Are you looking for an inexpensive gaming laptop that will allow you to enjoy the gameplay? Then the Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 should definitely catch your eye.
You don’t need high-end hardware to play games comfortably. This is proved by the new Lenovo LOQ brand, whose devices allow beginners to take the first steps in their gaming journeys.
By creating a sub-brand that inherits the design features of the Legion series and focusing on affordability, Lenovo has opened up the opportunity for gamers on a budget to get quality games too. The combination of performance, design, and value makes Lenovo LOQ series laptops attractive to those who want to dive into the world of computer games without spending a lot of money. Recently, an interesting laptop from this series was introduced – Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8, which will delight fans of modern computer games not only with its powerful hardware but also with a pleasant price.
Of course, I could not pass by such an interesting gaming laptop. I wanted to try what Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 can do for myself. So, make yourself comfortable, we’re getting started.
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In simple terms, this is almost a Lenovo Legion series or, rather, a Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming. Here, manufacturers had to make some compromises to reduce the price.
But this does not mean that it is not suitable for modern games or programs. Judge for yourself. We have a modern Intel Core i7-13620H processor and one of the most advanced gaming graphics cards, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. They are supported by 16 GB of dual-channel DDR5 5600 MHz memory, which will make your gaming experience as comfortable and convenient as possible. Don’t forget about the superb image quality provided by the 16-inch WQXGA display with a 16:10 aspect ratio and a high refresh rate of 165 Hz.
Lenovo has not forgotten to provide its new laptop with advanced gaming capabilities thanks to the Lenovo AI Engine+ solution with the LA1 AI chip, as well as a special MUX switch with NVIDIA Advanced Optimus.
Despite the fact that the Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 has excellent specifications and functionality, it is cheaper than the same laptops in the Lenovo Legion series. Thus, the hero of my review can be bought in Ukrainian electronics stores at a price starting at $1550.
I like the fact that Lenovo makes its boxes out of eco-friendly recycled material. Everything is quite simple here.
The box is light brown with the series logo and information about the device. The inside is also ascetic. In addition to the gray Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 itself, you’ll find a 170W charger with Super Rapid Charge technology and some paper instructions and warranty cards.
It is a rather modest but sufficient set. Yes, some would like more, but we have what we have.
The Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 takes a balanced approach to design, finding the golden mean between the slim form factor of regular laptops and the bulkier profile of high-performance gaming laptops.
The choice of Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 in Storm Gray may not be the most interesting, but the overall design makes up for it. The laptop body gives a feeling of high quality workmanship, and the metal design elements add a touch of elegance.
The lid of the laptop features the LOQ branding, which demonstrates a minimalist approach to gaming aesthetics. Unlike many gaming laptops with bright RGB backlighting on the lid, LOQ has a more restrained look, but the design of the back of the laptop confirms its status as a gaming laptop.
The entire body is still made of plastic: the plastic matrix cover, the hand rest, and the bottom of the case. Although, on the one hand, this does not surprise me at all (after all, we are talking about a budget gaming laptop), on the other hand, it seems that the new device is worse than its predecessor in this regard.
An interesting aspect of the laptop’s design is the colored elements around the ventilation system, especially noticeable on the back.
With these color accents, the manufacturer emphasized the gaming orientation of the laptop without resorting to full RGB backlighting. A system of vents helps to dissipate heat efficiently, so the laptop stays cool during intense gaming sessions.
The lid can be opened with one hand. When you open the laptop, you will see not quite thin bezels around the matte display. But this is a gaming device.
Unlike most gaming laptops in this price range, the Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 is equipped with a Full HD webcam.
There are speaker grilles next to the front legs. I’ll talk about them later separately. Lenovo developers have not forgotten about the massive fan holes that allow hot air to be removed from internal components and the keyboard.
The dimensions of the laptop indicate that we are looking at a gaming device. So far, they are not as thin and elegant as we would like. Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 with dimensions of 359.6×277.6×21-25.9 mm weighs from 2.6 kg. This is a rather bulky laptop, which will not be easy to move around the city or go on business trips with. Still, it’s more of a gaming device that should be on the table more often.
I liked the design of the new Lenovo product. Yes, it’s a massive gaming laptop, but it’s made of high-quality material, it doesn’t creak or play anywhere. All the components are well fitted, and I didn’t experience any inconveniences during work or play.
In terms of connectivity, most of the ports are located on the back, keeping the aesthetic clean and organized. These ports include: a power connector, HDMI 2.1 port, RJ45 LAN port, and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A ports.
Additional ports are distributed on the sides, including a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A port and a webcam on/off switch on the right side.
There’s also a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C port along with a 3.5mm audio/microphone jack on the left side.
At about 2.4 kg, the laptop strikes a balance between portability and performance.
This number of ports and connectors is definitely enough for comfortable work and gaming. Perhaps a few more USB ports would be nice, for example, a USB Type-C with charging capability. But that’s just me, though.
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I’ve always liked the keyboards on Lenovo laptops, especially the Yoga series. The Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 boasts a full layout with chiclet keys that provide satisfactory tactile feedback. The close proximity of the keys may be somewhat uncomfortable for some users, but the presence of a number pad is a valuable addition. There are no dedicated keys, which are often seen on gaming machines.
The keyboard has a three-level white backlight. Sometimes the backlight is too bright. This can be annoying for some people. I would like an intermediate level of backlighting, because it is either very dim or very bright.
The Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 touchpad has a 75×120 mm mylar surface.
Its texture is quite smooth (not like glass, though), and the tracking is more than decent. The touchpad is very convenient.
