Lenovo LOQ 15 (2023) Laptop Review

The Lenovo LOQ is only available in a Storm Gray color scheme. See the bottom of the laptop here.

The Lenovo LOQ 15APH8's build quality is decent. It's entirely plastic, which is typical for a budget-friendly laptop. There's a fair amount of flex on the lid and keyboard deck, and the display twists a bit; however, these issues aren't bad enough to be dealbreakers. The laptop feels otherwise well-assembled, except for the display, which isn't lined up with the body when opened, turning the display slightly to one side. The finish doesn't scratch or pick up fingerprints easily, and the feet are solid.

The hinges feel smooth, and while they have a lot of resistance, you can still easily open the laptop with one hand. That said, there's a fair amount of screen wobble when moving the laptop or touching the screen.

The Lenovo LOQ has many user-replaceable parts, but accessing the internals is challenging. First, you need to remove a few screws holding a panel at the back of the laptop (where the RGB lighting and ports are) and remove the panel. You then need to remove more screws to remove the main bottom panel. There are 13 screws in total, and they're of different sizes, so it's best to keep them organized to make the reassembly easier. A prying tool is necessary to undo the clips, and you'll have to be careful, as the clips feel fragile and can break easily.

See the hardware maintenance manual here.

• 170W power adapter and cord
• Documentation

Note: Models with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU have a 230W power adapter.

The Lenovo LOQ is available with the following displays:

• 15.6" IPS 1920 x 1080 60Hz
• 15.6" IPS 1920 x 1080 144Hz
• 15.6" IPS 2560 x 1440 165Hz

A 1080p resolution looks decently sharp on a 15.6-inch screen. You can see individual pixels up close, but this isn't an issue at typical viewing distances. The QHD display is noticeably sharper with a pixel density of 188 PPI, though you'll have to pair it with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU to get the most out of it.

As specified in the screen specs section, you can get this laptop with a 60Hz, 144Hz, or 165Hz display. For gaming, getting a model with a 144Hz or 165Hz display is best, as they'll deliver a clearer image and provide better responsiveness. The 144Hz FHD panel doesn't have the best response time, so expect to see some ghosting behind fast-moving objects. There isn't a significant difference in responsiveness between the 144Hz and 165Hz panels, though the latter likely has a slightly faster response time. The 60Hz panel will probably perform like any other 60Hz display on productivity laptops and is the only one that doesn't support variable refresh rate.

The 144Hz FHD display's contrast ratio is good and within the typical range for most IPS panels. However, it's still relatively low compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings. The other panels likely have the same contrast ratio.

The 144Hz FHD display gets bright enough for use in most indoor environments but is too dim for outdoors in broad daylight. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness settings, which is great for dark room viewing, as it causes less eye strain. The 165Hz QHD display has the same advertised brightness (350 cd/m²), while the 60Hz FHD display has a slightly lower advertised brightness of 300 cd/m².

The display's reflection handling is decent. Its matte coating works well against mirror-like reflections; however, it doesn't do much to reduce the intensity of bright light sources and creates a hazy, halo effect in other areas of the screen, making dark-color content hard to see. Bright reflections are visible when viewing light-color content with the screen at maximum brightness, but they aren't overly distracting.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out relatively quickly as you move to the side, so you need to be more or less directly in front of the screen to get the best accuracy.

The display's vertical viewing angle is okay. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image dims and washes when viewing from above and below, so you need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image, which can be challenging in tight places where you don't have much room to tilt the screen, like on a bus or airplane.

The display's accuracy is mediocre out of the box. The white balance inaccuracies are relatively minor and hard to spot; however, many colors are visibly off due to the panel's narrow color gamut, especially the highly saturated greens, reds, and blues. The gamma is closer to a flat 2.2 rather than following the curve, making dark scenes too dark and bright scenes too bright.

The 144Hz FHD display has a poor color gamut. It doesn't even have full coverage of the commonly used sRGB color space, making most content look slightly washed out. The 60Hz FHD display has the same color gamut as the 144Hz panel, while the 165Hz QHD display has 100% sRGB coverage.

