LG blooper marketing images depict weird “15.6 inch WinBook Retina”
Pressure’s on South Korean electronics manufacturer LG, as of last week, when the marketing team working on promotional images of LG’s latest Gram laptop, released some puzzling montage hinting at what can only be described as a one-of-a-kind 15.6 inch WinBook Retina running by Microsoft OS X.
While this is not the first time for a marketing team to take creativity a little too far, it’s difficult not to notice the similarity between LG’s own brand new laptop and Apple’s 12 inch MacBook Retina. According to the images, the LG Gram’s body appears to feature a gold color, a black keyboard, a “teardrop” slope, and a touchpad that looks very much like the Force Touch trackpad found in all current MacBook models. A USB Type-C port is also integrated in the laptop, although a power cord is visible in the images, in white, for good measure.
Interestingly enough, the Gram features many of the specs that the next generation MacBook is rumored to integrate, including an Intel Core i7 Skylake, instead of the 12 inch MacBook’s Core M, and additional USB 3.0 ports, as well as HDMI support. The internal storage seems to be a non-upgradeable 512GB SSD SATA 3, and the total memory available is 8GB DDR3L.
Compared to the 12 inch MacBook, however, the Gram falls short in display resolution, with the former capable of 2304 x 1440 pixels, and the latter’s display limited to 1080p.
According to the specs, the LG Gram doesn’t appear to be an awful product, if we overlook the limited display resolution, and the older 4.0 Bluetooth hardware. In fact, audiophiles may actually like the fact that the Gram has a built-in Cirrus Logic DAC audio card, capable of high-fidelity audio, which is a decent setup, considering that the laptop still uses a regular 3.5mm combo jack.
Consumers who have commented on the laptop have also expressed mixed opinions, with some reporting heat dissipation issues that can be felt while typing, and a number of issues concerning build quality, such as defective SD card readers, and non-working microphones, although experience may vary.