LG’s color-changing Style laptop is a less boring-looking Gram

The LG Gram line has been around for years, but the LG Gram Style adds a brand-new look. It’s ultralight, it’s ultrathin, and it’s covered in an iridescent, color-changing finish. It’s also available for purchase today, in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, with a starting price of $1,499.

I checked the Style out in January, and it looks what I would call silvery-white most of the time. As you move it around and the light changes, it can look anywhere from blueish to grayish to sunset-y orange. (Look, I’m not an artist — we’re all doing our best here, and the showroom where I saw the device wasn’t particularly well lit.) The other funky thing about it is that it has a non-delineated haptic trackpad that’s illuminated by LEDs. While I question the utility of this feature (the lights don’t come up until after you click, so they don’t actually help you find the touchpad), it certainly looks very cool.

In the past, LG Grams have been well known for basically one thing — they weigh nothing. They’ve been great for that specific use case, consistently ranking among the lightest laptops you can buy, but they’ve also tended to look a bit boring.

At 2.2 pounds (999 grams), the Style isn’t likely to eliminate fans of the thin-and-light category, but it may attract a more style-conscious (sorry, I know) audience. LG also displayed a number of more eclectic designs in its CES 2023 booth, including polka dots and funkier pink and purple finishes. No word yet on whether all of these will come to market, but it seems to indicate that more fun is on the horizon.

We’re starting to see more of things like haptic touchpads, cute LEDs, and jazzy finishes as companies attempt to market established premium lines to new, younger audiences.

The ThinkPad Z-series, announced in 2022, brought a number of distinctly non-Thinkpad colors and designs to the ThinkPad line, while the more power user-oriented Dell XPS 13 Plus threw out its physical touchpad and function keys in favor of haptics and LEDs. This year, a number of companies are angling major products around an elusive hyper-mobile, style-conscious, remote freelance professional. HP’s Dragonfly Pro (including an RGB Chromebook and a Windows PC with a dedicated tech support button) is a recent example.

While I don’t quite see these choices making the LG Gram Style into a mainstream, say, MacBook Air competitor — a color-changing finish certainly won’t be for everyone — it does seem likely to bring the already-niche Gram line to niches it hasn’t reached before.