The Lenovo LOQ laptop has a good keyboard. Its layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. The keys have a decent amount of key travel and don't require much force to actuate; however, they provide very little tactile and audio feedback, so it's sometimes hard to know if you've actuated a key. Also, key stability is inconsistent, as some keys wiggle more than others. Depending on how you type, you might find that the touchpad is in the way, causing you to rest your wrist in an awkward manner. The backlighting is white, leaning on the cooler side. There are models with a 4-zone RGB backlighting, although these variants are only available in specific regions. The backlight shines through the legends but is a little too dim.

The Lenovo LOQ has a good touchpad. Its size is decent, and it tracks all movements and gestures well. However, dragging and dropping doesn't always work because it’s hard to keep the button pressed while dragging over a long distance. You can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad, which is typical for a non-haptic touchpad, though the buttons feel cheap and plasticky. The touchpad's placement is very much to the left, which can be uncomfortable for some people, as it leaves little room to rest the left wrist.

The speakers get decently loud with minimal compression at higher volume levels. They sound clear but boxy and unnatural, with very little bass.

The Lenovo LOQ has a decent webcam. The image has a fair amount of fine detail, but the colors and tint are slightly off. As for the audio, while voices sound loud and clear over the microphone, there's some background static noise, and sibilants are slightly over-accentuated. There isn't a physical privacy cover; however, there's an E-shutter switch on the right side of the laptop that turns off the camera. Some models have a 720p webcam, so check the specifications if this matters to you.

The Lenovo LOQ has a great port selection. The USB-A port on the laptop's right side supports USB 2.0 data transfer speed of up to 480Mbps, while the two on the back support USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed (up to 10Gbps). The USB-C port also supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed. You can charge the laptop via USB-C, but it can only take up to 140W of power, meaning the battery will discharge when plugged in if you do something intensive, like gaming. The HDMI is a true HDMI 2.1 port that can output a 4k @ 120Hz signal.

The Lenovo LOQ 15 2023's wireless adapter is a MediaTek Wi-Fi 6 MT7921.

The Lenovo LOQ 15 is available with the following CPUs:

• AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS (6 cores, 12 threads, up to 5.0GHz, 16MB L3 cache)
• AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.1GHz, 16MB L3 cache)

Both are high-performance CPUs typically found in workstations and gaming laptops, but unlike the more common H-series processors, they run at a lower wattage of 35W. These CPUs can handle fairly demanding tasks like video editing, programming, and gaming. The Ryzen 7 7840HS is noticeably faster than the Ryzen 5 7640HS in multi-threaded applications, up to 30% faster in some workloads.

The Lenovo LOQ 15 is available with the following GPUs:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 VRAM (95W TGP)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 VRAM (95W TGP)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 VRAM (115W TGP)

All three GPUs can handle 1080p gaming; you just have to tweak the settings a bit more on the lower-end RTX 3050 to get over 60 fps in highly demanding games. Models with a QHD display are only configurable with an RTX 4050 or 4060. Naturally, the RTX 4060 is the better option for 1440p gaming, though you might still need to tweak the settings a bit in the most demanding games. The main difference between the 30-series and 40-series GPUs (other than raw performance) is the addition of Frame Generation, a feature that boosts frame rates by inserting A.I.-generated frames. Few games currently support this feature, but as we've seen with DLSS, that number will grow quickly. Regarding the RTX 4050 and 4060's TGP (Total Graphics Power), although they aren't as high as we've seen on other laptops, like the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8 16 (2023), the performance difference isn't significant because the power scaling usually plateaus around 90W to 95W on the 40-series GPUs, so anything above that has minimal effect.

This laptop has a MUX (multiplexer) switch, a feature that allows the GPU to send information directly to the display without going through the integrated GPU, resulting in better performance than on laptops without this feature. The performance difference can be anywhere from 10% to 25%, or more in some cases.

You can configure this laptop with 8GB or 16GB of RAM. The memory is user-replaceable.

You can configure this laptop with 512GB or 1TB of storage. The storage is user-replaceable. There are two slots, one for an M.2 2242 and another for an M.2 2280 SSD.

