Lenovo LOQ 15 review: A solid entry-level gaming laptop

The Lenovo LOQ 15 with AMD Ryzen 5 hardware is a budget gaming laptop through and through. For $799 or less, this 15-inch machine can play the latest games at low settings. But, while Lenovo has delivered a reasonable package here, there’s no getting around this machine’s low-end GPU and CPU.

This machine can do the job, and that’s admirable. Lenovo delivered decent build quality and lots of ports. But the CPU and GPU here are about the bare minimum of what’s acceptable in a gaming laptop at the end of 2024 and the battery life is unusually low.

Further reading: Best gaming laptops 2024: What to look for and highest-rated models

Lenovo LOQ 15: Specs

The Lenovo LOQ 15ARP9 is a 15.6-inch gaming laptop with an AMD CPU. Lenovo offers several different models of this machine. The Lenovo LOQ we reviewed is the $799 model with a four-core AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS CPU, 12 GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU with 6 GB of VRAM, and a 512 GB SSD.

• Model number: 15ARP9
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS
• Memory: 12 GB DDR5 RAM
• Graphics/GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 6GB
• Display: 15.6-inch 1920×1080 IPS display with 144Hz refresh rate
• Storage: 512 GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
• Webcam: 720p webcam
• Connectivity: 1x USB Type-C (USB 3.2), 3x USB Type-A (USB 3.2), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo audio jack 1x Ethernet, 1x DC power in
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3
• Biometrics: None
• Battery capacity: 60 Watt-hours
• Dimensions: 0.94 x 14.17 x 10.19 inches
• Weight: 5.39 pounds
• MSRP: $799 as tested

It’s hard to argue with a 15-inch gaming laptop for $799 that can play the latest games, even if it is at low detail settings. And it’s especially hard to argue with this machine when Lenovo has put an unusual amount of effort into the build quality.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Design and build quality

The Lenovo LOQ 15 is a 15.6-inch gaming laptop that uses a lot of grays and blacks. It doesn’t have the “gamer aesthetic” found on many gaming laptops. The only visible signs it’s a gaming laptop are the “LOQ” logo on the lid and the fact that it’s rather chunky compared to the average thin-and-light laptop.

The Lenovo LOQ 15 uses a lot of plastic in its chassis, which is no surprise for a bargain-priced gaming laptop. At 5.39 pounds, it’s also a little on the heavy side for a gaming laptop of this size.

Lenovo has done a great job with the build quality here, plastic and weight aside. It’s solid and well put together with no weird flexing. The hinge feels good, and it’s easy to open the laptop with one hand. It’s unusually good for the price range.

There is a good amount of bloatware preinstalled here — lots of pop-up messages out of the box, including from McAfee. You can uninstall this stuff, of course.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Keyboard and trackpad

The Lenovo LOQ 15 has a full-size keyboard complete with a number pad at the right side. The keyboard offers a white backlight.

This laptop’s keyboard is spacious and feels reasonable to type on. It’s not mushy, but there is a bit of a “soft” feel when you bottom out each key. The activation isn’t as crisp as it would be on a high-end ThinkPad or a mechanical keyboard, for example. But again, this is an $800 gaming laptop, so we’re not expecting the very best feel from the keys here. They’re pretty good and I had no problem playing PC games with this keyboard.

The trackpad is a good size — on the larger side, but it doesn’t feel too large. While it’s plastic like the rest of the laptop, it feels nice and smooth and very response, with a click-down action that also feels great. This is a great trackpad for the price point.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Display and speakers

The Lenovo LOQ 15 has a 15.6-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920×1080 and a refresh rate of 144 Hz. The biggest problem with the display is its low maximum brightness. At 300 nits, this is a dim display and I had to crank it way up to enjoy playing games on it.

The display looks okay aside from that — but, naturally, just okay. You won’t find the vivid colors of an OLED here nor will you find the more accurate color reproduction of a more expensive IPS panel.

Still, it’s not bad. 1920×1080 makes sense as a resolution to play games on given this machine’s hardware. And 144 Hz is a reasonable refresh rate, too. (For the record, this isn’t a touch screen).

The speakers aren’t great. Firing up Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I aimed to give the speakers a longer test drive than I managed — but I quickly had to plug in headphones for better audio quality. The speakers are on the quiet side, too. They’ll be okay for listening to a YouTube video or online meeting, but you’ll want to plug in a good pair of headphones or external speakers for gaming. Still, this is to be expected for a budget gaming laptop in this price range.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

The Lenovo LOQ 15 includes a 720p front-facing camera. Let’s be honest here: This is a 720p webcam on an $800 gaming laptop. We know this isn’t going to be the best webcam for online meetings.

The picture it produces is a little low-resolution, sure — it’s a 720p webcam. Still, as far as 720p webcams in $800 gaming laptops go, it’s fine. You’ll be able to use it in an online meeting now and then.

Lenovo includes a physical webcam shutter switch on the right side of the laptop, which is great to see — and also the kind of feature you don’t necessarily expect to see on a budget gaming laptop.

The built-in microphone is surprisingly good. It doesn’t have the absolute best audio quality. But it produces very clear audio. Using it for voice chat while playing some Diablo IV, my companions were happy with its clarity.

Unfortunately, this laptop doesn’t offer any biometrics. There’s no fingerprint reader or IR camera for Windows Hello sign-in. These are convenient ways to quickly sign into Windows. But it makes sense that Lenovo would omit these components to keep the cost down.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Connectivity                                                    

The Lenovo LOQ 15 offers a good selection of ports. On the left side, there are no ports — instead, Lenovo places many of this machine’s ports on the back of the laptop. That’s where I like to see them to keep the cables out of the way.

