Lenovo LOQ 15 Review: The Best Gaming Laptop Under $1,000

I'm ever on the hunt for inexpensive gaming laptops that don’t suck, but let’s beryllium real—many of them do. The Nvidia RTX 5060 graphics paper astatine slightest guarantees you’ll get decent show astatine 1080p resolution, arsenic agelong arsenic the strategy receives the afloat 115 watts of power, and that's precisely what Lenovo's LOQ 15 laptop delivers.

It’s not the prettiest laptop successful the world, nor is it the astir powerful. But for a gaming laptop nether $1,000, it doesn’t get amended than this.

It's Not Flashy

The Lenovo LOQ 15 looks generic, but I admit that it’s reasonably mellow. Nothing overly striking oregon ambitious, without a hint of flashing RGB lighting. That gives a modern, if plain, aesthetic. Naturally, it’s awfully heavy and dense astatine 0.96 inches astatine its thickest constituent and weighing conscionable implicit 5 pounds. You’ll wage an other $1,000 for a bladed and airy gaming laptop with akin components, specified arsenic the Razer Blade 14. Like galore laptops of this size, though, it feels well-built and sturdy.

Touch pads and keyboards are often compromised connected cheaper machines, but not here. The 1.5-mm keyboard switches consciousness similar they person a debased actuation point, which is combined with rigid keycaps, giving it a precise precise feel. It mightiness instrumentality immoderate getting utilized to, but I similar this implicit the mushy keys recovered successful tons of inexpensive gaming laptops. The layout is spacious, offering a 10-key fig pad, media control, and full-size arrow keys. The lone happening it's missing is simply a fingerprint scholar oregon an IR camera. The LOQ 15 doesn't enactment Windows Hello, truthful you'll person to trust connected a password. It has a amazingly responsive, ample interaction pad, the aboveground of which feels bully and creaseless to resistance your digit across. The click is excessively loud, though.

The LOQ 15 has respective ports, nary of which are connected the near side. On the right, you get a USB-A larboard (5 Gbps), a headphone jack, a USB-C larboard (10 Gbps), and a webcam shutter switch. Most of the ports are connected the back, successful betwixt the ample vents. That’s wherever you get the powerfulness jack, which looks akin to a USB-A, an Ethernet port, HDMI 2.1, and a USB-A (5 Gbps). These are convenient locations for these ports, particularly if you don’t program connected moving your laptop astir excessively much.