retailing up to $3,594 for a 17-inch model. In an effort to compete with the likes of Microsoft Surface, Lenovo, Samsung and Qualcomm AI, LG has moved to spruik a cloud-based and on-device AI-feature, due in part to AI notebooks set to be in demand this year. The 16-inch Gram Pro is also using the Intel Lunar Lake Core Ultra V-Series processors.
The 17-inch Gram Pro and 16-inch 2-in-1 use Intel’s Arrow Lake Core Ultra H-Series processors. The screen only has 2,560 x 1,600 displays, up to 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, and up to 2TB Gen4 NVMe SSDs. The 16-inch Gram Pro and the 16-inch LG Gram Pro 2-in-1 will have Intel Arc GPUs, while the 17-inch Gram Pro will have an Nvidia GeForce RTX4050 graphics card.
LG management in Australia have not announced the cost of their new notebook offering. The move to AI comes as Samsung gains ground in the AI market with their 2025 TV to incorporate their home-grown AI offering along with their new 2025 appliances, Galaxy smartphones and tablets. LG who is not known for their AI initiatives appear to still be trying to sell their OLED display as a key point of difference despite Lenovo, HP and Dell also offering OLED displays in notebooks at significantly lower prices than the LG Gram, they also have touch screen models.
IDC Research claims that newer AI PCs such as Copilot+ PCs from Qualcomm along with Intel and AMD’s equivalent chips as well as Apple’s expected M4-based Macs are expected to drive the premium segment in coming months.” “While we expect AI to reach ubiquity at some point at the end of this decade, the ramp up towards mass market will take longer than expected, well into 2026,” states research vice president of devices and displays, Linn Huang. “The next year-and-change will be largely about developing software, use cases, and target audiences for this AI-enabled hardware.
” LG also appears to be trying to mimic the controversial Microsoft Recall feature with their own AI feature called Time Travel, which LG claims allows users to “easily revisit webpages, documents, videos, and audio files.” LG did not provide screenshots or videos of these AI features. In effort to try and compete in the notebook market, LG who is making more money selling data on consumers who use their products than they do manufacturing and selling notebooks has introduced the Gram Book which is a cheap “entry-level model.
” The only problem is the device is packed with older PC components and standards, it also only has a 16:9 aspect ratio screen with a 60Hz refresh rate, a 720p webcam, an Intel processor that’s at least two generations behind, and 8GB of RAM at the low end..
