The video gaming landscape in India is witnessing massive growth. However, most of this engagement happens on smartphones, especially with college students and young professionals. When these gamers look for an upgrade, to experience real video gaming, they usually look for laptops, which will not just be gaming machines but will also be their primary computing devices.
Lenovo with its latest LOQ series is trying to cater to this crowd, with its slightly affordable gaming laptops. I have been testing the Lenovo LOQ (82XV00K0SB) with the 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13620H CPU, and RTX 4050 GPU mobile GPU, and here is the full review of the same.
The rear-facing I/O helps with cable management (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
Lenovo LOQ gaming laptop: Design, form factor, and display
Lenovo has borrowed a lot of design elements from its more expensive Legion series. This includes my favourite aspect — a real I/O panel, which helps keep the gaming desk neat and tidy. Like most mid-tier gaming laptops, at 2.4 kg, it is definitely slightly on the heavier side. However, the machine is slim and the overall form factor makes it look like a well-crafted gaming device, especially the sky blue accent at the rear, around the exhaust area.
There are a few things that are missing on this laptop, including a microSD/SD card slot. Besides, there is no biometric authentication on this machine, which does make it slightly impractical.
The Lenovo LOQ has an above-average 15.6-inch 1080p screen with a 144Hz refresh rate. It gets adequately bright, with a peak rated brightness of 350 nits. Unlike some high-end gaming laptops, it does miss out on HDR support. However, the display does offer good colour reproduction for content consumption without any issues, especially indoors. The bezels across the display aren’t that thick, but they aren’t the thinnest either. It’s also worth noting that, there is a 720p web camera at the top, with a privacy shutter.
RBG backlighting definitely makes it look like a gaming machine (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
Lenovo LOQ gaming laptop: Keyboard and trackpad
The Lenovo LOQ has a well-laid-out keyboard with a dedicated numerical pad. On top of that, there is also RGB lighting support, although it does miss out on key-level lighting customisation. The keys offer a good amount of travel, although the feedback feels a bit mushy. The trackpad, on the other hand, is slightly larger and is definitely among one of the best trackpads that I have tested on a gaming laptop in this class.
I liked the uniquely positioned power button and the slightly more spaced-out arrow keys. Unlike some gaming laptops, where, one can feel the heat around the “WASD” keys area while gaming, I didn’t notice much of a heating on this machine. However, given this is a gaming laptop, I would have loved to see uniquely styled “WASD” keys to make them stand out.
The latest CPU and GPU ensure great performance (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
Lenovo LOQ gaming laptop: Performance
Thanks to the Intel Core i7-13620H, a 10-core 16-thread CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU with 6 GB video memory, this is a 1080p gaming powerhouse, that can easily handle most AAA titles at high graphics settings without any issue. On Geekbench 6, CPU benchmark, the laptop posted 2230 and 11583 points on single and multiple core tests. Similarly, on CPU-Z, the device posted 628.8 points on a single thread and 6572.3 points on a multi-thread CPU test.
Coming to the graphics performance, the laptop posted 82108 points on the Geekbench 6 OpenCL test and on the Superposition benchmark, the device posted an average fps of 72 at 1080p resolution and high graphics settings and 43 fps at 4k resolution at optimised graphics settings.
Most Read
I also played GTA: V on this machine, where, the fps was slightly over 90. While the laptop does not get loud or hot under normal day-to-day usage, with continuous gaming, the fans do kick in and you can definitely feel the heat on the back, left, and right side. However, it doesn’t get too hot or loud and I also didn’t notice any sort of thermal throttling.
The laptop has a slightly smaller battery (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
Lenovo LOQ gaming laptop: Battery life
The laptop is equipped with a 60Whr battery with support for fast charging, where, the laptop can be fully charged in just 80 minutes. It does ship with a proprietary charging port, and it also supports power delivery via the USB-C port located on the left side. Due to the slightly smaller battery, the laptop lasts around three and a half hours with regular usage and gaming does drain the battery fairly quickly and gaming just on the battery power also affects the overall performance of the device.
As good as Legion (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
Lenovo LOQ gaming laptop: Verdict
This is definitely a good gaming laptop that can handle most games without any issues. On top of that, even for non-gaming tasks, it performs well, without any issues. Despite being slightly heavier, there aren’t many compromises on this device, which makes it an exceptional laptop for students, working professionals, and anyone else who seeks a good-looking gaming laptop that does not compromise on performance.
