Lenovo LOQ 15 gaming laptop review

Every year, it seems more and more people are getting into PC gaming, and the reason seems to be affordable gaming laptops. Available at the price of a Sony PlayStation 5, modern gaming laptops can do gaming and double up as a general laptop for studies, work, and even entertainment.

This versatility is precisely why these laptops make for some great buys for users, even though they don’t facilitate high-end gaming like the Sony PS5. One of the newest laptops in this affordable space that we’ve been testing out is the new Lenovo LOQ 15.

ALSO READ: Dell Alienware M18 R1 gaming laptop review

The base variant, which comes with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 chip and Intel’s Arc graphics, offers an interesting proposition under Rs 60,000. But is it worth it, or should you simply hop onto its bigger brothers? Let’s find out in our Lenovo LOQ 15 review.

Lenovo LOQ 15 design

Right off the bat, the Lenovo laptop comes across as a mid-segment laptop. That’s because of its design and heft. With a sturdy body and a lid that feels like it’s built like a tank, the Lenovo LOQ 15 is a good-looking laptop that can take a beating.

Open the lid, and the build quality carries over to the keyboard as well, which features well-spaced keys and decent travel. This is also a full-size layout, meaning you do get your numpad, ideal if you plan on flying the aircraft in GTA with your keyboard.

Some interesting choices can be seen on the sides of the laptop, where we see a clean left edge, with most of the ports going on the rear and some going on the right. While we do appreciate the rear-facing ports (which honestly should be standard on gaming laptops), we would have loved for the right edge to be clean instead, since that is where most users will be using their external mouse.

What is great about the shuffling around, is that there are no more side-facing vents on the Lenovo LOQ 15. All the hot air leaves the laptop from the rear, and none of it is trying to burn your mouse-hand. Kudos to Lenovo on this move.

Lenovo LOQ 15 display

The Lenovo LOQ 15 also comes with a pretty good display for the price. While it doesn’t have any standout features, it does offer everything you’d need at this price. A 15-inch 1080p panel with 144Hz refresh rate is plenty to enjoy everything from casual titles to a bit of competitive FPS games. Games like God of War and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy were a treat to play on this screen.

Lenovo LOQ 15 performance

The performance of the Lenovo LOQ 15 is what most users would be interested in and it is here that the laptop will remind you that it is, after all, an affordable laptop. While the 12th Gen Core i5 should be enough for games like FIFA 23 and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, we frequently saw choppy gameplay for these titles.

Pre-match cuts scenes in FIFA, particularly, never played smoothly and once a match started, things didn’t improve much. This could be a direct consequence of either the laptop being bottlenecked by a measly 8GB of RAM, or Intel’s Arc A530M graphics not being up to the mark.

We tried a lot of workarounds to get the gameplay to stutter-free levels, including dropping the graphic settings to their lowest, updating the Intel Arc Graphics drivers to the latest versions and even putting the laptop in both performance and dedicated GPU modes.

Though these measures did help us improve the performance (significantly in some cases), graphic-heavy and resource-heavy titles were still far from smooth.

Fortunately, the laptop was well-equipped to handle low-requirement games like most FPS shooting titles. In games like Counter Strike 2, you won’t notice any break in gameplay, and it is also where the 144Hz screen shines.

Lenovo LOQ 15 keyboard and trackpad

The Lenovo LOQ 15 features a nice keyboard for its price. We especially liked the fact that this is a full-size keyboard, and that the arrow keys are proper, square keys with a dedicated space. The addition of a numpad on a 15-inch machine is also a major plus-point here.

There’s minimal flex on the keyboard, which is an extension of the great build quality we spoke of earlier. Even with the weight of multiple fingers mashing down on the keys as the God of War himself pulverised his enemies, the keyboard did not flex. If I were to nitpick, I’d wish for a zonal RGB keyboard instead of the bland, white backlighting here.

The trackpad is also decent. It feels premium to touch and is adequately sized. Of course, you will be using either an external controller or mouse for most titles that do require a precise pointing device, but for all other use-cases this trackpad should be more than enough.

Lenovo LOQ 15 battery life

Like most gaming laptops, the Lenovo LOQ 15 isn’t really built to stay away from the plug. As a result, the laptop will last for about four hours when unplugged, for everyday tasks like internet surfing, YouTube and basic file transfers.

ALSO READ: Lenovo Legion Slim 5i review

We suggest you don’t look at battery life as a metric when buying a gaming laptop, especially an affordable one. This is because these machines will often offer their best performance when plugged in.

Lenovo LOQ 15 review verdict: Should you buy it?

The Lenovo LOQ 15 is a capable device, but this lower-end Intel Arc variant is not one we can outright recommend. If you’re looking for a gaming laptop for casual titles, competitive shooters or strategy-based games, this is more than capable.

However, for anyone looking to try games that demand more from their machine, we recommend going for a gaming laptop with at least 16GB RAM. If your budget allows it, you may also want to pick up a laptop with a more powerful GPU than the Intel Arc A530M.

ALSO READ: HP Pavilion 15 2023 review

These include laptops like the ASUS TUF Gaming F15, or the Lenovo LOQ 15’s own higher-end variant which comes with a 13th Gen Intel chip, 16GB RAM and Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics.

Although these are priced significantly higher, they will offer a better performance with games that are heavy on the visuals. For everyone else, the Lenovo LOQ 15 base variant offers a compelling experience, as long as, expectations are in check.