All language subtitles for Lenovo Made The LOQ WORSE!_ - LOQ Essential Review-en-US

Lenovo sneakily released this new version
of their popular LOQ gaming laptop.

It’s called the LOQ Essential, and as
you can probably tell from its name,

they’ve cut out most of the good
things that made the original LOQ a

great budget friendly gaming laptop
and only kept the bare essentials.

And that’s a problem, because I’ve been
recommending the original LOQ as one of the best

budget friendly gaming laptops for the last couple
of years. And I’ve seen this new Essential version

listed on different stores without actually
specifying that it’s the new Essential mode.

And the last thing that I want is for you to be

misled by Lenovo’s naming by making
a mistake and buying the wrong LOQ,

so I bought this new Essential version as soon
as I heard about it to get this review up ASAP.

The LOQ Essential has a grey
plastic build all over. It feels

noticeably cheaper compared to the original LOQ.

There’s not too much flex to the keyboard,

but there’s more when it comes to
the lid, particularly the exterior.

The lid wobbles a bit if you move or
bump it, but it’s stable when typing,

and the hinge feels alright even
when ripping the lid open fast.

The middle of the lid sticks
out a bit to help with opening,

but you can’t open it easily with
one hand unless you jiggle it a bit,

and that’s because it doesn’t have
enough weight to support that.

This makes the LOQ Essential quite portable
for a 15 inch gaming laptop, weighing in at

just over 4lb or 1.85kg, increasing to 5.1lb or
2.3kg with the small 135 watt charger included.

This puts it in the same weight class
as MSI’s GF63. But there’s a bit of a

gap between the LOQ Essential and most
of the other 15 or 16 inch options.

The original LOQ with the same RTX 3050
graphics weighs 30% more, for example.

It even ends up slightly lighter compared to
the lightest 16 inch gaming laptop we’ve ever

tested once we include the chargers, and that’s
because the LOQ Essential only has a small 135

watt power brick. It’s actually similar in
weight to Lenovo’s smaller 14 inch Slim 5,

so yeah the LOQ Essential is
fairly light weight for its size.

The size is pretty standard for a 15 inch
gaming laptop, and it’s actually smaller

than the original LOQ. It’s not thin,
but it’s not massively thick either.

My configuration has Intel’s
Core i5-12450HX processor,

NVIDIA’s RTX 3050, 16 gigs of memory and
a 144Hz screen. But you can customize it

with a cheaper RTX 2050 or more expensive
RTX 4050 and more with the link below.

My keyboard does not have any backlighting,
but in the US white backlighting is available

with an optional $20 upgrade. That’s not an option
here in Australia though, so it varies by region.

Typing feels ok, but I don’t like
this keyboard. It’s not as good as

the original LOQ. The keys have this
weird grippy textured feel to them,

the presses feel flat with 1.3mm of key travel,
and depending on where you’re pushing down,

there’s a little movement to the
keyboard deck towards the middle.

I actually didn’t mind the plastic touchpad,
yeah it doesn’t feel as nice as the original LOQ,

but I found it accurate to click
with and nice enough to use.

Most of the ports are on the left. From
the back we’ve got the power input,

gigabit ethernet, HDMI 2.1, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
and Type-C ports, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack.

The right just has an SD card slot and a
second USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port. There

aren’t any ports on the back, which is where
most of them are found on the original LOQ.

Unfortunately the Type-C port is for data transfer
only. It cannot be used to charge the laptop,

and it does not have DisplayPort
support for connecting a monitor.

So I guess it really only
does have the essentials,

because the original LOQ had a third USB
Type-A port, and its Type-C port was faster,

it supported Type-C charging, and it supported
DisplayPort for connecting a monitor.

HDMI always connects directly
to the Nvidia graphics,

and we confirmed it could run our LG
B9 TV at 4K 120Hz 12-Bit with G-Sync.

Getting inside requires taking out 9
TR5 screws, the ones down the front are

shorter than the rest, so keep track
of them. It was easy enough to open,

but pry tools were required. I’ll
leave a link to these ones I use below.

Inside we’ve got the battery down the
front, single RAM slot on the right,

installed SSD in the middle with a spare M.2 slot

for a second SSD below the RAM, and
the Wi-Fi 6 card next to the SSD.

The biggest downgrade here is that this
new Essential version only has one memory

slot. I guess at least it’s not soldered
memory so there’s still room for upgrades,

so best case you’re limited to a single 32
gig stick, or I guess one of those new 48

gig sticks would probably work too, which
should be plenty for most budget gamers.

And although the laptop came
to me with a DDR5-5600 stick,

it runs at DDR5-4800, as that’s the top
speed Intel’s Core i5-12450HX supports.