On the back of the laptop, you’ll find a DC power in port, two USB Type-A ports, one HDMI 2.1 out port, and an Ethernet jack.

On the right side of the laptop, you’ll find a third USB Type-A port along with a USB Type-C port and a combo audio jack — plus a physical webcam shutter switch.

It’s a good collection of ports, complete with an Ethernet jack, which is something you don’t see on many gaming laptops. It’s worth noting that all the USB ports are USB 3.2 — no USB4 speeds here. And, with just one USB Type-C port, this machine is weighted toward the older USB Type-A standard — not a problem for many gamers, to be sure.

This laptop features Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 hardware. It’s no surprise that this machine doesn’t feature Wi-Fi 7 support, but it would be nice to at least see it support Wi-Fi 6E.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Performance

The Lenovo LOQ 15 combines an AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS CPU with 12 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU. There are two variants of the GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, and this machine has one with 6 GB of VRAM — an important upgrade over the lower-end 4 GB variant.

Still, there’s no getting around it: This is budget hardware. It’s an entry-level GPU along with just 12 GB of system RAM — many gaming laptops now start at 16 GB. The AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS CPU here only has four cores, too. It’s budget hardware at a budget price.

In real-world gaming, it performed alright. I fired up the demanding new Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and found it was playable (at low settings). That’s confirmation that this machine can get the job done.

Also, the cooling seems to work well. I love that the fans blow hot air out of the back of the laptop instead of the sides. The keyboard stays reasonably cool to the touch. And the fans, while audible, aren’t particularly loud — especially by the standards of a budget gaming laptop.

Anecdotes aside, we ran the Lenovo LOQ 15 through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs.

First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an overall PCMark 10 score of 6,059, this machine is in the back of the pack as far as gaming laptops go. The Acer Nitro V 15 costs $50 more than this machine and offers a little extra performance.

Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage.

The Lenovo LOQ 15’s AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS CPU only has four cores, so it’s no surprise to see it in the back of the pack here, too. A score of 2,763 is low. It’s worth noting that this is multithreaded performance, and this score is not representative of real game performance.

We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load.

The Lenovo LOQ 15 took 1,934 seconds to complete the encode process — that’s over 32 minutes. Once again, this is a slow result on a heavily multithreaded benchmark due to the CPU’s low core count.

Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This is a gaming laptop, so these gaming-focused benchmarks will tell us more about how the laptop will perform in PC games. First, we run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance.

With a 3DMark Time Spy score of 5,511, the Lenovo LOQ 15 is on the slow side when it comes to graphical performance — though certainly faster than the average laptop with integrated graphics. The main issue here is that entry-level Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU.

After that, we run the benchmarks built into some games. First, we use the built-in benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider to test all the gaming laptops we review. It’s an older game, but it’s a great way to compare graphical performance across different PCs.

The Lenovo LOQ 15 delivered an average of 76 FPS with our standard Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark settings — with the highest settings at 1080p resolution. No surprise again — it’s a lower score due to that RTX 3050 GPU.

Finally, we run the built-in benchmark in Metro Exodus. This is a more demanding game, and we set the benchmark to 1080p resolution at the Extreme detail setting.

The Lenovo LOQ 15 scored 23 FPS in this benchmark. Once again, this score is low — and that entry-level Nvidia GPU is likely the main cause. While 23 FPS isn’t an ideal playable frame rate for this game, you will of course be able to lower graphical settings and achieve a playable experience in this game.

Overall, the Lenovo LOQ 15 delivers low-end gaming performance. With its entry-level Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU and four-core AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS CPU, this isn’t a particularly fast gaming laptop. Still, the performance here is faster than you’ll see with integrated graphics, and it can play games. For $800, that’s something.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Battery life

The Lenovo LOG 15 has a 60 Watt-hour battery. Gaming laptops generally aren’t known for their long battery life, and this is a fairly small battery for such a larger laptop. That makes sense, as a larger battery costs more and Lenovo is on price and gaming performance here — not long battery life.

To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat in the Movies & TV app on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks, which meant cranking this machine’s brightness way up. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this.

The Lenovo LOQ lasted 196 minutes — that’s a bit over three hours — before suspending itself in our standard battery test. That’s on the low end even for a gaming laptop.

Here’s why: The AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS chip here does not include any integrated graphics. That means what, while on battery, the machine is always using the power-hungry Nvidia GeForce 3050 GPU. Combined with a battery that’s on the small side, this results in poor battery life.

This machine just doesn’t prioritize battery life. If that’s important to you, look elsewhere — and ensure your machine of choice has an integrated GPU.

Lenovo LOQ 15: Conclusion

The Lenovo LOQ 15’s benchmarks tell a clear story: This isn’t a particularly fast gaming laptop. On the other hand, it’s only $799 — and the build quality is unusually good for the price range.

It’s hard to argue with a 15-inch gaming laptop for $799 that can play the latest games, even if it is at low detail settings. And it’s especially hard to argue with this machine when Lenovo has put an unusual amount of effort into the build quality.

Still, I would encourage you to spend a bit more on a gaming laptop if you could. PCWorld’s favorite gaming laptop under $1,000 is currently the Acer Nitro V 16. It costs a bit more, but it delivers much better performance.

I also recommend keeping an eye on gaming laptop deals. You can get a faster gaming laptop for about $800 if you shop the laptop sales — and we’ve got a great regularly-updated guide to laptop sales here at PCWorld.

On the other hand, you might find this laptop on sale, too. Perhaps it’s hundreds of dollars off while you’re reading this! Now that would be an exciting deal. If you’re wondering whether this machine can do the job, the answer is yes. It may be an especially good value if the price drops further and you don’t have particularly demanding gaming needs.