Lenovo LOQ 15 (2024) review: get your money’s worth

With the launch of its LOQ series last year, Lenovo established a new category of budget-focused gaming laptops and desktops. This year we have a refreshed lineup including the new 15-inch LOQ gaming laptop which is available with the latest Intel 14th-gen mobile CPUs.

As of now, there is only one configuration if you are looking for the latest hardware, powered by the Core i7-14700HX and an Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU with the option of choosing a 1080p or 1440p display. This makes it an excellent choice if you are looking for a mid-range gaming notebook without spending a whole lot of money. But does it manage to deliver the right balance of price and performance?

Here’s an in-depth look at the 2024 Lenovo LOQ 15.

Design and build

The refreshed LOQ 15 looks more or less identical to the outgoing model which made its debut last year. You get a plastic construction, yet it doesn’t feel cheap. Lenovo has done a great job in terms of the finish, and the laptop feels worthy of its cost. The edges and corners are nicely refined and the hinge is rock solid, with minor screen wobble.

I also love how Lenovo continues to add an extension on the lid which makes it easier to open the laptop with just one hand. Speaking of which, the hinge allows the display to open all the way back up to 180-degrees, which is excellent if you want to avoid reflection and glares. The lid has the LOQ and Lenovo logos placed vertically on the top and bottom corners, while the ports are mostly moved to the back, similar to the company’s Legion range of laptops.

Now the minimalistic industrial design may not align with gamer aesthetics, but it can certainly fit in casual and professional environments alike. In terms of portability, the laptop weighs 2.38kgs with a maximum thickness of 0.94-inch… typical for a mid-ranged gaming laptop. On top of that, the 230W charging brick adds more bulk. Essentially, the LOQ 15 is not going to be the most convenient gaming laptop if you travel frequently.


For I/O you get two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, an Ethernet jack, HDMI 2.1 and the charging port, all placed at the rear. On the right side, there’s an additional USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 (DisplayPort 1.4 + 140W Power Delivery), a headphone/mic combo and a webcam shutter button.


The exhaust vents are placed on the rear while the bottom cover has ventilation holes for the two cooling fans to pull in fresh air. The cover also has rubberised feet which offer a good grip when using the laptop on a smooth surface. To remove the bottom cover, there are 10 screws (6x long and 4x small) with standard Philips heads. Removing the bottom panel carefully with a prying tool gives you access to the battery, two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots (under a protected shield), two M.2 slots for SSD storage, and the Wi-Fi card. If you notice, there’s room for a bigger battery and one of the M.2 SSD slots uses a smaller 2242 size as opposed to the standard 2280. There is a good scope for upgradability in my opinion, particularly the review unit that was sent to me as it included a single 16GB RAM stick leaving the second SO-DIMM slot for additional memory.

Display

The base variant of the LOQ 15 comes with a 15.6-inch full HD (1,920 x 1,080) IPS display with 144Hz refresh rate and support for Nvidia G-Sync. This panel is capable of 100 percent sRGB colour gamut with a rated peak brightness of 300 nits.

There is support for adaptive refresh rate as well, wherein the panel drops to 60Hz when you unplug the charger and goes back to 144Hz when you plug it in. This feature can be enabled or disabled via the Lenovo Vantage software and is quite useful when you want to save on some battery.

The matte coating helps reduce reflections and glares while brightness is good enough for indoor usage. Having said that, backlight uniformity could have been better, but I believe Lenovo had to cut some corners to maintain the price of the laptop. In terms of gaming, the visual experience just about hits the mark, and even though the response times aren’t the fastest, that shouldn’t be a big deal but unless you are an esports professional.

I found the display to be adequate for most day-to-day computing tasks and media consumption, but if you care for better visuals, the 1440p panel should be a much better choice. Overall the display isn’t that bad and offers the bare minimum that is expected from a gaming laptop at this price range, especially in terms of brightness and colour reproduction.

Keyboard and trackpad

The laptop boasts a full-sized keyboard complete with a dedicated numpad and a spacious layout. Like most Lenovo laptops, the keyboard has been borrowed from the company’s ThinkPad lineup with keycaps that have a curved bottom. Having a 1.5mm key travel and 100 percent anti-ghosting support, the typing experience was excellent. In fact I was able to type efficiently and get used to the layout rather quickly.

Now you don’t get per-key RGB lighting, hence you are limited to a 4-zone setup. It is well implemented though, and the LEDs shine through the key legends making it easier to type in dark or low lit environments. As with most Lenovo gaming laptops, you can switch between RGB modes by using the Fn + Spacebar combination while the Fn + Q key combo lets you switch between the various performance modes.

Moving on to the touchpad, I found it to be responsive and supporting Windows gestures seamlessly. Switching between Windows, scrolling through web pages and even tracking while doing precise photo edits felt snappy. I would have loved to have a glass finish, but I guess that would be asking too much from a laptop that is primarily targeted at budget-conscious users.

Software and performance

The Lenovo LOQ 15 comes with Windows 11 Home pre-installed but you can also opt for the Pro version by paying extra. There is a suite of Lenovo’s preinstalled apps all of which are mostly just bloatware, except the Vantage app which can be used to control various aspects of the laptop.

Apart from monitoring the hardware Vantage lets you choose between the various performance modes, control the MUX switch, enable fast battery charging, control audio options, check for system updates, and so on.

