LG’s first gaming laptop has a 300Hz refresh rate display

LG has revealed its first gaming laptop, the UltraGear 17G90Q, which sounds more like a model number for a missing appliance part. It’s a far call from the names that other companies employ to entice those elite hardcore gamers, like Razer’s Blade lineup or Asus’ Zephyrus or Strix series, but there are some promising highlights to its introductory offering.

LG has carved out a brand name associated with household appliances, a now-shuttered mobile division, and TVs even detailing its new offering that can hide itself with a slide-up fabric cover. But, the South Korean electronics company has also been cutting its teeth by making plenty of consumer-level laptops and gaming monitors.

LG’s first gaming laptop does offer impressive specs, but it will have to compete with the likes of Acer, Alienware, Asus, Gigabyte, Lenovo Legion, HP, MSI, Razer, you get the idea. It’s a crowded market with many established names.

Strong specs — Hoping to slingshot off its years of experience in developing gaming monitors, LG’s first gaming laptop offers a 17.3-inch screen with a 1-millisecond response time and an impressive 300Hz refresh rate. Along with the reliability of a fast monitor, LG also built the UltraGear 17G90Q with a two-way speaker system with accurate directionality and sound location for the sweats who want to know which way footsteps are coming from.

LG didn’t skimp on the internals either, equipping the UltraGear 17G90Q with an 11th-gen Intel Tiger Lake H processor, a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q graphics card, dual-channel memory for up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage.

At a little under six pounds, the weight of the UltraGear 17G90Q is almost double that of LG’s Gram lineup of consumer laptops but comparable to other high-end gaming laptops. The laptop is also built with a 93Wh battery and a vapor chamber cooling system, but still maintains a thickness of under an inch.

One of the more fun details of the build is that you can customize the LED color of every single key on the laptop’s keyboard, so you can really get your RGB on. The UltraGear 17G90Q will also come with the LG UltraGear Studio, for those who like tracking the real-time performance numbers.

Available next year — LG’s first gaming laptop has already drummed up some buzz and earned itself a CES 2022 Innovation Award. It’s hard to say how the newest competitor will fit into the overcrowded gaming laptop market, especially as a higher-end offering.

LG says the UltraGear 17G90Q will be available in the U.S. and South Korea in the first quarter of 2022, with other markets to follow. No details about pricing, but judging from the build, it’s probably going to be on the expensive side.