It’s not ideal that both M.2 slots
only fit smaller 2242 drives,

the more common and bigger 2280s don’t fit.

The upgradeability score isn’t great. I take off
half a point for each M.2 slot that can’t fit a

full drive, a full point per memory slot, and
half a point for the uncommon screw type. The

original LOQs could fit two full sized
SSDs and two sticks of RAM no problem.

The speeds from the 512GB SSD are
ok. The writes aren’t impressive,

but the read speeds confirm that it’s at least
using a PCIe Gen 4 SSD, so that’s something. The

SD card speeds are super pathetic though, a good
laptop would get 10 times what we’re seeing here.

Of course that said, I’m surprised
there’s an SD card slot at all,

that feels like a bit of an extra bonus rather
than sticking to the essentials for a gaming

laptop. The card does not click in and sticks
out a fair bit, so be careful not to bump it.

Wi-Fi speed was the slowest I’ve
recorded since upgrading to a new

Wi-Fi 7 router earlier in the year. Of
course you could change the Wi-Fi card,

because it’s not even 6E, and
that’s only a $20 upgrade.

The speakers are found on the left
and right sides towards the front.

They sound ok, nothing impressive,
but there was a tiny bit of bass.

The latencymon results weren’t great

The LOQ Essential is powered
by a 3-Cell 57Wh battery,

so it’s smaller than the 4-Cell
60Wh battery in the original LOQ.

The vantage software also lets
you enable adaptive refresh rate,

which lowers the screen’s refresh rate down
to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save

power. The screen flashes black as the refresh
rate changes, and it automatically goes back up

when you plug back in. You can manually do this
at any time with the function plus R shortcut.

You can also enable conservation mode in Vantage.
This limits the maximum charge level between 75

and 80%, helping battery longevity. You can’t
use it at the same time as rapid charge,

and you’ve also got the option to charge the
battery slower overnight, again to help longevity.

Battery life wasn’t too bad, lasting for 5 hours
and 47 minutes in my YouTube video playback test.

The bigger LOQ 16 with larger 80Wh battery only
lasted 12% longer, despite having a 40% higher

battery capacity. It even lasted longer compared
to the other three original LOQ 15s that have the

slightly bigger 60Wh battery. And of course
it destroyed the LOQ with 7435HS processor,

because that one does not have integrated
graphics, so battery life suffers as a result.

Let’s check out thermals next. The LOQ Essential
only has one big 100mm fan inside, so hot air only

exhausts from one side out the back. There are
two heatpipes shared between the CPU and GPU,

but otherwise there’s quite a bit of empty
space. This explains why it’s lighter compared

to so many other laptops. There are plenty
of vents on the bottom panel to allow air in.

Lenovo’s Vantage software allows us to
change between different performance modes,

which from lowest to highest are quiet, balance,

performance and custom. Custom mode lets us
set the fans to full speed or customize them,

and we’ve also got the option to tweak
CPU and GPU power and temperature limits.

You can also hold the function key and press the
letter Q to cycle between all performance modes.

It briefly shows you the mode on the screen
as it changes, but unlike the original LOQ

which had a power button that changes color so
you could quickly identify what mode you’re in,

the LOQ Essential only has
a standard power button.

Honestly this is the quickest way that
I’ve been able to tell whether a LOQ

is the Essential version or the original
version. Unfortunately there are plenty

of stores I’ve seen that don’t specify
whether the LOQ they’re selling is the

Essential version. So just look at the photos,
if the power button is in the middle and looks

like the LOQ logo, so it’s the original and
superior version. But if the power button is

on the right and it's only a power button, so
no LOQ logo, then it’s the Essential version.

The internal temperatures were cool at idle. The
rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU

stress tests which aim to represent a worst case
full load scenario. But temperatures are perfectly

fine even in the higher performance modes. These
are seriously cool results in this workload,

so you don’t have to worry at all about there
only being one fan inside. Setting the fan to

max speed in custom mode only lowered the temps a
couple of degrees, so it’s probably not worth the

louder fan noise. Docking the laptop with the
lid closed wasn’t much different to lid open,

so no issues there either, and the cooling pad
I test with, linked below, only helped a little.

Although temperatures were similar in performance
and custom modes, custom mode gets us higher

CPU clock speeds. The highest CPU speed was
actually measured in the lowest quiet mode,

but that’s because it compromises by
heavily limiting the GPU to just 14 watts.

The NVIDIA control panel says the RTX 3050 is
allowed to run up to 65 watts with dynamic boost,

but with the CPU loaded up at the same
time I found that it maxes out at around

57 watts. A full powered 3050 can run up
to 95 watts, so it’s worth considering

that this lower GPU power limit on the
LOQ Essential is probably what allows

it to weigh less compared to so many others.
A lower power limit means a smaller charger,

and less power means less heat, so
less materials needed for cooling.

