MacBook Professional vs LG Gram 17

AppleInsider might earn an affiliate fee on purchases made by way of hyperlinks on our website.

The 2023 Gram 17 began delivery on February 1, although LG introduced the brand new pc in January at CES 2023. It contains the most recent applied sciences, resembling an Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia GPU.

The brand new 16-inch MacBook Professional mannequin was unveiled on January 17 and went on sale on January 24. It contains most of the identical options because the earlier mannequin with a couple of noticeable adjustments — most notably the brand new M-series processors and an upgraded HDMI connector. Additionally, battery life was prolonged by an hour.

Whereas comparable in measurement, the first variations between the LG Gram 17 and the up to date MacBook Professional lay inside with the CPU, GPU, and sound system. The MacBook Professional is healthier in some methods, however there are particular audiences which will find yourself wanting on the LG Gram.

Right here is how the 2 notebooks stack up in opposition to one another.

The casing of every MacBook Professional is made completely of recyclable aluminum, and all the magnets are product of uncommon earth metals. Many elements make use of 35% or extra recycled plastic, whereas the principle logic board makes use of 100% recycled tin for soldering.

At 14.01 inches by 9.77 inches by 0.66 inches, the MacBook Professional weighs 4.7 kilos or 4.8 kilos with an M2 Professional or M2 Max chip, respectively. The LG Gram is lighter at 3.2 kilos and comparable in measurement at 14.91 inches by 10.19 inches and 0.7 inches.

The LG Gram as a wedge-shaped design

LG makes use of a magnesium alloy materials for the pocket book’s physique, although it does not point out if they’ve recycled supplies. It has a wedge-shaped design that’s typical of “ultrabooks,” a time period used to explain ultra-thin, high-end notebooks.

LG additionally has a variation of the Gram, 17Z90R-Okay.ADS9U1, weighing 2.98 kilos. Different variations on this mannequin embrace built-in graphics, a battery with decrease watt-hours, and lower-wattage audio system.

The display screen on the MacBook Professional is provided with mini LED Liquid Retina XDR know-how with a decision of three,456 by 2,234 pixels and a pixel density of 254 pixels per inch. It allows professionals to make use of pre-set reference settings that management the show’s brightness, gamma, white level, and colour house.

MacBook Professional backlighting provides full-screen brightness sustained at 1,000 nits and peak HDR content material brightness of 1,600 nits. Its most SDR brightness is 500 nits, and the utmost distinction ratio is 1,000,000:1.

The mannequin’s show has ProMotion, which permits it to robotically modify its refresh charge to 120Hz or decrease ranges when energy conservation is required.

The display screen on the MacBook Professional additionally helps True Tone. This function robotically adjusts the show primarily based on ambient lighting circumstances to make sure that colours look the identical in numerous environments.

The MacBook Professional additionally has a notch within the top-center of the show, just like newer iPhones, that incorporates the webcam.

The 17-inch IPS LCD on the LG Gram comes at a 2,560 by 1,600 decision with a a lot decrease pixel density of 178ppi. It additionally has a typical brightness of 350 to 400 nits with a variable refresh charge of as much as 144Hz, and the bezels are uniform with out a notch.

The M2 Professional chip within the 16-inch MacBook Professional begins with 16GB of unified reminiscence, a 12-core CPU, and a 19-core GPU. Furthermore, it has a unified reminiscence bandwidth of 200GB/s, and consumers also can select an M2 Professional chip with 32GB of reminiscence.

It has 40 billion transistors with eight high-performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores. The extra highly effective M2 Max chip has 67 billion transistors.

With a 12-core CPU, the M2 Max has 400GB/s of unified reminiscence bandwidth and helps as much as 96GB of unified reminiscence. Apple’s 16-core, next-generation Neural Engine, which might carry out 15.8 trillion operations per second, is part of the M2 Professional and M2 Max.

M2 Professional helps hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, and ProRes video encoding and decoding. The M2 Max, as compared, has twice as many video encode engines and double as many ProRes engines because the M2 Professional.

The LG Gram 17 has a Thirteenth-gen Intel Core i7-1360P processor with twelve cores — 4 for efficiency and eight for effectivity. The efficiency cores run at 2.2GHz as much as 5.0GHz, whereas the effectivity cores are 1.6GHz as much as 3.7GHz.

A MacBook Professional with an M2 Professional chip has a Geekbench rating of two,638 for a single-core and 14,054 for multi-core efficiency. The M2 Max chip will increase that to a single-core efficiency of two,738 and 14,393 for multi-core.

In the meantime, the LG Gram trails behind — by rather a lot. It has a rating of 1,725 in single-core efficiency and eight,710 in multi-core.

Though all three chips have twelve cores, Apple has a transparent edge over Intel. Even the 2020 MacBook Air with an M1 chip beats the Intel GPU in single-core efficiency, though it trails barely behind in multi-core.

The GeForce RTX 3050 GPU comes with 4GB of GDDR6 reminiscence, second-generation ray tracing for higher graphics, an encoder constructed for stay streaming, and options powered by synthetic intelligence to boost voice and video options. It has 2,560 NVIDIA CUDA cores.

The M2 Professional chip on the 16-inch MacBook Professional in the meantime has a 19-core built-in GPU, and the M2 Max chip has two choices to decide on a GPU with 30 or 38 cores.

It is not simple to immediately evaluate a discrete GPU just like the GeForce in opposition to a system-on-a-chip like Apple Silicon. Nonetheless, Geekbench nonetheless lists OpenCL scores for every.

The RTX 3050 has a rating of 65,751, whereas the M2 Professional is at 46,118. Nonetheless, at the very least on paper, the M2 Max is the winner right here at 79,659.

