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New LG Laptop Has a Hidden Touchpad That Lights Up Under Your Fingers

LG's new thin-and-light laptops arrive, one with a neat detail that has our ears perked.

Joshua Goldman Managing Editor / Advice
Managing Editor Josh Goldman is a laptop expert and has been writing about and reviewing them since built-in Wi-Fi was an optional feature. He also covers almost anything connected to a PC, including keyboards, mice, USB-C docks and PC gaming accessories. In addition, he writes about cameras, including action cams and drones. And while he doesn't consider himself a gamer, he spends entirely too much time playing them.
Expertise Laptops, desktops and computer and PC gaming accessories including keyboards, mice and controllers, cameras, action cameras and drones Credentials
  • More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
Joshua Goldman
2 min read
LG Gram laptop being held in someone's hands.
LG

LG makes some impressive laptops with lightweight designs, reliable performance and long battery life. This year's LG Gram Style -- unveiled at CES 2023 in Las Vegas -- has a little bonus that one-ups standard Gram laptop designs: a hidden haptic touchpad with LED backlighting that turns on when you touch it. 

Read more: CES 2023: How to Watch the Biggest Announcements from Samsung, LG, Nvidia

Here's how the touchpad hides in plain sight: Staring at the laptop, all you see is a smooth metal plane. But when you touch the palm rests or touchpad area, a border lights up, showing you where to tap and drag your finger to navigate around the screen. The Gram Style is joined by the Gram Ultraslim, and both laptop models extend a line from LG that tends to fly a bit under the radar. 

LG Gram Style laptop open and facing away to the left, showing the laptop's glass-covered lid.

The LG Gram Style has a shimmery glass lid.

LG

The Gram Ultraslim 15Z90RT is only 11 millimeters thick -- the thinnest Gram ever -- when closed and weighs a scant 998 grams (2.2 pounds). Despite its size and weight, though, LG squeezed in a new Intel 13th-gen Core processor, up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to a 1TB solid-state drive. It has a 15.6-inch 1080p OLED display, too.

The 14- and 16-inch Gram Style laptops (14Z90RS and 16Z90RS ) also have OLED displays but are 16:10 instead of the Ultraslim's 16:9 aspect ratio. The slightly taller display gives you a little more space to work. The 16-inch display has a 3,200x2,000-pixel resolution, while the 14-inch has 2,880x1,800 pixels. The internal components are the same as those offered in the Ultraslim, but they have larger batteries that should help accommodate the power needs of the higher-res OLED screens. 

As you might expect given the name, the Style adds some design flair you won't find on standard Gram laptops -- that's the LED backlight on the haptic touchpad, and the glass topper that adds some visual shimmer. 

LG will also update its 14- and 16-inch Gram two-in-ones and its 14-, 15-, 16- and 17-inch Gram laptops this year with 13th-gen Intel Core processors. The 16- and 17-inch Gram laptops will be the first to feature variable-refresh-rate displays for smoother-looking graphics and will also be configured with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU -- good for basic gaming and content creation. 

More details on the new models are available on LG's site. However, LG did not announce availability or pricing for any of the new or updated models.