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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.
Styling and 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). |
