There is a new gaming laptop brand in town, and it’s one you’ve heard of before. LG, best known for its TVs and home appliances, has unveiled its first gaming laptop, and it appears to be the antithesis of the company’s ultra-lightweight “Gram” notebooks.
Dubbed the UltraGear 17G90Q (catchy, huh?), this beastly gaming rig is powered by an 11th Gen Intel Tiger Lake H-series CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q graphics card. These can be paired with either 16GB or 32GB of DDR4 RAM and up to 1TB of M.2 dual storage.
With that much power under the hood, games should play at high frame rates and look silky smooth on the LG’s 17.3-inch, 1080p (16:9) display which flaunts a 1-millisecond response time and 300Hz refresh rate.
The UltraGear fits the stereotypical gamer aesthetic, with a per-key RGB backlit keyboard and winged “LG” logo on the purple-grey aluminium chassis and touchpad. Here, you’ll find some nice convenience features, like a fingerprint sensor on the power button, quad speakers, and a 1080p webcam.
Port selection is also excellent, with two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side and two USB 3.2 Type-A inputs on the right next to a microSD card slot and a headphone jack. On the rear are a third USB Type-A port, an RJ45 Ethernet jack (FYI, the UltraGear supports Wi-Fi 6E), an HDMI input, and a DC barrel connector.
Up to this point, LG has run its laptop division with a singular focus: make the lightest devices possible. That changes with this gaming rig, which comes in at 15.75 x 10.7 x 0.8 inches and weighs 3 kg. To be fair, plenty of 17-inch models clock in at over six and even seven pounds.
LG’s first gaming laptop will be available in the U.S. starting in early 2022. There is no word yet on pricing; we’ve reached out and will update this article once we learn more.
Based on what we do know, the UltraGear should be a capable machine, though some of its specs raise an eyebrow. In just a few weeks’ time, Intel and AMD are both expected to reveal new chips — with the former all but confirmed to launch 12th Gen H-series CPUs. Releasing a product with the 11th Gen variant when everyone else is prepping to push out 12th Gen-powered gaming laptops is an interesting choice.
And while I’ll need to confirm this detail, LG’s press release suggests the UltraGear will only be available with an RTX 3080 GPU. If accurate, the UltraGear 17G90Q will likely have a high starting price. There is a lot to like here, too, including some beefy specs and generous ports and features, but the appeal for LG’s opening into the gaming world will largely depend on how much you have to pay to get in.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.