LG 17G90Q – LG’s first gaming laptop announced – specs and release date
LG is no stranger to making laptops and some gaming stuff like monitors. LG gaming monitors, in general, have lots of praise from customers. One of those I’ve reviewed lately. Regular LG laptops are known for good batteries and for being really lightweight. But asides from that – not much. Yet, it’s obvious that company wants to expand itself on the gaming market, and other gaming products appearing was only a matter of time.
At December 20, LG announced 17G90Q – aka it’s first gaming laptop. Specs are already known – and they look really impressive to say at least. Here they are:
CPU: Intel Tiger Lake-H 11th Gen – this one is a supposed response to AMD Ryzen 5000 mobile processors. It’s a flagship laptop CPU.
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 Max-Q. That’s yet another monster (by laptop standards) which is more or less an equivalent to RTX 2080 Super or RTX 3060 Ti on desktop PC.
Monitor: IPS 17 inch 1080p 1ms 300Hz screen. Yes, it’s not a typo – 300Hz refresh rate.
RAM Memory: 16 and 32 GB DDR4.
Storage: up to 1TB SSD.
Battery: 93Wh – that’s a great one.
Weight: 2.64kg (5.82lbs).
Keyboard: LED RGB keyboard with an ability to set up any color to any key.
How these specs look like and compare?
From what it looks at last from the announced data, purely specs wise, LG 17G90Q is a beast.
CPU and GPU are flagships. Battery power is one of the highest between various other high-end gaming laptops (which is from 50Wh to 95Wh from model to model). On the other hand, while average LP laptops are known for the small weight, this one is not the heaviest, but not the lightest either. Its weight is 2.64kg (5.82lbs). Other popular gaming laptops in this segment weight from 3.6 to 6 lbs (1.65 to 2.72 kg respectively). It also seems there will be couple of submodels with different storage and RAM size.
To stand out, it seems, LG decided to specifically bet on the monitor – this makes sense knowing they already make great monitors for gaming rigs. 17 inch 1ms 300Hz laptop screen looks impressive technically. World’s most popular PC gaming monitors like Samsung Odyssey G7 have 240Hz refresh rate, while some of the latest models released in 2021, like Dell Alienware AW2521H, have up to 360Hz. Heck, even some laptops, like Razer Blade 15 have up to 360Hz. Anyhow, 300Hz for laptop is truly high-end claim.
At the same time, even with the stuffing declared, what kind of games this laptop will be actually able to run at 300FPS? Some shooters, like CS:GO? Platformers? Some simpler games in general? Yes, easily. But if you plan to play something like Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 or latest Assassin’s Creed games – don’t even hope. Yet ofc, if you’re a fan of of shooters, racers and any kind of competitive games – you will be deeply pleased.
The appearance. Not to lie – at least from the image, it looks pretty slim and stylish. LED RGB keyboard with an ability to adjust every single key color is not decisive, but still a nice fancy bonus. Look how LG 17G90Q looks below (click to open in full size).
Devil in details.
From the announced specs, LG 17G90Q looks like a top tier gaming laptop, ready to dare to the army of the best ones. At the same time (and especially for laptops) specs alone don’t determine the quality of the product.
How good is the cooling system? How noisy it is? What are the details of other hardware besides the main one, and how good everything works together? What the price will be? Spoiler: it will be high. Various similar laptops in this segment cost from $1700 to $3000.
Those and some other small (and not) details will determine the actual ability for this laptop to compete with other well-known brands. Time will show.
Meanwhile, you can take a peek at the full list of specs in LG’s official announcement. More details will be announced at CES 2022 starting at 08:00 PST on January 4. You can also take a look at more news and reviews on this website. Cheers!
