At a look
Knowledgeable’s Ranking
Professionals
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060
- Highly effective Thirteenth-gen Intel CPU
- Reasonably priced
- Glorious keyboard
Cons
- Just one USB-C port
- Heavy design
- Poor battery life
- Extreme Bloatware
Our Verdict
A robust processor and a discrete video card are spectacular at this price, and for many who need moveable 1080p gaming, the LOQ is a wonderful selection. Battery capability is its achilles’ heel, and the restricted period of time it affords you away from an influence socket.
Worth When Reviewed
$1029.99
One of many nice points of a PC maker like Lenovo is that it doesn’t make a single design of something, and its LOQ 15-inch gaming laptop computer is not any exception. Whereas this evaluate covers an Intel-based possibility that begins round a grand, there are extra highly effective decisions and designs with various GPU configurations and as much as 16-inch shows.
The mannequin reviewed right here is £1,069 within the UK (15IHR8), and an analogous mannequin begins at $1,029.99 within the USA. That outlay will get you a Thirteenth-Gen Intel CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU and a 15-inch 144Hz, 1080p show. Whereas this specification doesn’t spell 4K gaming, even related to an exterior show, it’s greater than sufficient horsepower for some fluid 1080p gaming on the transfer.
Nonetheless, this can be a crowded a part of the market, and this LOQ competes towards not less than fourteen different laptops on this collection made by Lenovo, the Asus TUF A15, the up to date Acer Nitro 5 and different contenders on our Finest Low-cost Gaming Laptops 2024 chart.
the rear of the machine has a distinctly Star Trek vibe.
Design & Construct
- Plastic on the surface
- A restricted port choice that may want a docking station
- At 2.4kg, a wrist check to deal with single-handed
The place Asus likes the army look with its gaming machines, Lenovo has pitched for a barely sci-fi motif with the LOQ, and the rear of the machine has a distinctly Star Trek vibe. Vents on the rear have an impulse engine styling, however regrettably, Lenovo didn’t deploy warp nacelles.
Curiously, the display hinge place has been moved away from the again line by about 23mm, leading to simpler entry to the central port space on the backbone. When folded flat, this creates a particular shelf on the rear quarter.
What isn’t in proof is any metallic, with your complete exterior of the LOQ completed in numerous shades of gray plastic. Not that this seems to be low-cost, as high-quality mouldings have been used, however given how a lot plastic was used, the LOQ is surprisingly heavy. At 2.4kg, that’s one other 200g greater than the Asus TUF Gaming A15, and even 50g greater than the hefty HP Omen 16.
The place this machine is considerably missing is in respect of the ports offered. {That a} gaming machine in 2024 solely has a single USB-C port and never even USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt is a disappointment.
The offered port is positioned on the left aspect alongside the audio jack, whereas the proper edge has a single USB 2.0 port and a curiously positioned digital camera disabling swap.
Most ports are on the again, nevertheless it solely provides two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (Kind-A), a single HDMI 2.1 out and a gigabit LAN port. That the LAN isn’t 2.5GbE isn’t a shock, however not less than the inner Wi-Fi is 2×2 AX specification.
Ideally, this machine wanted a second USB-C for charging and connecting a docking station, however as a substitute, Lenovo went with a proprietary rectangular energy connector and a 170W PSU. The dimensions of the PSU hints at why they didn’t select USB-C for the ability since these sometimes peak at round 100W.
Total, the perimeters of the LOQ are massively underutilised for ports, and the mass makes it extra of a luggable desktop with an built-in display than a laptop computer. Nonetheless, it has different virtues, as we’ll uncover.
Keyboard & Trackpad
- An awesome keyboard really feel with RGB LED lighting
- Giant however unresponsive trackpad hints at utilizing a mouse
Whereas the keyboard on this design is a membrane construction, the size of the keys and the inclusion of many enhancements make this an honest typing expertise.
What’s barely completely different is how the cursor cluster is projected down in entrance of the primary keyboard line, making these keys simpler to search out throughout a firefight. Nonetheless, this leaves a sliver of open house between the trackpad and the house bar.
The keytops are smaller than the remainder, however a full numeric pad and a whole row of operate keys are included.
The complete keyboard is RGB backlit, and when booting, it shows a rainbow preset to indicate off the chromatics out there
The complete keyboard is RGB backlit, and when booting, it shows a rainbow preset to indicate off the chromatics out there.
