The LG Gram line has been round for years, however the LG Gram Fashion provides a brand-new look. It’s ultralight, it’s ultrathin, and it’s lined in an iridescent, color-changing end. It’s additionally out there for buy as we speak, in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, with a beginning worth of $1,499.

I checked the Fashion out in January, and it appears what I might name silvery-white more often than not. As you progress it round and the sunshine modifications, it may well look wherever from blueish to grayish to sunset-y orange. (Look, I’m not an artist — we’re all doing our greatest right here, and the showroom the place I noticed the gadget wasn’t notably effectively lit.) The opposite funky factor about it’s that it has a non-delineated haptic trackpad that’s illuminated by LEDs. Whereas I query the utility of this function (the lights don’t come up till after you click on, so that they don’t really aid you discover the touchpad), it actually appears very cool.

Prior to now, LG Grams have been well-known for principally one factor — they weigh nothing. They’ve been nice for that particular use case, constantly rating among the many lightest laptops you should buy, however they’ve additionally tended to look a bit boring.

At 2.2 kilos (999 grams), the Fashion isn’t more likely to remove followers of the thin-and-light class, however it could entice a extra style-conscious (sorry, I do know) viewers. LG additionally displayed a lot of extra eclectic designs in its CES 2023 sales space, together with polka dots and funkier pink and purple finishes. No phrase but on whether or not all of those will come to market, nevertheless it appears to point that extra enjoyable is on the horizon.

We’re beginning to see extra of issues like haptic touchpads, cute LEDs, and jazzy finishes as corporations try to market established premium traces to new, youthful audiences.

The ThinkPad Z-series, introduced in 2022, introduced a lot of distinctly non-Thinkpad colours and designs to the ThinkPad line, whereas the extra energy user-oriented Dell XPS 13 Plus threw out its bodily touchpad and performance keys in favor of haptics and LEDs. This yr, a lot of corporations are angling main merchandise round an elusive hyper-mobile, style-conscious, distant freelance skilled. HP’s Dragonfly Professional (together with an RGB Chromebook and a Home windows PC with a devoted tech assist button) is a latest instance.

Whereas I don’t fairly see these decisions making the LG Gram Fashion right into a mainstream, say, MacBook Air competitor — a color-changing end actually received’t be for everybody — it does appear more likely to carry the already-niche Gram line to niches it hasn’t reached earlier than.