When it comes to performance modes, Vantage allows you to choose between Performance, Balance, Silent and Custom. Performance mode offers the most out of the hardware, however choosing the Custom mode allows you to further tune the CPU and GPU power and thermal limits. If you don’t understand how thermal limitations work, I would advise you not to mess with any settings as it can potentially damage the hardware.

Using Vantage you can also control the built-in MUX Switch that lets you choose how the system accesses the discrete graphics card (dGPU) and integrated graphics card (iGPU). Disabling the dGPU and using only the iGPU ensures the best battery life, while forcing the system to only use the dGPU and disable the iGPU completely ensures the best graphics performance. There are two additional hybrid modes that automatically switch between both GPUs to offer balanced performance.

As for performance, the system relies on the Intel Core i7-14700HX which is part of Intel’s Rocket Lake refresh series featuring 20 cores, 28 threads and a maximum boost clock speed of up to 5.5GHz. There’s also 16GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. Now while I would’ve preferred dual-channel memory, Lenovo does offer the option to configure 2x8GB or a single 16GB stick. Powering the graphics is Nvidia’s RTX 4060 with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, 115W rated TGP, and 2,370MHz boost clock speeds.

The laptop features an improved cooling system compared to the previous generation where Lenovo is using two heat pipes and two cooling fans that have a ‘sealed chamber’ to direct airflow in a single channel. Air is pulled in from the bottom and exhausts from the back. This is nice to see as all the hot air goes out from the back instead of having vents on the sides which usually end up spewing hot air onto your hands while gaming.

At full load, the fans ramp up fast and are quite audible, although that shouldn’t be an issue if you use a decent pair of earphones. The CPU has a rated TDP of 157W and it can push well over 100W when stressed, although it hovers around 80W during gaming as most of the power is directed towards the GPU. Speaking of which, the RTX 4060 on the LOQ 15 managed to peak around 110W while both chips recorded a temperature of under 85 degrees at sustained loads.

Here’s a look at some of the synthetic benchmark results:

As you can see, the LOQ 15 scored 1,254 points in Cinebench 2024’s multi-core CPU benchmark test and 100 points in single-core. As for Cinebench R23, it scored 23,128 points in CPU multi-core and 1,697 points in single core. PCMark 10 is another great benchmark tool to quantify performance and the laptop managed to deliver an overall score of 9,568 points which is a significant jump when compared to the Core i7-13700H. The LOQ 15 also shines when it comes to benchmarks that stress the GPU wherein the laptop scored over 25,000 points in 3DMark Fire Strike and over 10,000 points in Time Spy.

Moving to gaming, I had a pretty satisfying experience at 1080p with the RTX 4060 managing to handle most games with ease. Here’s a quick look at what kind of frames per second (FPS) you can expect at various settings.

Considering that the RTX 4060 on this laptop can boost up to 110W, most modern AAA games should run without any issues. Even demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077 can achieve stable framerates of 90fps and beyond, thanks to upscaling technologies.

Battery life

The LOQ 15 features a 60Whr battery unit and in my testing testing, I was able to get about 4 hours of battery life. That’s a bit disappointing especially since there is enough space for a larger battery unit. Now your mileage is going to vary depending on the performance mode enabled, so if you want the most out of the battery, I suggest switching to the iGPU-only mode. Additionally, you can reduce the screen refresh rate and brightness and maybe even turn off the keyboard backlight.

The bundled 230W charger supports Super Rapid Charge Pro which is basically a fast charging feature. It promises to charge the laptop’s battery by up to 40 percent capacity in 10 minutes, 80 percent in 30 minutes, and 100 percent within 60 minutes. In my testing, the charging speeds were more or less similar to Lenovo’s claims. The laptop also supports 140W USB Type-C charging which is nice to see, but sadly I didn’t have a powerful enough charger to test this feature.

Verdict

With a starting price of about Rs 1,15,000, the new Lenovo LOQ 15 is a highly competitive gaming notebook. While the standard 1080p display is good enough though, I would rather have a higher resolution 1440p display at this size format. Despite not having premium aesthetics, I was pretty satisfied with the implementation as the laptop doesn’t look cheap and seems to justify the cost. Of course, it is bulkier than most modern gaming notebooks, and falls behind when it comes to battery life, which is something that most gaming laptops struggle with anyway. Other minor points of concern are the webcam and speakers, both of which are average. Competitors like the ASUS TUF Gaming A16, Dell G15 Gaming, and the new MSI Cyborg 15 with Intel’s new Core Ultra processors, are all viable options available in the same price range. 

All said and done, the Lenovo LOQ 15 is one of the only gaming laptops that features Intel’s latest 14th-gen processor. That, combined with an RTX 4060 GPU, makes it a great option for gamers who seek a reliable machine for 1080p gaming. The combination of Intel’s Core i7-14700HX and Nvidia’s RTX 4060 ensures solid performance and Lenovo has ensured users have proper control using the Vantage software too.

Editor’s rating: 7.5 / 10

Pros:

• Powerful 20-core CPU
• Great port placement
• Excellent keyboard
• Good scope for upgradability

Cons:

• Battery life
• Base 1080p display could be better
• Large and bulky
• Mediocre speakers and webcam