Here’s how the LOQ Essential performs in an
actual game with the different performance

modes. I’ve got the native results
without upscaling shown in purple,

and a demonstration of the performance
improvement that’s possible by setting DLSS

to balanced in red. Ultimately there’s not really
a difference in terms of FPS between balance,

performance or custom modes, while quiet
mode wasn’t useful for playing this game.

The CPU can use more power in a CPU only workload
like Cinebench where the GPU is idle, though

there wasn’t a difference between performance
and custom with all power sliders maxed out.

CPU performance was kind of pathetic
compared to other laptops tested. The

exact same processor in the original LOQ
had a 9% higher single core score and 8%

higher multi core score. That’s not a big
difference, but it’s yet another example

of where this new Essential version
of the LOQ falls short in comparison.

Performance lowers if we unplug the
charger and instead run off of battery

power. But the original LOQ didn’t lose
any single core performance like this,

so it’s now 31% ahead of the Essential
version. Likewise multicore performance

suffers, and the OG LOQ is now 28%
better than the Essential version.

Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees
Celsius range on the keyboard at idle,

and the LOQ Essential was a little cooler than
this. Temperatures increase with the stress

tests running, but the middle only feels a little
warm, no problem at all in the lowest quiet mode.

Stepping up to balance mode doesn’t really change
much. The keyboard is only a little warm while the

rest feels cold. Nothing changes in the higher
performance mode. We can see the internal fan

is blowing some warm air onto the screen, but
it’s not really hot either. Custom mode with

the fans maxed out wasn’t much different either,
but it’s definitely louder, let’s have a listen.

The fan was only just audible when
idling in quiet mode. It gets louder

with the stress tests running, with
volume increasing in the higher modes,

as expected. Manually maxing
the fans out was the loudest,

but there’s not really any point in doing this.
It’s cool enough without it, so save your ears.

The cooling pad allowed the laptop’s fan to run
a bit quieter too, while also still reducing

temperatures a couple of degrees. So same
benefit as maxing the fan out, only quieter.

Don’t forget that even balance mode was basically
performing the same as custom and performance

mode, so that offers a great sweet spot in terms
of good performance to lower fan noise ratio.

The screen is one of the first places
that a budget gaming laptop is going to

make cuts. But it’s not actually
as bad as I thought it would be.

Color gamut isn’t terrible, near 100%
sRGB is what I like to see as a minimum

for gaming laptops, but creators will
probably want higher AdobeRGB or DCI-P3.

Brightness maxed out close to 300 nits,
which again is the minimum that I want

to see from a gaming laptop, so not
impressive, but it’ll do - barely.

It is on the dimmer side compared to
most others, but it’s actually using

the same panel as the three original LOQs that
I tested this year with RTX 3050, RTX 4060 and

Intel Arc A530M graphics. The differences we’re
seeing are just luck based, there’s always some

variance even between panels that are the same
model, but Lenovo advertises it with 300 nits.

Backlight bleed was only very minor, no problems
here, but this varies between each laptop screen.

Screen response time wasn’t terrible, but it’s
not great either. Slower than 20ms and even I,

a filthy casual, start noticing blurriness in
fast paced games. Some transitions were slower

than this, but on average we’re looking at just
under 14ms as there’s no panel overdrive option.

It’s very close to those other LOQ
laptops that are using the same panel,

again what we’re seeing here is just
small tolerances that exist within

the same panel model. To be fair it’s on
the faster side compared to other budget

friendly gaming laptops with a 144Hz screen,
so like I said, not terrible but not great.

The total system latency is the amount
of time between a mouse click and when

a gunshot fire appears on the screen in
Counter-Strike 2. The LOQ Essential was

a bit faster compared to the original LOQ with
Arc A530M graphics, but that thing sucks and no

one should ever buy it. Otherwise all the
original LOQs with real GPUs were faster,

including the one with the exact same GPU, but
it has a higher GPU power limit and newer CPU.

Unlike the original LOQ, the LOQ Essential does
not have a MUX switch, but that doesn’t matter as

much as it did a few years ago since Microsoft’s
CASO update. I did a whole video about that,

but long story short, yeah performance isn’t
quite as good compared to a laptop with a MUX

switch or advanced optimus, but the
gap isn’t as big as it used to be.

This means G-Sync on the
laptop’s panel is impossible,

but adaptive sync is enabled by default
via the Intel integrated graphics.

