Pros
- Good 3D performance for the price
- Roomy, comfortable keyboard
- Room to expand RAM and SSD
Cons
- 15.6-inch, 16:9 display looks outdated and limits overall use
- Drab design and no RGB lighting
- No biometrics for easy, secure logins
- Lacks fast Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 port
The Lenovo LOQ 15 is an old-school 15.6-inch gaming laptop powered by present-day AMD and Nvidia silicon. Most gaming laptops have transitioned from 15.6-inch, 16:9 displays to taller, more modern 16-inch, 16:10 panels, but the LOQ 15 is helping to keep the widescreen tradition alive. Most games are still designed for 1080p and other 16:9 resolutions, but you can still play games at 1080p on a 1200p display, and I like getting the added vertical space for non-gaming pursuits, such as web browsing, writing and spreadsheeting, because more lines of text or rows of a spreadsheet fit on the screen.
Just based on the display aspect ratio alone, I prefer a 16-inch gaming laptop such as the Alienware 16X Aurora, HP Omen 16 or Lenovo’s own Legion 5i Gen 10. But if you don’t mind the outdated look of the 15.6-inch LOQ 15 or seek it out for the types of games you like to play, then you’ll get good bang for your buck from its AMD Ryzen 7 250 processor and Nvidia RTX 5060 graphics. Lenovo smartly puts most of the LOQ 15’s budget toward the RTX 5060 graphics, which helps its 3D framerates compete with those of pricier models, albeit at the expense of general application performance. That’s a trade-off most gamers on a budget will make.
Lenovo LOQ 15AHP10
| Price as reviewed | $1,029 |
|---|---|
| Display size/resolution | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 IPS 144Hz |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 250 |
| Memory | 16GB DDR5-5600 |
| Graphics | 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 @ 115W |
| Storage | 512GB SSD |
| Ports | USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, HDMI 2.1, Gigabit Ethernet, combo audio |
| Networking | Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Operating system | Windows 11 Home |
| Weight | 5.36 pounds (2.43 kg) |
The Lenovo LOQ 15 (15AHP10) series starts at $1,000 at Lenovo for a system with an AMD Ryzen 5 220, 16GB of RAM, RTX 5050 graphics and a 512GB SSD. My test system keeps the RAM and SSD at their baseline levels but bumps you up to a Ryzen 7 250 and RTX 5060 graphics and costs $1,029 at Amazon. All models feature the same display: a 15.6-inch IPS panel with a 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution and 144Hz refresh rate.
The Lenovo LOQ 15AHP10 starts at 1,144 in the UK and AU$1,699 in Australia.
Lenovo LOQ 15AHP10 performance
The Lenovo LOQ 15 is strong where it counts: 3D performance. Among a group of budget-to-midrange gaming laptops I’ve tested recently with Nvidia 50-series GPUs, it finished toward the back on our Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 tests, on both the single-core and multi-core versions of each. That’s not to say that it felt sluggish. Navigating about in Windows and multitasking with more open Chrome tabs than I care to admit felt speedy and was lag-free. It’s just that its Ryzen 7 250 CPU was unable to keep up with Intel-based systems like the Alienware 16X Aurora, Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 and MSI Katana 15 HX on our application benchmarks.
Things improved, however, on our 3D graphics and gaming tests. The LOQ 15 posted frame rates on par with other RTX 5060 laptops, with the exception of the Guardians of the Galaxy benchmark, where it was slightly slower. It had its strongest showings on our newest gaming benchmarks, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and F1, where it proved its mettle as a potent 1080p gaming machine.
The Lenovo LOQ 15 also performed admirably in battery testing. It lasted close to 8 hours on our YouTube streaming battery drain test, which isn’t bad for a big-screen, high-powered gaming laptop. The HP Omen 16 lasted six hours longer, but its nearly 14-hour battery life is an outlier among gaming laptops. Going the other way, the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 failed to pass the 5.5-hour mark on the test, but it has a high-resolution OLED display, which is a bigger drain on the battery than a lower-res IPS panel. The LOQ 15’s roughly 8-hour battery life should suffice for lugging the LOQ 15 around between gaming sessions, where you’re almost certain to be playing on AC power.
Whether running on AC or battery power, the LOQ 15’s fans kicked in regularly. The noise they created was generally tolerable, but a few times, they became annoyingly loud during gaming. The LOQ 15 is a little louder than the average gaming laptop.
