It wasn’t too long ago that anyone who wanted an entry-level, cheap and cheerful gaming laptop would simply look at the likes of the Acer Nitro 5 or the Asus TUF A15. Since then though, we’ve seen a few other manufacturers come up with new and affordable gaming laptops of their own, with one of them being Lenovo.
Introducing the Lenovo LOQ sub-brand, pronounced ‘lock’. Announced earlier this year, Lenovo would finally introduce the first couple Lenovo LOQ devices to our shores back in June and we’ve been using one of them for a couple of weeks now: the 15-inch Lenovo LOQ 15IRH8.
Pick your poison of choice
One thing I’ve noticed off the bat with the Lenovo LOQ gaming laptops is the sheer range of configurations available. The first choice you’ll have to make is if you want to opt for a 15.6-inch, 16:9 display or a taller 16-inch, 16:10 display. Then you’ll also have to choose between going Team Intel or Team AMD for the processor under the hood. This is on top of having to pick what graphics card too, with the base models offering the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, while the RTX 4050 and the RTX 4060 are also available.
For us though, Lenovo sent us the Lenovo LOQ 15IRH8 with the 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13620H under the hood mated to 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD. That’s a processor with six of Intel’s performance cores running at 2.4GHz with boosts to 4.9GHz, four efficiency cores running at 1,8GHz with boosts to 3.6GHz and 16 threads. It also comes with the top of the line NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 laptop graphics card that overall offered a very competent gaming package, with the synthetic benchmarks at least showing that it does perform up to spec for the most part.
But this is a gaming laptop first and foremost, so let’s take a look at how well it does in games shall we? And here it does seem like the Lenovo LOQ 15 could take pretty much anything I threw at it. Your mileage may vary of course depending on the exact parts you opt for in your own Lenovo LOQ 15, but with our Intel Core i7-13620H and the RTX 4060, triple-A titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 were smooth and frames were comfortably high enough even though I was playing at 1440p, often times with higher settings turned on too.
As for temperatures, the Lenovo LOQ 15 isn’t the coolest machine that’s for sure, with temps spiking some times to the mid 90°Cs when under full load during benchmarks and mid 80s during gaming, though you can increase the fan speed through the Lenovo Vantage app for better cooling at the cost of louder noise. Battery life meanwhile is quite mediocre as to be expected with gaming laptops, with the 60Whr battery lasting around two hours away from the plug when using for non-gaming purposes.
Build quality is a cut above
While the entry level gaming laptops that we’re accustomed to tend to waver in is in their build quality, but the Lenovo LOQ looks and feels much different.
Lenovo claims that the laptop was built to ‘withstand the rigors of everyday use’, complete with ‘military grade’ standards and while I normally eschew marketing words from the manufacturer, I must say that the Lenovo LOQ 15 I used did inspire a lot of confidence in its build quality. The keyboard’s deck flex for instance was kept to a minimum, while the lid didn’t feel flimsy or wobbly. It just doesn’t feel, you know, cheap.
Adding to this is its design that doesn’t come across as too ‘gamer-y’, with a succinct LOQ logo on the lid along with gunmetal grey over the top while some blue accents on the fan exhaust still gives it a subtle edgy feel to the laptop’s overall design. Its keyboard is complete with RGB lighting too, and has reasonable travel that types well enough when gaming or working. The touchpad though isn’t great, but again if you’re using it primarily for gaming chances are you’d have a gaming mouse on the side anyway.
As for its display the 15.6-inch, 1440p IPS display isn’t the brightest by any means, but that’s not really its selling point anyway. Instead, it’s that 165Hz high refresh rate that competitive gamers in particular would appreciate. I found the display to be good enough in most situations, though I do wish still that it was a little bit brighter. It does come with a claimed full coverage of the sRGB colour gamut too, as well as NVIDIA G-SYNC support. The pair of 2W speakers on the Lenovo LOQ are actually pretty decent; while certainly not audiophile grade they do get loud enough though a little lacking in the bass department.
Its selection of I/O meanwhile is also pretty solid, with two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, an Ethernet jack, a HDMI 2.1 port, an e-shutter toggle as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. It should be noted though that a lot of these ports are located on the rear, which seems to suggest that while it’s technically a portable device, you still wouldn’t want to be moving around a lot with the Lenovo LOQ 15.
Great value—if you can find it
Overall though, the Lenovo LOQ 15 does seem to offer quite a lot. Right off the bat its step up in terms of build quality compared to the previous generation of entry level gaming laptops will certainly be noticeable, and it’s not like it’s particularly expensive too with a starting price of RM3,699… or so we thought anyway.
Like we mentioned earlier, there appears to be plenty of different configurations for the Lenovo LOQ lineup, and the one we reviewed with the Intel Core i7-13620H, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and RTX 4060 graphics card isn’t even on the Lenovo Malaysia website at time of writing. According to Lenovo, this was because the specs of the review unit that they sent us and the available local retail units that they had were slightly different.
It fact we couldn’t even find one priced at RM3,699 on the Lenovo Malaysia website, with the cheapest Lenovo LOQ on their website being the LOQ 16IRH8 priced at RM3,829 with an Intel Core i5-13420H, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050. However, we did find a third party retailer on Shopee selling the Lenovo LOQ 15 with our exact specs for RM5,787.
For one that’s as close as possible to our review unit though, the Lenovo LOQ 15IRH8 with the same processor, RAM, storage and display but a lower NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU is available on the Lenovo Malaysia website at RM5,699. That graphics card is weaker than our RTX 4060 though, with the RTX 4050 more in line with something like the RTX 3060 from last generation if you take into account the new software features like DLSS 3.0 and NVIDIA Frame Generation.
While it may be quite a jump from that original ‘starting from RM3,699’ price tag, the Lenovo LOQ 15 that we reviewed still isn’t that bad especially when you consider that its entry level gaming laptop rivals have been going up in price too.
The new Acer Nitro 16 for instance with comparable specs (AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, RTX 4060) to the Lenovo LOQ 15 that we have here is priced at RM6,399. If we were to compare with what the Lenovo Malaysia website has on offer though, its RTX 4050-powered Lenovo LOQ 15 is still cheaper than the RTX 4050-powered Acer Nitro 16 that’s priced at RM5,799, though in both cases the Nitro 16 does have a taller 16-inch, 16:10 WQXGA display with the same 165Hz refresh rate.
As such, the Lenovo LOQ 15 actually ends up being very competitive with this segment’s long standing favourites. Granted, that’s if you can actually find the thing on sale but still, judging the laptop as it is, it was not only built well but performed well too. It’s a fantastic debut for the Lenovo LOQ sub-brand and if they can continue the momentum, chances are we’ll be seeing these Lenovo LOQ laptops for some time to come.