The 17Z90R-Okay.ADS9U1 variant of the LG Gram 17 has built-in Intel Iris Xe graphics.

The 16-inch MacBook Professional has a 1080p webcam housed in a notch on the show, and the chips can improve the sharpness and video high quality.

The Full HD infrared webcam on the LG Gram 17 contains two microphones and 1080p decision. The webcam is able to facial recognition with LG Look, which makes use of superior face, eye, and gaze sensing from Mirametrix for enhanced safety.

In the meantime, as Apple’s Face ID facial recognition know-how has but to make its approach on the Mac, the corporate features a Contact ID fingerprint sensor on the keyboard.

The MacBook Professional has storage capacities of as much as 8TB, with configurations beginning at 512GB. The three LG Gram notebooks begin at 1TB of storage and maxes out at 2TB.

Three USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports with help for charging, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 as much as 40Gb/s are discovered on the MacBook Professional, whereas the LG Gram has two Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 ports with Energy Supply and DisplayPort, two USB-A 3.2, one HDMI, a Micro SD slot, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

One other port on the MacBook Professional — MagSafe 3 — permits for a magnetically-attached charging cable that may rapidly disconnect if somebody journeys over it.

Ports on the LG Gram

The MacBook Professional additionally connects with Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.3. Connectivity on the LG Gram contains Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax).

The LG Gram has a 90Wh battery which the firm says can last as long as 20 hours of video playback. The MacBook Professional has a comparable battery lifetime of as much as 22 hours, which Apple examined by enjoying HD 1080p content material within the Apple TV app with the show brightness set to eight clicks from the underside, although it may possibly range by use and settings.

Testing circumstances for the LG Gram’s battery concerned a show brightness of beneath 150 nits, a wireless-off setting, content material performed in Microsoft Films & TV, and headphones plugged in.

The MacBook Professional and LG Gram have backlit keyboards so customers can comfortably sort in low-light environments. They every additionally provide trackpads that help multi-touch gestures for managing apps and navigating by way of the working methods.

An array of three “studio-quality” mics with a excessive signal-to-noise ratio and directional beamforming to report audio is discovered on the MacBook Professional. It additionally boasts a force-canceling six-speaker high-fidelity audio system.

The audio system on the MacBook Professional helps vast stereo sound, spatial audio, and Dolby Atmos. Excessive-impedance headphones can be utilized with the three.5mm headphone jack, and the HDMI port helps multichannel audio output.

Audio on the LG Gram consists of two stereo audio system at 3W, although the 17Z90R-Okay.ADS9U1 variant has HD audio with Dolby Atmos Stereo, two audio system at 2W, and a Good Amp with a most of 5W.

The 16-inch 2023 MacBook Professional begins at $2,499 with a 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU on an M2 Professional. Prospects can improve to an M2 Max with a 12-core CPU and 30-core GPU for $200 additional or one with a 38-core GPU for $400, that is $200 extra once more than the 30-core GPU.

Relying in your chip alternative, the reminiscence upgrades out there to you may range. For a begin, the M2 Professional ships with 16GB of Unified Reminiscence, however going for 32GB prices an additional $400.

The M2 Max lineup begins at 32GB, with a $400 improve out there to succeed in 64GB. When you go for the highest M2 Max possibility, 96GB of reminiscence turns into out there as an $800 improve from the 32GB starter.

The MacBook Professional has extra choices for reminiscence and storage

The MacBook Professional prices $200 extra to improve its storage from 512GB to 1TB and one other $400 on high to increase it to 2TB. The associated fee will increase by $600 to go from 2TB to 4TB, and 8TB is $1,200 greater than 4TB.

LG sells the Gram 17 pocket book in three variants, beginning with a $1,999 mannequin (17Z90R-A.AAB7U1) that has 1TB of storage and 16GB of DDR5 RAM.

The opposite two are $2,099 (17Z90R-Okay.ADS9U1) and $2,299 (17Z90R-A.ADB9U1) which offer 32GB of DDR5 reminiscence and a 2TB SSD on every mannequin.

Selecting the costliest MacBook Professional that provides the highest {hardware} upgrades prices $6,499, which incorporates an M2 Max with twelve CPU cores and 38 GPU cores, 96GB of unified reminiscence, and an 8TB solid-state drive. The highest-tier LG Gram in the meantime offers an Intel i7 chip with twelve CPU cores, a 4GB Nvidia GPU, 32GB of reminiscence, and a 2TB SSD.

The LG Gram 17 is a perfect gaming laptop computer with Home windows, a big show, and a devoted GPU. However, Apple sometimes markets its notebooks for productiveness and creativity.

The MacBook Professional provides extra choices for storage and reminiscence, and the M2 Professional/Max chips handily outclass Intel’s providing on this case. Apple’s providing additionally has higher audio system that ship higher-quality audio.

Whereas the LG Gram is, by far, higher fitted to video games and people who want Home windows, the MacBook Professional is a more sensible choice in almost all different elements. Whereas comparable in measurement, the LG Gram is lighter than the MacBook.

The MacBook Professional will discover a good residence on a desktop, however vacationers might discover it too heavy to hold in a bag the place weight is an element. The LG Gram weighs much less however is barely bigger in dimensions.

Nonetheless, it does not beat Apple’s pocket book in benchmarks, although that is not essentially reflective of real-world efficiency.

Apple’s 2023 MacBook Professional is on sale now, with unique offers out there within the AppleInsider 16-inch MacBook Professional Value Information. At press time, each configuration is as much as $300 off.

The LG Gram 17 begins at $1,999, with Amazon.com stocking all three fashions.