LG on Tuesday announced the LG Ultra PC 17 “(17U70Q), a large screen and portable graphics card RTX 3050 Ti in a laptop that is 0.78 inches thick. LG’s ad called it a “mobile workstation” in keeping with the style of the Gram series of LG’s ultra-portable laptops. However, there are more powerful competitors out there.
LG announced a single configuration of the 17U70Q, which has 512GB of storage. The laptop is said to have one NVMe PCIe 4.0 slot and an older and slower NVMe PCIe 3.0 slot. More storage would help the machine better compete with other workstation’s thin oysters, such as Dell XPS 15 9520. We asked LG if the device is user upgradeable and will update this piece if we hear back.
Like the XPS 15, the Ultra PC 17″ has an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti graphics card with 4GB of GDDR6 and 16GB of dual-channel DDR5-4800 RAM.
This 17-inch LG computer also has an Intel Core i7-1260P processor. We’ve seen this CPU in recently tested lightweight machines that lack dedicated graphics cards, including Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga. The chip has four performance cores (2.1–4.7 GHz), eight effective cores (1.5–3.4 GHz), 16 threads, as well as 18 MB of cache. Specs-wise, the i7-1260P isn’t as powerful as the Intel 12th Gen H-series chips, which have higher core capacity and maximum turbo power consumption found in the XPS 15 or even the i7-1280P (six performance cores at 1.8-4.8GHz, eight cores Efficiency at 1.3-3.6 GHz, 20 threads, 24 MB cache) we tested in Dell XPS 13 Plus.
The 17-inch screen on the device has an aspect ratio of 16:10 with 2560 x 1600 pixels. LG says it IPS The screen can cover at least 95 percent of the DCI-P3 and reach a brightness of 350 nits.
LG claims a battery life of nine hours with the 80W battery in the device but hasn’t revealed how it came to that number. In the meantime, the port selection might be worse for a 0.78-inch laptop. There are three USB-A ports, a Thunderbolt 4 . port HDMI 2.1 port, 3.5mm jack, Micro SD card reader, RJ45 ethernet.
The new 17-inch device also includes a feature that is becoming increasingly popular in laptops: a webcam and AI software that can detect if the user is in front of the computer. The feature called “peek” locks the computer if the user is no longer within 13-29 inches of the camera and blurs the screen if someone looks over their shoulder. For multi-monitor settings, the computer can also determine which monitor you are looking at and automatically bring the cursor there. The core technology of Mirametricsand when we tested it in Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7i ProHe came with a creepy, always-on webcam, a pair of distracting lights, and he sometimes thought someone was behind me when no one was there. Of course, you can choose to disable the Glance feature.
17U70Q from LG is $1600. For those who are looking for something smaller with more storage and who don’t need a dedicated GPU, LG has also released 16″ Ultra PC (16U70Q) yesterday. It has an AMD Ryzen 7 5825U, up to 1TB of storage, 16GB of dual-channel LPDDR4x-4266 memory, and a 1920 x 1200 IPS display for $999 – $1,299.
“Typical beer trailblazer. Hipster-friendly web buff. Certified alcohol fanatic. Internetaholic. Infuriatingly humble zombie lover.”