Lenovo LOQ 15.6" 144Hz Gaming Laptop FHD - Intel 12th Gen Core i5 with 12GB Memory - Intel Arc A530M - 512GB SSD - Luna Grey

Had some great first experience with using this Lenovo LOQ gaming device! My specifications are: -CPU: i5 1245HX -GPU: Intel A530M 4G -RAM: 12GB -HDD: 512gb SSD While the laptop itself it's a great daily for most of the people it can also be used as the name is suggesting for some basic gaming. Also those gaming characteristics make this Lenovo somehow strong enough for some editing. The screen works great and i recommend you going into the LOQ LenovoVantage app and select *Adaptive screen rate* this way goes from 144hz while plugged in into 60hz while on battery allowing you to stat charged longer while on the move. The built quality is strong and it really makes it a great enjoyable gaming laptop for someone that is just getting into it or someone that is not super hardcore. I love the hinges of the screen, and for being a 15.6" in size they hold it tight at any angle plus it allows it to go completely flat on the table. The keyboard is nice and very pleasant to use the whole surface of the laptop having a somewhat kind of grippy texture that make dropping this thing harder. The power up/off button has 4 colors indicating the operation mode(blue,white,red and purple) i taught that was pretty neath also! The speakers are ok, placed on both lower side of the laptop, they can get loud but there is no bass to it. The Fans are quiet on a daily operation and when they kick in under harder usage they do cool the laptop very well. Bottom Line : - I think this is a great budget friendly Gaming laptop if not the best so far for 2024!

Summary: Budgets are rarely fun, but Lenovo has done what it can to change that with the Lenovo LOQ Gaming Laptop. Make no mistake, this gets the work done (video editing, coding) but it remembers the person that likes to take breaks and play games on a budget. Good play for the buck. Pros: -Price, easy on the wallet and a value for what it offers. -144 hz monitor, silky smooth motion. - Backlit, full keyboard including a number pad and full size arrow keys (good for gaming). - 12 gb 4800 mh DDR5 Ram, reasonable for the price (expandable to 32). - 512 gb SSD Storage - Solid and streamlined build that feels premium, will fit anywhere. - Decent performance for casual gaming. A Matter of Taste: - 350 nits on the screen are never going to be called ‘bright’, but it’s fine inside under normal conditions. I left it at 85% normally so there was some headroom. - 1920 x 1080 is full HD, but not a retina screen. It’s okay for games and most work (not great for high resolution color sensitive photo editing). - I found the sound lacking, tinny with no bass. And max volume isn’t that max. But it was good enough for games. For movies I wore headphones. -Plastic build, looks premium, and does not seem to attract a lot of fingerprints. - Not a touch screen, and does not have a fingerprint reader. - It won’t play AAA at ultimate settings, but did you expect it to for this price? Can get 60 fps at low settings. - Middle of the road size trackpad, requires a firm click. - So so web cam. Gets the job done, but won’t impress. - So so battery life even on low power mode. Long enough for an afternoon of general use (but not gaming). Cons: -Heavyish for what it delivers in terms of power (5.3 lbs). -Nonstandard charging cord. You can charge the battery by USB-C, but not run and charge the computer at the same time (with USB-C). More Words: They might have called this a gaming “Notebook” versus “Laptop” to better set the stage of expectations. This isn’t your $2500 gaming Laptop screamer, but what you save in money you can buy all the games you want, a top-grade gaming chair and desk, and a year of snacks. So what did they chop off to save bundles of money? The build is all plastic. It has basic ports, included are 4 USB ports (1 x USB-A 2.0, 2 x USB-A 3.2, 1 x USB-C can charge), an ethernet port, and 1 HDMI 2.0 port (external display). The bezels, well, look like bezels and the chin is huge by today’s standards. The screen has a 144 Hz refresh rate which is good for games and is a nod to its gaming future, but it’s only 1080p and its not going to win awards for color gamut or brightness, but it looks good for the price. And that’s about where they drew the line on minimizing the build. For working purposes, they retained a really good keyboard, decently sized trackpad, and wifi 6 for connectivity. Battery life you ask? Eh, any machine that even hints at gaming doesn’t exactly sip at the power, but when not gaming you can expect 3 to 4 hours of general use in low power mode (screen dims). Its usable, but you will want to plug it in when you can. But they did put their money where the mouth is with the CPU and graphics processor, exactly where you would want it. The 2.4 gigahertz intel core i5 12450HX has 8 cores and 12 threads, that yields decent performance. It holds own against other budget CPU’s from AMD. It has an Intel Arc A350M discrete graphics processor with 4 gb RAM. I would like more, but it gets the job done for casual gaming. Speaking of which, forget about running the latest at ultimate settings, but it did an okay job at 1080 p. The fans do kick on aggressively, but they are not the loudest I have heard. The keyboard does get warm under heavy gaming. Check the actual requirements for the games you are interested in, but this isn’t your dad’s spreadsheet only computer. Finally, appearance is a matter of taste, but I liked its modern and sophisticated look. To me it looked ‘premium.’ It was a solid build. So who is this for? It’s about expectations. The full-size keyboard gives it away, this is meant to do work. But can it game? If you ONLY want a gaming machine, you might see if you can get something with a better GPU but more limited build. If you want a Mercedes on a Volkswagen budget, keep saving until you have a Mercedes budget. If you want a balanced compromise, I liked the design choices for the buck, and the ability to take a break when I wanted to. But if you plan on carrying it around, do have a strong backpack. For the value I give it 5 stars.

