The LG LW70 is the biggest of the new LG lineup of notebooks. It features a bright 17.1-inch "glossy" widescreen. Glare meaning it's reflective, and widescreen meaning you should watch lots of movies on it. The design of the new LGs carry on the same style that they started with, very simple. Like the previous LGs, they use heat piping to help keep the notebooks cool and reduce the need to use loud fans. While they do have fans, and they do come on when the notebook is under a lot of load, they generally come on at a low speed keeping the notebooks very quiet. LG seems to be taking aim at the part of the market that wants it all - long lasting battery life, nice bright screens, high performance machines, and all in a thin & light package without any noise. They seem to be doing a pretty good job at pulling it off, although the battery life on the LW70 isn't nearly as good as on their smaller notebooks - for obvious enough reasons. Still, on the 6 cell it nudges 4 hours.
I recently read a review touting the Dell Inspiron 9300 as being the longest running, lightest, thinest 17" PC notebook available - I'd say it's safe to say that if that was true, the Dell has been dethroned. The LG LW70 is faster, lighter, thinner, runs longer, and has a 17.1" widescreen - with wide angle viewing (courtesy of IPS) to boot. Presented inside a sleek designed case with a very quiet cooling system, the LW70 shines as a strong example of what a 17" notebook should be.
Design
The design is nice and simple not straying far from their previous designs, except there is a big "mobile intelligence" indent/bevel thing above top right of the keyboard. I'm not a fan of that, and don't really see why they put it there. The power/volume buttons are centered above they keyboard now, and there is the addition of two "instant on" buttons, "DVD" and "Music" . More on these later. The top has two latches which lock it closed, and they are placed near the sides so it's easy enough to open - however you need both hands to do it. It sure would be nice if they used some kind of magnetic system instead! The overall fit and finish of the LW70 was what you would expect from a premium notebook, I was not able to find any problems with it, and the notebook is very rigid and sturdy.
The front of the notebook has 2 decently sized speakers (woofer on the bottom) and a remote-control sensor, the left side has the 2 PCMCIA slots with a 4-in-1 memory card under it (SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro), a parallel printer port (with a cover, so you don't have to look at it!), and a standard video out. The back has power, 2 USB plugs, network, modem, audio-in, and S-Video out. The right side has 2 more USB plugs, DVD Multidrive, 1394 'firewire', IrDA, audio out, and microphone in. The top has nothing except for the LG logo in the center. They got rid of the strange black line on top, which I think was wise. It was after all, a strange black line. The bottom is fairly standard, with access to RAM, HDD and a little vent for a fan. Two things to take note of on the bottom are the woofer and a plug for a docking bay. I'm not sure what docking bay this docks too, but there is definitely a plug for a docking bay here. The LW70 is about 34mm (1.33-inches) thick with the lid closed, so it's not remarkably thin, but it's not very thick either... especially for a 17.1-inch screen. The indicator LED's are small and to the point, which is nice to see. There is a blue LED integrated into the power button, and the rest are green (num-lock, scroll lock, wireless activity, battery light that blinks when low and is solid when charging, AC power, and HDD activity).
The dimensions of the notebook are impressive for such a big screen, 3cm thick (1.18-inches) with the lid up and it weighs in at 6.8lbs. This is definitly not a heavy or bulky notebook by any stretch, if it wasn't so wide it wouldn't be very far off from 'thin & light'
The keyboard is a joy to use, and because there is plenty of room, the touch pad stays out of the way when typing. There is a hot key to toggle the touch pad if needed, which is always nice to have.
Speaking of hot keys, the special function keys are: 3 User functions, sleep, standby, touch pad toggle, wifi toggle, video mode (laptop, external, laptop and external), hibernate, screen brightness up/down, and two buttons to modify battery miser settings. These are all accessed holding down the function button and hitting the appropriate key, which are clearly marked in a blue color.
Sound and Display
Well the display is fantastic. The 17.1" WSXGA has a resolution of 1680x1050. For those who are keeping track, it's a 200nit screen - for those who are not, it's nice and bright, and razor sharp. The IPS (In Plane Switching) is apparently responsible for the wide view angles, but whatever the case is, it works. To test it I fired up a DVD, and spun the laptop away from me, I was able to watch it from any angle side-to side. Viewing from above does wash out colors towards white, and from below they get darker.. but both top/bottom only happens at extreme angles. What this means is that it's not a problem to watch DVD's on the laptop with several people on a couch, all viewing at different angles. I tried using it outside and had no problem viewing the screen, however it was overcast. I haven't had a sunny day to test, but I imagine it would hold up as well as any other 'glare' type notebook on the market. The screen has 8 brightness settings, all of which are very usable, even at the lowest setting.
The glare screen really works with DVD's, it kind of makes me want to replace my TV with an LW70. The sound is good too, it's 5.1 channel audio, and it's quite clear and full, which is a nice change coming from a notebook. There is some nifty mixing software that comes with it, with a full on equalizer for all audio output. An internal mic is built into the left corner.
Performance, Benchmarks & Battery Life
The battery that came with this was the standard 6 cell battery. After using it for awhile, the number windows gave me seemed about right, 3 hours 50 minutes on a full charge with wifi on and the screen brightness at about half - which is surprisingly bright - doing things like browsing, word processing, etc.
Using the windows Power Meter It returned the follow times:
- Min Brightness (1/8) : 4 hours
- Medium (4/8) : 3 hours, 50 minutes
- Full Brightness (8/8): 3 hours, 15 minutes
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