The Lenovo LOQ has an outstanding overall score in Geekbench 5. The AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS has strong single- and multi-thread performance, making it suitable for general productivity tasks and highly demanding workloads. That said, there are significantly faster CPUs on the market, like AMD's own Ryzen 9 7845HX in the Dell Alienware m18 (2023). The Ryzen 5 7640HS is slower in multi-threaded workloads, as it has fewer physical cores. As for the GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU performs well and is suitable for intensive tasks; just know that there are much faster GPUs.

The Lenovo LOQ's AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU performs remarkably well in the Cinebench R23 benchmarks. It has no problems handling demanding multi-threaded applications and general heavy multitasking. The AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS CPU has weaker multi-thread performance but can handle fairly intensive tasks.

The Lenovo LOQ is outstanding for 3D rendering work in Blender, as the NVIDIA discrete GPUs render images very quickly.

The Lenovo LOQ's NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU performs well in the Basemark GPU benchmark, scoring almost identically to the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8 (2023) equipped with a 140W version of the same GPU. A GPU overclock feature boosts performance slightly, raising the score to 111933 (a little over 5% performance increase). Among the three available GPUs, the RTX 3050 is the slowest. It's mainly designed for 1080p gaming with medium or low settings. The RTX 4050 is also for 1080p gaming but can handle some games at 1440p, especially in games that support DLSS and Frame Generation. The RTX 4060 can handle most games at 1440p with some tweaks in the settings.

Models with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU and/or 60Hz display will likely have longer battery life, while models with a QHD display and/or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU will likely have shorter battery life.

The Lenovo LOQ 15APH8 with a Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU and RTX 4050 GPU runs Borderlands well. The gameplay is mostly smooth; there are some noticeable stutters, but they don't happen all that often. Turning on the GPU overclock boosts the frame rate to 99 fps at 1080p with high settings, roughly a 9% performance increase.

Civilization VI runs very smoothly. Every configuration can handle this game with no issues. Turning on the GPU overclock feature boosts frame rates slightly to 157 fps at 1080p with high settings.

Counter-Strike 2 runs well. Except for some occasional stutters, the gameplay is very smooth. Every CPU/GPU configuration can push high frame rates in this game at 1080p; you can even play at 1440p with no issues. The GPU overclock feature boosts the average frame rate to 210 fps at 1080p with high settings.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs well on the Lenovo LOQ. Except for some occasional stutters, the gameplay is smooth. You can even play this game at 1440p with only a few tweaks in the settings, especially on models with an RTX 4050 or 4060. The RTX 3050 can handle 1440p, but you'll have to lower some settings and use DLSS to get high frame rates. Turning on the GPU overclock feature boosts the frame rate to 130 fps at 1080p with high settings, roughly a 5% performance increase. The large frametime spikes are scene changes and aren't representative of the performance.

The keyboard deck doesn't get uncomfortably hot under load, and the hot spots are near the top of the deck, away from where most people rest their hands. The fans are loud, but the noise isn't annoying, as it's only the sound of whirring fans, not a high-pitch whine. You can change the fan profile, though the other profiles don't seem to do much.

The higher-wattage NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU probably runs hotter, but considering the RTX 4050's low temperature, it's unlikely to throttle, as there's a fair amount of headroom.

The Lenovo LOQ has many pre-installed software applications, including:

• AMD Software: Lets you tweak the performance and power settings, check for updates, change the display's color profile, create hotkeys, monitor system status, and view system information.
• Lenovo Hotkeys: Lets you create keyboard macros.
• Lenovo Now: Ads for Lenovo Support Services, like Accidental Damage Protection and Smart Lock (remote lock and data wipe). Also contains ads for Amazon Music, Dropbox, Adobe Acrobat, and Lenovo accessories.
• Lenovo Vantage: Lets you check for drivers/BIOS updates, view system status, change power and audio settings, and view warranty information.
• McAfee: Antivirus and anti-malware application.
• Nahimic: SteelSeries-branded audio customization and configuration utility.
• Solitaire and casual games: Solitaire, FreeCell, Spider, Mahjong, Sudoku, and other casual games.
• Spotify: App for the music streaming service.