After using this laptop for a while, I think it's pretty decent. It runs games pretty well, except for the fact that I can't seem to get Cyberpunk 2077 to run. Older games work pretty well when cranked up to maximum graphics settings, particularly when you install DXVK. Borderlands 2 was fine, BioShock Infinite worked great, and I got Borderlands 3 to work pretty well at reduced graphics settings. The machine seems to work fine for media playback such as YouTube. The keyboard feels pretty mushy, but it's not a dealbreaker - particularly since it has a backlight. I also like that this machine is just grey with white lights - I can easily bring it into a professional setting without a second look, because even though it does have a "chin" it doesn't look like an RGB-festooned spaceship. In that regard, it's actually pretty great for things such as bringing it to college to do schoolwork and then playing Genshin Impact in between classes. I also really appreciate that it's easy to crack open - there's no tamper seals to deal with, and the base plate comes right off with a screwdriver and a guitar pick. I actually found a second NVMe slot by doing this, which was a pleasant surprise. I was also pleasantly surprised by the Intel Arc A530M graphics. I have yet to encounter a bug with them. It feels like the Arc drivers have matured a lot since the cards were released, which I'm glad about. That being said, I can't quite get over the really horrible first impression this laptop made on me. The first time I set it up, it was barely usable. The machine would constantly freeze. I'd open Edge, and it would just be a blank white window without even the X button. Firefox would lock up. I'd constantly have to get out Task Manager to kill some unresponsive process or other. When watching YouTube, I had a persistent issue where the video itself would freeze as well as the window it was playing in, but I could still hear the audio, and I could still control the video with my keyboard. Oddly enough, even with constant issues that made my computer completely unusuable for basic tasks, I could still game perfectly fine. Anyway, I got sick of it and installed Linux, only to find out that it had the same issues. I managed to download a recovery USB from Lenovo's website, and for some reason using that to reimage the computer worked fine and resolved all of my problems, even though I didn't make any changes from the factory defaults? I'm really confused and a bit upset by the whole experience, and while I'm liking how it's running now that that's resolved, I'm still suspicious of the computer. If reinstalling the factory image fixed all of my problems, it should have worked fine the first time I set it up. I don't understand what happened, but that first impression really damaged my feelings about this computer. If it had worked like it does now right out of the box, I would have absolutely recommended it without hesitation, but I'm not quite sure I can bring myself to now. Hopefully it was some sort of one-off.