The keys have a really optimistic motion, however the trackpad is way much less responsive, and whereas the pointer strikes easily sufficient, clicking on it could often go unnoticed. For gaming, built-in mouse buttons to the trackpad might need been a greater possibility. Lenovo believes that together with the right-side USB 2.0 port reveals that almost all avid gamers will use a mouse.
In contrast with many laptops, the LOQ is ergonomically sound. Loads of palm house is under the keyboard, and the spacing of the keys isn’t excessively cramped. And, whereas the no-mans-land between the trackpad and keyboard is just a little odd, it avoids bashing the house bar and having it register as a mouse motion.
Display & Audio system
- A 1080p IPS panel at 144Hz
- Shiny at most, however not sufficient for out of doors gaming
- Low-performance audio system
There are a number of panels that gaming system makers are drawn to, probably resulting from worth, and the LOQ has a type of. Utilizing IPS expertise and with a pure refresh price of 144Hz, this display provides a peak brightness of simply 350 nits.
What’s curious concerning the brightness is that it doesn’t ramp in a linear style, because the 120nits degree that we use for video playback testing comes at round a 70% setting. These selecting a brightness of fifty% will expertise about 50 nits, which is darkish.
The colors on this panel additionally aren’t extremely saturated or consultant. Maybe I’ve seen too many screens designed for inventive use, however this one has a gamut that doesn’t method 100% of sRGB on its finest day. Round 70% of sRGB is the very best it could handle.
Equally unimpressive is the audio expertise, as the 2 down-firing 2W audio system mounted on the LOQ have a restricted vary that doesn’t prolong to delivering a lot bass, if any. Most quantity appears remarkably low and unlikely to trigger complaints from an adjoining room.
Briefly, if you wish to hear higher, purchase some cheap exterior audio system or headphones.
Specs & Efficiency
- Intel Thirteenth-gen processor
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 or 4060 graphics
- 16GB DDR5 reminiscence and 512GB SSD
The headline act right here is the GeForce RTX 4060 in our evaluate {hardware}. This discrete graphics card has 8GB of devoted GDDR6 reminiscence and makes use of the most recent Nvidia GPU expertise utilizing the Ada Lovelace structure. Working alongside that’s Built-in Intel Iris Xe GPU, a graphics platform we wouldn’t usually suggest for correct gaming.
Relying on the LOQ mannequin chosen, it could include both the RTX 3050, RTX 4060 or RTX 4050, and from our expertise, we’d keep away from the lower-level playing cards and go for the significantly better RTX 4060 possibility.
What’s uncommon concerning the RTX 4060 is that the desktop half and the one used for cell platforms are the identical die, the place these chips are sometimes branded the identical however have wildly completely different specs.
That’s true of the 4070 and 480 cell elements, however the 4060 is a desktop GPU shoehorned right into a laptop computer. Nonetheless, it’s price noting that the cell AS107 GPU used within the RTX 4060 has a decrease enhance clock, barely slower reminiscence, and marginally much less reminiscence bandwidth.
However the true constraint on the cell RTX 4060 is the quantity of energy that the laptop computer will sanction for the GPU, and the place on the desktop that is all the time 115W, on the cell variant, this ranges between 35W and 115W. As dangerous as that may sound, with so many elements in play, the precise distinction between the desktop and cell elements is simply about 8-10%, making the RTX 4060 one of many higher decisions for cell avid gamers.
The opposite major factor in these outcomes is the Intel Core i5-13500H, a twelve-core CPU with 4 efficiency P-Cores and eight effectivity E-Cores. The 4 P-Cores have hyperthreading, boosting the variety of simultaneous threads to sixteen. This Raptor Lake-H design with a most energy envelope of 95W and a base energy of 45W is taken into account to be on par with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D and Ryzen 7 5800X.
The benchmark numbers this GPU can generate we’d seen earlier than within the Asus A15, and its capability to method 90fps in Cyberpunk 2077 with extremely settings hints that it’s attainable to activate much more eye-candy, comparable to Ray Tracing with out it changing into unplayable.
Conversely, for many who use the LOQ with a 1440p monitor, this decision isn’t past the skills of the RTX 4060 to drive that decision with medium element settings.
The 3DMark Evening Raid rating of 51,283 is extremely respectable, particularly in comparison with this processor utilizing the built-in Iris Xe, which delivers a typical rating of between 16,500 and 17,000.
Whereas 16GB of RAM is sufficient, factoring that the graphics card has its personal devoted reminiscence, what barely lets the LOQ down is the 512GB of storage that Lenovo consists of with most fashions.
