Lenovo LOQ15 hands-on: Affordable but not cheap

engadget.com:

Just a few months ago Lenovo announced updates to its high-end Legion gaming PCs. But now the company is back to introduce some fresh budget-friendly fare as part of its new “value-oriented” LOQ line. Though they aren’t quite as powerful as their more expensive siblings, after checking them out, I like how these new devices don’t feel cheap despite their lower prices.

At launch, the LOQ family (pronounced “lock”) will consist of either a 15 or 16-inch laptop and a 17L desktop PC. The LOQ 15 and 15i will be the least expensive of the bunch starting at $900 for either an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS or Intel Core i7-13700 chip, while the LOQ 16 and 16i (the “i” denotes an Intel-based config) will go for just a bit more at $960 and $1,150, respectively. Finally, for people who don’t need to move their gaming rig around, the LOQ tower will be priced at a reasonable $980.

But more importantly, while Lenovo is trying to keep costs down, it doesn’t feel like it cut too many corners with its new machines. Not only do they have similar styling to the Legion line, they also have solid specs with the laptops offering support for up to NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPUs. And like the premium Legion line, you also get rear IO to help keep wires from getting too cluttered.

The main differences between Lenovo’s LOQ and Legion gaming notebooks are that instead of an aluminum chassis, the LOQ line features a plastic body, with either a white or a four-zone RGB backlit keyboard (instead of per-key). The new machines also carry slightly smaller batteries (either 60 or 80Whr depending on the model). And while the LOQ line doesn’t support super fast 240Hz refresh rates, you can still get 165Hz displays going up to 2,560 x 1,600 with variable refresh rate support (both