XPS 13 9370 vs LG Gram 14

The one thing that's stopping me from buying the gram is customer service here in the US. How is the LG Gram's customer service? I can open things up and add memory etc, but if something like a heatsink/cpu is messed up it's a tougher repair. From what I understand LG hardly services here in the US.

How would they compare to Dell in this regard?

 

I personally own a Gram 13 and XPS 15 9570.

I've done surgery on quite a few laptops, and this one is pretty darn easy to open up, aside from the sticky feet. Ifixit has a great guide. If you are reasonably careful, you shouldn't have any issues with this laptop.

For work, I have a Dell Precision 5520 (XPS 15 9560 w. Quadro & Xeon instead of i7 and GTX 1050ti)

The Dell complete care warranty is amazing. I've had a co-worker who spilled a smoothie on, in, and through their computer (Precision M6400 back in the day) and it was coming out of the vents on the underside of the machine. Dell replaced pretty much everything no questions asked.

If you are looking for bulletproof support, it's going to be Dell.

That being said, the Gram is a factory freak. I have a 13" laptop with 40 GB of RAM and Dual M.2 solid states. With some mild thermal upgrades (thermal pads and Panasonic graphite sheet to transfer heat through the underside of the case) I'm routinely seeing 4+ GHz in programs like AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, and Bluebeam.

Yes, I'm not going to get NBD on site support, but this machine is a rare bird. The XPS 13 is a great machine, but for me, ultimately I needed more RAM, and the lightest possible machine with thunderbolt for egpu support.


I did do the squaretrade warranty when I purchased it, assuming if I did something very stupid, at least I'd have that.

Hopefully that feedback is helpful in your decision making process.

 

i ordered the 8gb of the 9370 (by mistake gotta return it for the 16gb)

Overall loved it ecept for one thing. The touchpad feel very plasticy. Is the LG's nicer? I need some accuracy for programming. Also is the lg keyboard smaller than the dell's?

 

The clickpad/touchpad is less brutish on the LG -- you don't have to push as hard to trigger right of left clicking, and after a few minutes of typing on the LG, I'm hitting 50-70 WPM (adjusted for ~98% accuracy).

I don't notice any size difference on the keyboard, and I'm certainly not wishing I had one over the other, when I'm using different computers.

Also: just break down and get a nice bluetooth mouse. I'm rocking the Razer Atheris. It's both bluetooth or a dongle if you want it, and makes fore a much better experience.

BTW: I hit 9,948 CPU Marks, which I think is pretty awesome for a laptop this size:




John

 

I am looking at getting the Gram 13 (2019). Regarding the memory upgrade, I remember the suggestion before was to get an identical stick to get the best performance for dual channel. Does it still apply to the latest laptops? Or can I stick a 32GB without any performance hit?

 

I have contacted Customer Service by e-mail for information, and they responded in a timely fashion with a good response. I don't know how it would work if I needed to fix the laptop.