I was recently granted an exciting opportunity to prepare reviews of a Lenovo LOQ 15 in collaboration with Intel. Earlier this year, Lenovo announced a new series of products named LOQ. The name symbolizes locking in with one’s allies in the epic battles to be had in the gaming world. In the lineup there are both desktop computers and laptops available. They are targeted towards people who have been looking to start their gaming adventures but have yet to dip their toes in – for example long time stream watchers – or more budget conscious veterans, who are looking to get the best value for their money.
There are both Intel and AMD products available under the brand, however they are treated as separate models, so my review is only applicable to the 15-inch Intel model. To be precise, LOQ 15IRH8. This model comes in a few configuration variants, but all of them feature 13th Generation Intel® Core™ processors, commonly known under the name of Raptor Lake.
The chassis of the laptop is made of matte plastic material in Storm Grey colour, which is a dark shade of grey. There is a silver Lenovo logo near the hinge on the left-hand side and a stealthy black LOQ logo on the diagonally opposite side. The hinges allow for smooth one-handed opening of the laptop and the lid stays in place without wobbling. It was surprising to find that the keyboard keycaps match the colour of the chassis, which makes it blend in when the device is not powered on. The keyboard feels soft to type on, yet without any mushiness or noticeable flexing. Below the spacebar, there is a trackpad, which is pretty a typical representative of the modern ones – no separate buttons on it, its bottom edge handles the left and right click functionality. It is sufficient for non-gaming tasks. Overall, the LOQ 15 laptop has a stealthy, timeless style. This illusion can be dispelled by the rainbow puke emerging from the keyboard once the device powers on, but it’s nothing that couldn’t be amended by a change of settings.
The reviewed unit comes equipped with a 15” IPS display with 2560x1440 resolution and 165Hz refresh rate. Additionally, it supports NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology, which allows to eliminate or at least greatly reduce tearing when gaming. According to the specification the maximum brightness is 350 nits; it is bright enough to counter even high ambient light indoors. The screen covers 100%sRGB spectrum and has good viewing angles. A 13th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 13620H processor is breathing life into this unit. It consists of 6 performance cores and 4 efficient cores. The performance cluster has a base clock rate at 2.4Ghz, boosting up to 4.9Ghz on single core and up to 4.7Ghz all-core. The efficient cluster ranges from 1.8Ghz to 3.6Ghz. Since the P-cores support Hyper-Threading technology, a total of 16 threads are available. A NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060 GPU is responsible for rendering the graphics in more intense tasks. The performance in games is further aided by Lenovo’s AI Engine+ technology. The device comes with 16GB of DDR5-5200Mhz memory and 1TB NVMe storage installed. The power is supplied by a 240W charger and a 60Wh battery allows the user to do some work off-the-grid.
When it comes to connectivity, the LOQ 15 has the needs of a typical gamer covered. I managed to get a part of the gaming testing done in a cosy setup at my desk with a wired keyboard, mouse and two monitors connected. On the left-hand side there is a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB C with Thunderbolt 4 technology support. Opposite side has a switch for the camera for those, who would like to minimise the risk of their laptop turning into a mech version of the Big Brother. It is accompanied there by a USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB port. The remaining ports are on the back side: two USB 3.2 Gen 2, a HDMI 2.1 and Gigabit Ethernet.
The laptop comes with Windows 11 preinstalled. From the preinstalled software a noteworthy one is Lenovo Vantage, which is essentially the command centre for the laptop. There one can change the settings for the cooling of the laptop, either maximizing the performance or getting a quieter profile. An important setting when spending most of the time with the laptop plugged in is conservation mode for the battery. It prevents the battery from being charged past 60% of the capacity. Contrary to what many people think, this is not about battery cycles, as modern devices have overcharging preventions in place. However, due to simple laws of physics and dimension constraints, laptops tend to get hot. When a full battery is exposed to heat for prolonged periods of time, eventually its life deteriorates. This setting mitigates that problem. For regular battery users there is sort of opposite setting available as well: rapid charge. Another thing that can be tweaked in the Vantage software is the backlight – one can pick either one of the rainbow presets or set their preferred colours in four configurable zones.
When gaming, the laptop gets a bit warm, but the hardware does not reach dangerous heat levels, and neither is the surface of the laptop causing discomfort when using. The keyboard gets only mildly warm and the trackpad (should one be desperate enough to use that for gaming) remains cool. The only problematic area is a hot point between the spacebar and trackpad, which did feel a bit uncomfortable, but it can be easily avoided when gaming, as long as one keeps it in mind.
Under stress the laptop gets noticeably louder, but not more than to be expected from a typical gaming laptop. Sensitive people might want to use headphones or play some music to cover up the sound, using a cooling pad with a large (thus quieter due to slower speeds) fan would reduce the noise levels as well.
I tested the laptop in a handful of games that I am playing: the latest expansion of Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, Diablo IV and Hogwarts Legacy. All of them can be called recent games, even the two MMO games as the latest content released either this or last year and is a lot more visually refined than the base game. I was able to play all those games smoothly on 1440p. The i7 is a high-end processor and the graphics are a solid mid-tier offering, so the results don’t come as a surprise. There were some issues down to optimisation of the games, sometimes resulting in FPS getting brutally murdered, but that is no fault of the device. Some settings may be able to amend that; for example, Guild Wars 2 is notorious for struggling in areas with many players in combat. There’s a setting for player model limit and I set that to medium, down from highest. That helped a lot and I was able to have everything else maxed out in that game without a problem. World of Warcraft also has some „trap settings” that you need to beware of, but otherwise the game runs just fine on medium to high settings, depending on what is the target for the framerate. In Diablo IV and Hogwarts Legacy, I was able to make use of DLSS and frame generation, the latter being exclusive for RTX 4000 series. That allowed me to get good quality of picture without sacrificing performance. The gameplay can be seen in my review video.
To sum things up, the LOQ 15 I reviewed will allow the users to hop into any new releases and enjoy them. There are some testimonies of that on the internet already; I went to check something on the product page and a user left a review there that they bought the laptop to play Baldur’s Gate 3 and it fit the task perfectly. The sample I reviewed is on the higher end of the configuration spectrum, it will allow running even brand-new games at 1440p, but those with smaller budgets should have a good 1080p experience with the cheaper variants. All the processor options are strong, the main difference lies in the graphics cards option. OTOH, some users may choose to pay more to get a the i7-13700H variant to get better performance in productivity tasks; strictly in gaming the higher count of E-cores would not matter and the 100Mhz clock difference is negligible outside of benchmarking. I am impressed by the build quality and how well-rounded out this laptop is. The value per money segment has been lacking good options for quite some time; the LOQ fills that niche now. I believe this is the series many players were waiting for: Steam hardware surveys continuously reveal that most of the users have 50 and 60 tiers of graphics, not the bleeding edge technology, which unfortunately, few can afford.
Last edited by DoctorEldritch; 15-05-24 at 10:57.
Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
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DoctorEldritch
