LG P430 and P530 Blade Announced: LG Slims Down
by Jason Inofuentes on May 6, 2011 12:17 AM ESTAnnounced today, LG joins in the race for thin with its latest P series notebooks, now dubbed the Blade series. Available in late May across Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East (no North American release was mentioned), the new line features 14" and 15.6" laptops each sporting Sandy Bridge i7's in their slender profiles. Sporting an aluminum case, chiclet keyboard and quad-core-only line-up, there's little room to speculate from whence LG drew its inspiration. A few factors separate these new thin notebooks from the rest, however.
LG's display division has developed an ultra-thin LED display that sports a bezel about 40% smaller than is found around your typical display. The innovation allows its 14" class device to fit in the footprint of a 13.3" notebook; and while those two classes have seemed awfully close all along, this will surely blur the line even further. Being able to squeeze the display into a smaller footprint makes the device generally more compact, which means less materials used, which means a lighter weight. Indeed, at a listed 1.94 kg, the 14" P430 is certainly one of the lightest quad-core laptops announced so far. Its 15.6" sibling, the P530, weighs in at a spry 2.2 kg, besting the 15" Macbook Pro by almost a third of a kilogram.
Don't expect to be tearing through Crysis 2 on the (lightweight) go with these slim quads, though. Packing the lowly NVIDIA GT 520M, gaming is clearly not a priority amongst the designers at LG. Packing half as many shader cores (48) as the GT 420 M (96) it ostensibly replaces, the GT 520M's strongest competition comes from the Intel HD 3000 graphics. Yep, the one it's being packaged with. Obviously, buyers would still get to benefit from NVIDIA's PureVideo and CUDA technology, but this is exactly what Intel's latest integrated graphcis were designed to do, obviate the need for low end discrete graphics.
Even non-gamers might not be wowed by the visuals, however, as both the 14" and 15.6" displays are limited to 1366x768 as their only resolution option. Early reports indicate that the added cost of these small bezel displays will place a price premium on system costs, a disappointing thing to consider for a device whose compromises seem unrelated to its benefits. North American release has not been announced, so we can only hope that when these slender beauties do make it to these shores they bring a few choice upgrades with them. Full specifications below.
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Sebec - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Thanks for the article, but could you make the tables in the same style as the "AnandTech" format (i.e. like the rest of the tables on this site)? It looks pretty bad as it is.JasonInofuentes - Saturday, May 7, 2011 - link
The tables were actually part of the LG press release, and feature some unfortunate typos. I'll remember your suggestion for next time though. Thanks.xype - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
made anyone think these were a good idea? And people keep wondering why Apple is selling laptops like crazy compared to other manufacturers? At least they compensate any potential shortcomings with great design.ekerazha - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
I have to buy a new notebook and these LG looked nice, but I'll go for another product because I see that there isn't any USB 3.0 port. I don't change my notebook every year and a notebook without USB 3.0 is not future-proof at all.robinthakur - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Sue LG as well as Samsung, they are just taking the p*ss now. Is it seriously so hard for other brands to actually hire good designers and then design a concept which they can roll out to their whole line that looks good without just copy and pasting what Apple does, only worse?? Generally it looks like LG did little work to actually profile who would purchase this other than somebody who wants something that resembles a Macbook but who can't afford one....if I was in that position, these might seem attractive until the weird decision on the discrete graphics which does little besides lessening battery life. Apple must be laughing their socks off at PC laptop manufacturers.von Krupp - Saturday, May 7, 2011 - link
You do realise that LG is most likely going to charge as much as if not more than a MacBook Pro for these, yes?marc1000 - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
No, they DIDN'T. I just bought a P430, and paid half of the value a MacBook costs here at brazil. we may not have all latest and greatest tech from companies, but sometimes the manufacturers are not so greedy...TrackSmart - Friday, May 6, 2011 - link
Call me crazy, but the weight of these laptops is nothing to brag about (even for a quad core Sandy Bridge machine). 1.94 kg (4.3 lbs) is 0.2 lbs lighter than the 13.3" Macbook Pro, which is an older design and was never that light to begin with.Aankhen - Sunday, May 8, 2011 - link
Might be in the market for a new laptop a few months down the line myself. It’s nice to see a sensible resolution on these. The discrete GPU seems completely redundant, though—’sup with that?marc1000 - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
I just bought one, believe me: it is worth every penny. The GPU is a litle redundant, but with Optimus it wont drain your battery. And it makes the diference between being able to game "low gfx" and "medium gfx". It is not much, but it IS a little better than HD3000.(I would prefer an Ivy Bridge, as HD4000 would beat GT520, but thats not an option)