In addition to the two cooling fans, you’ll also find some room to expand inside the LOQ 15. The RAM is user-replaceable, and the 16GB in my review unit comes as one stick, leaving a free DIMM slot for easy expansion. There’s also a free M.2 slot to add a second SSD, which is useful since it won’t take more than a few games installed locally before you fill up the laptop’s 512GB SSD.
Drab design
Aside from the stylized power button above the keyboard, which glows either red, blue or white (depending on the power mode), the LOQ 15 has a monochrome look that’s more corporate workstation than gaming laptop. The gray-and-black, all-plastic chassis is definitely an example of function over form. It even lacks RGB keyboard backlighting, which would add a bit of flair to the otherwise dull design.
It may not be the most exciting-looking gaming laptop, but the LOQ 15 has a solid feel and a comfortable keyboard. The plastic keyboard deck is fairly rigid, holding up well under the frantic mashing of keys during games. I wish the key feedback felt a little snappier, but there’s enough travel to keep them from feeling mushy. And I like having four full-size arrow keys separated from the rest of the keyboard, despite also having a number pad, which often forces at least two and sometimes all four arrow keys to get the annoying half-height treatment.
The keyboard backlighting is a personality-less white. Lenovo offers 24-zone RGB backlighting on some LOQ 15 models, but my eval unit didn’t have it. I feel like any gaming laptop ought to have RGB backlighting, even if it’s just a single zone. (In fact, I think the 24 zones were a bit overkill on the Legion 5i Gen 10.)
In addition to the dull gray enclosure and boring white keyboard backlighting, the 15.6-inch display gives the LOQ 15 its corporate workhorse look. It looks like a laptop your company might have handed you in 2006. The plastic bezels that frame the display give the LOQ 15 a definite budget look, and the bottom bezel is comically wide.
The display itself is a pedestrian 1080p, 144Hz IPS panel that did nothing to distinguish itself other than prove to be a bit brighter than its brightness rating. Rated for 300 nits, it hit a peak of 341 nits on my tests with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter. It also covered 100% of the sRGB color gamut but only 77% of AdobeRGB and 82% of P3, which is not unexpected for a low-end IPS panel and the larger color spaces.
The widescreen 16:9 display is best suited for playing 1080p games and watching shows and movies. Movement in games and movies looked smooth on the 144Hz, and you also have the ability to use a variable refresh rate that drops the rate to 60Hz when you aren’t gaming to extend battery life.
Like the display, the LOQ 15’s speakers failed to distinguish themselves. It’s a typical pair of 2-watt stereo speakers that emit a typically weak laptop sound.
The webcam, however, is a step above true budget fare. Some budget laptops still serve up a fuzzy 720p webcam, but Lenovo outfitted the LOQ 15 with a crisp 1080p camera. The image it produces is closer to that of the 1440p cam you get with the pricier Legion 5i Gen 10 than the grainy, poorly balanced picture of the 720p one in other budget gaming laptops like the Acer Nitro V 16S AI or MSI Katana 15 HX. Without an IR sensor, however, the webcam can’t be used for Windows Hello facial recognition for logins. And there’s no fingerprint reader, so you’ve got no way for easy, secure biometric logins.
The LOQ 15 has a decent selection of ports, but there’s only one USB Type-C port. And the lone USB-C port offers a transfer rate of only 10Gbps, which is a far cry from the 40Gbps you’d get from Thunderbolt 4 or USB4.
Is the Lenovo LOQ 15 a good gaming laptop?
The LOQ 15 is worth considering as a secondary laptop specifically for gaming. Its 15.6-inch, 16:9 display can feel cramped for general use compared to roomier and taller 16-inch, 16:10 displays, but its resolution and aspect ratio are perfectly suited for 1080p gaming. And you’ll get more than playable frame rates at 1080p from its RTX 5060 GPU.
For a more versatile gaming laptop, I recommend the Acer Nitro V 16S AI, which has an RTX 5060 but a bigger and brighter 16-inch display, more RAM and storage, some aluminum in its build and RGB backlighting. It costs about $250 more but is the better value. Moving up the price scale a little further, I also like the Alienware 16X Aurora and Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10. The HP Omen 16 is also a good choice, especially when it’s on sale.
The review process for laptops, desktops, tablets and other computerlike devices consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our expert reviewers. This includes evaluating a device’s aesthetics, ergonomics and features. A final review verdict is a combination of both objective and subjective judgments.
The list of benchmarking software we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. The most important core tests we’re currently running on every compatible computer include Primate Labs Geekbench 6, Cinebench R23, PCMark 10 and 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra.
A more detailed description of each benchmark and how we use it can be found on our How We Test Computers page.
