Sunday, November 16

Geek

LG 13Z940 - The Great, The Good, The Meh, The Bad, And The Ugly

Great
  • Amazingly light without sacrificing build quality.
Good
  • The Core i5-4200U together with the SSD deliver zippy performance.  Not the right system for gaming or video editing, but for general computing tasks it's a very capable combination.
  • The 1920x1080 IPS display is bright, sharp, clear, and colourful, and fills the lid almost edge-to-edge.
  • The keyboard and trackpad both do their jobs well.  The only minor issues are that the power button is where the Delete key should be (the Delete key squeezes in to its left) and there are no dedicated Page Up/Down/Home/End keys.
  • The retail price, 35% off LG's RRP on this model, undercutting all the competition.  In Australia, November 2014 anyway, YMMV.
  • Sleek and stylish design.
  • No fripperies - no fancy four-dimensional hinges, no detachable touchscreen, no 48-hour battery.  Just a notebook.
  • As far as I can tell, it's completely silent.
  • Free of third-party crapware.
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Meh
  • The complement of ports is adequate, but not outstanding.  Two USB 3, one micro USB 2, one micro SD, one HDMI, and a headphone socket.  The notebook comes with a micro USB to ethernet adaptor, but it only does 10/100 speeds.  I'd love to see Dockport implemented on next year's model.  Last year's model had dual micro SD slots, and it would be nice if that returned too.
  • Reportedly, battery life is only middling, but I haven't tested that myself yet.
  • Speakers are about what you'd expect from a compact notebook PC, not awful, but not great.
Bad
  • Only 4GB of RAM, supposedly non-upgradeable, though I'm not sure of that, because -
  • The manual is remarkably non-specific about the hardware.  It could be powered by magic smoke for all it tells you.
Ugly
  • Taking that literally, Windows 8.  It works just fine, once you banish the Start Screen and Modern UI to the Howling Wastes, but compared to Aero Glass it is ugly.

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