There’s a 720p camera above the
screen with a privacy shutter,

but there’s no IR for Windows Hello face
unlock - I guess that’s not essential.

Here’s how the camera and
microphones look and sound,

and this is what it sounds like
while typing on the keyboard.

Now let’s find out how well Lenovo’s
LOQ Essential performs in games. It’s

time to find out how much that lower
GPU power limit affects performance.

Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with our own custom test
run, and I’ve got my LOQ Essential shown by the

red highlight. At 1080p, the original LOQ with the
exact same GPU, granted one generation newer CPU,

was reaching an 18% higher average frame rate.
Most of this difference is simply due to the GPU

power limit. The original LOQ is able to use more
power, and more power equals more performance,

it’s as simple as that. It’s kind of rough
when even a more than 4 year old laptop

with RTX 2060 graphics is doing better, but
hey, at least it’s beating the 4050 in Dell’s

XPS 14 - but that laptop really does suck
for gaming as it’s heavily power limited.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s
benchmark, and the original LOQ with higher

powered RTX 3050 graphics had a similar lead here
too, with a 14% higher average frame rate. Don’t

get me wrong, the game runs ok before even making
use of features like DLSS upscaling, just don’t

expect full performance from the 3050 like other
laptops offer due to the power limit difference.

It can be a bit misleading when both laptops just
say “3050” on the spec sheet and nothing else.

The GPU power difference mattered more in Control
though, with the OG LOQ now 16% faster in terms of

average FPS. Again, you could use features like
DLSS to boost performance on the LOQ Essential,

but my point is more that another laptop that has
the same GPU on the spec sheet performs better.

Here are the 3DMark results.

The LOQ Essential is the lowest result
I’ve got in the content creation tests,

but that’s to be expected when it’s also the
lowest specced laptop that I’ve had in quite a

while. The original LOQ with higher powered 3050,
but also a better processor was a bit better.

The BIOS has a few extra features compared
to other laptop brands like Acer or ASUS,

but there’s not as much configuration
compared to Lenovo’s higher end models. And

any laptop MSI makes has far more customisation.

Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu
24.10 live CD. By default the keyboard,

touchpad, ethernet, Wi-Fi, speakers
and camera all worked. Keyboard

shortcuts for adjusting volume and screen
brightness worked too - a perfect result.

Pricing and availability will change over
time, so check the links below the video

for updates and current sales. And
if the LOQ does have a good sale,

we’ll be sure to add it to our
gaminglaptop.deals website. We

update that everyday to include all of the
latest sales, so make sure that you check

it out regularly to save money on your
next gaming laptop with that link below.

At the time of recording in early December, the
LOQ Essential without sales starts at $700 USD for

RTX 2050 graphics, but right now the 3050 version
I’ve tested is on sale. Which actually makes it

cheaper at $650, while the 4050 version is on sale
too at $850, down from its full price of $950.

Honestly that’s kind of pathetic
considering we’ve had the original LOQ

with higher tier RTX 4060 graphics listed on the
gaminglaptop.deals site recently for $700 to $800.

Even with these first initial
sales on the LOQ Essential,

it’s not looking too attractive. I think
this things just going to have to come down

in price more. Because based on what we’re
seen here, the original LOQ is better than

the Essential version in almost every way.
So if the original LOQ is cheaper or even

the same price then obviously you would
pick that one over the Essential model.

I think for me personally I’d be willing to
spend somewhere between $50 and $100 extra

to get the original LOQ instead of the Essential
version, because it’s just such a better laptop.

Now it’s not all bad, the Essential version is
smaller and lighter compared to the original LOQ,

so it’s a bit more portable. And the Essential
version does at least have the same screen

panel as the original LOQ. But otherwise, the
Essential has worse build quality which just

feels cheap. There’s no keyboard backlighting,
unless you pay for the optional upgrade,

but even that isn’t available in all countries.
The keyboard just doesn’t feel as good to type

with. It only has one memory slot instead of
two. It only supports smaller SSDs. It uses a

less common screw type to open up, making getting
inside more difficult. It has a smaller battery,

however as noted the run time is actually longer
compared to the original LOQs. CPU performance

is worse. GPU power limit is like 30% lower,
which just means less FPS in games. There’s no

MUX switch, which also means no advanced optimus
or G-Sync. There’s a lower quality 720p camera

instead of 1080p. And for all of those downsides,
at the moment at least, it seems to cost more.

Look, you can absolutely buy the LOQ
Essential and play games and have a fun

time. It’s just that the original LOQ is all
round a much better laptop. So you might as

well just get the better option unless
the price gap between them is too big.

You can find out all about the original
LOQ in my full review video here. It’s

kinda sad how they massacred my boy…
I’ll see you over in that one next.