Nonetheless, for these prepared to take the underside off their machine, a free and unused M.2 SSD slot is accessible, permitting for a comparatively cheap improve path (test our chart of the very best SSDs). These are each M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 slots, and the one caveat to utilizing them is that they have to be drives that don’t have an built-in cooler, as there isn’t vertical house contained in the case for these.
Lenovo LOQ 15 benchmarks
Battery Life
- 60Wh battery
- Poor lifespan
- Quick recharge
The issue with placing a robust processor and a demanding GPU in a laptop computer is that they demand loads of energy. Until the machine has an enormous battery, it can eat by means of what’s out there briefly order. And once I say ‘brief’, I’m not kidding.
the battery will recharge rapidly, hitting 100% energy from virtually exhaustion in over an hour
Utilizing our common battery video loop, the LOQ barely made it by means of one loop of our film earlier than it wished to close down, managing a disappointing 3 hours and 58 minutes. Based mostly on this efficiency, I believe that enjoying a recreation would final not more than a few hours on battery.
The quoted battery life by Lenovo is bigger than 5 hours, which appears wildly optimistic. The system additionally has a high-performance mode that, if activated, reduces battery life much more.
The one upside to this less-than-stellar battery efficiency is that the battery will recharge rapidly, hitting 100% energy from virtually exhaustion in over an hour. Nonetheless, for those who insist on utilizing it whereas charging, it may take longer.
Worth & Availability
Within the US and UK, the Lenovo LOQ 15 comes with both an RTX 3050, RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 discrete video. Lenovo does the standard mixture of pre-configured SKUs and utterly customisable techniques the place virtually each side is adjustable.
For UK clients, the processor choices embody the i5-13450HX, i7-136050 and the i7-14700HX. Reminiscence could be 8GB, 12GB or 16GB. Storage begins with 512GB with 1TB choices. The place most LOQs include the 1080p show seen in our evaluate, there’s additionally a 1440p panel, however each are non-touch.
The retail SKU that almost all carefully resembles the evaluate machine is that bought by Argos with the half code 82XV00C0UK. That prices simply £949 and consists of the 1080p display, RTX 4060 graphics, i5-13500H processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.
US costs begin at solely $1,209.99 for a LOQ with the i5-13500H CPU, RTX 3050 GPU, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. A system with RTX 4060 graphics begins at $1,319.99. American clients additionally get the choice for AMD Ryzen fashions from $949.
For US clients, this machine is accessible at Andorama, Walmart, Newegg, and straight from Lenovo. Relying on the place you get it, the worth can differ. It’s out there straight from Argos, Amazon, Very, Ebuyer, John Lewis and Lenovo within the UK.
Do you have to purchase the Lenovo LOQ 15?
There are issues to love right here and others which might be a lot much less compelling.
What’s finest about it’s the CPU and GPU mixture, which may ship playable framerates on most fashionable titles at 1080p resolutions at a really engaging worth level. And, for those who join an exterior monitor, it can work at 1440p with some changes in texture high quality.
Nonetheless, to get essentially the most from the CPU and discrete GPU requires energy, and that’s the one a part of this method that Lenovo curated, most likely due to how heavy it was already. The 60Wh battery capability doesn’t go far in gaming or enjoying video. And it received’t take the LOQ by means of a working day. That’s the standard actuality of gaming laptops and the compromise that those that personal them confront.
Nonetheless, the opposite factor that’s not nice about this machine is totally addressable, particularly the software program detritus that Lenovo thickly utilized to the Home windows set up. How typically this method tried to push one thing at me whereas we tried to benchmark was disturbing, and every time I eliminated one software program drama queen, one other was wanting to take its place.
It takes lengthy sufficient to get the truckloads of Microsoft updates onto this laptop computer with out making the prep to be used even longer by including the additional hours to throw all this unrequested rubbish off it. How significantly better the system runs when it’s gone is a reward worthy of the trouble of that train, nevertheless it’s a disgrace that performing this can be a requirement.
Specs
- Mannequin examined: 82XV00C0UK/15IHR8.
- OS: Home windows 11 Dwelling
- Show: 15.6in IPS, 1920 x 1080 144Hz
- CPU: Intel Core i5-13500H
- Reminiscence: 16GB DDR5 onboard
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 6GB
- Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe M.s SSD
- Webcam: 1080p with twin microphones
- Connectivity: 1 x USB-C with DisplayPort, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB 2.0 Kind-A, 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x audio, 1x LAN
- Networking: WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
- Battery capability: 60Wh
- Dimensions: 265.8 x 359.6 x 22.1mm
- Weight: 2.4kg
- Guarantee: 1yr RTB