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Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 has a fairly high-quality display. This is a standard 16-inch WQHD IPS panel with a resolution of 2560×1440 and support for refresh rates up to 165 Hz. The screen aspect ratio is 16:10, the pixel density is 142 ppi, and their pitch is 0.18×0.18 mm. Support for 165 Hz refresh rate with G-Sync makes the display smooth, and it feels fast and responsive both during gaming and normal use.
The matte finish helps to avoid glare, but the panel isn’t very bright, with only 350 nits of maximum brightness. I could even notice that the backlighting on the display blurs when viewing darker images, although your experience may vary.
The display overall lacks a bit of brightness, and this was especially noticeable when using it next to other monitors. Lenovo claims 100% sRGB coverage for the Lenovo LOQ 16 display, which is the same as for more expensive laptops in the Legion series, such as the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i. But I definitely recommend manual calibration as it doesn’t look the best out of the box.
The dE2000 value should not be higher than 4.0, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you are going to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (maximum tolerance is 2.0). The contrast ratio is very good – 1500:1.
Overall, the screen is good for gaming and doing any other tasks. I even watched movies on this display. Of course, this is not an OLED matrix, but the impression is decent. The viewing angles are good, the image quality is excellent. But we are dealing with a gaming laptop, and not the highest price segment.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 has a fairly high-quality webcam. Like last year’s model, the laptop is equipped with a 1-megapixel FullHD camera.
This is enough for basic video calls or remote classes, and to protect our privacy, the camera has a built-in shutter.
The LOQ 15IRH8’s 2×2W downward-firing speakers are not much different from the Legion 5i or IdeaPad Gaming 3i, and while the Nahimic Audio software can improve sound quality, it is not a significant improvement. Therefore, it is advisable to use headphones or external speakers.
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The Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 combines the latest 13th-generation Intel processors with Nvidia’s new, expensive GPUs. In my review sample, it’s an Intel Core i7-13620H processor – a 10-core chip with performance that’s close to, if not quite equal to, the 14-core 12700H of the 12th generation, both chips have 8 performance cores, but the 13620H has only 4 effective cores versus 8 for the older chip – and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. All of this is complemented by 16GB of DDR5 5600 MHz RAM and a fast 512GB PCIe SSD Gen 4 storage..
For network connections, Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 has Wi-Fi 6, which supports Dual Band, that is, it can work in two bands – 2.4 and 5 GHz. You can also connect an Ethernet cable via the included micro HDMI to RJ45 adapter. While working with the laptop, there were no problems with Internet connections. For example, I will show the connection speed on the gigabit Internet when connected via cable and Wi-Fi (2.4 and 5 GHz). Let me remind you that Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 has Bluetooth 5.1 for connecting wireless devices.
Let’s talk about all the components in more detail.
Intel Core i7-13620H is a high-end mobile processor for the Raptor Lake-H series of laptops (based on the Alder Lake architecture). It was introduced in early 2023 and offers 6 productive cores (P-core, Golden Cove architecture) and 4 efficient cores (E-core, Gracemont architecture). The P-core supports Hyper-Threading, which provides 16 supported threads in combination with the E-core. The clock frequency ranges from 2.4 to 4.9 GHz on a productive cluster and from 1.8 to 3.6 GHz on an efficient cluster. E-core performance should be similar to older Skylake cores (compare to Core i7-6700HQ). All cores can use up to 24 MB of L3 cache. Compared to the older i7-12650H, the 13620H offers a higher clock speed.
Synthetic tests confirm that we are dealing with a fairly powerful modern processor.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 GPU for laptops is an Ada Lovelace mobile graphics chip announced in January 2023. It uses a full AD107 core with 3072 CUDA FP32 processors. Like the GeForce RTX 4070 notebook GPU, the GeForce RTX 4060 notebook GPU also offers fewer compute units than its predecessor (3072 CUDA in AD107 vs. 3840 CUDA in GA106).
We get 2 GB more memory – remember, the mobile GeForce RTX 3060 was very modest in this regard, as we only had 6 GB of VRAM on a 192-bit bus. The GeForce RTX 4060 laptop GPU offers 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus. The video memory bandwidth is the same as the GeForce RTX 4070 laptop graphics card and is 256 GB/s. On the other hand, the L2 cache has been increased to at least partially compensate for this change.
The Ada Lovelace architecture itself is the same for desktops and laptops. Thus, we get, among other things: more efficient CUDA kernels, rebuilt RT kernels to speed up ray tracing calculations, as well as new Tensor kernels with support for Frame Generator and Optical Flow Accelerator.
The laptop has 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The memory is made by 2 chips of 8 GB each from (HMCG66AG85AO92N). The operating timings are as follows: 64-52-52-112-CR1.
If you believe the built-in AIDA64 Extreme tests: read, write, copy, latency, we have a fairly fast RAM. I did not notice any problems in operation.
Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 has two NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0 slots. That is, we have a 512 GB SSD from Micron MTFDKCD512QFM-1BD1AABLA: 512.1 GB.
Of course, I really wanted to try whether it was comfortable to play on the Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8. I realized that I was not dealing with the most powerful gaming laptop, but I was not dealing with equipment for office work either.
I got a lot of pleasure from the gameplay. The performance of the laptop is enough to play in native FullHD resolution with a pleasant FPS level, without giving up ray tracing and high graphics settings.
Yes, these are not record-breaking figures in terms of game performance, but they are not bad either, considering the price segment of Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8. For beginner gamers, this is a very good device.
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It should be understood that gaming laptops have never impressed with good battery life. The hero of my review received a 60 Wh lithium-ion battery. I’ll say right away – don’t expect record battery life from Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8. The maximum I was able to squeeze out of the battery was 4 hours of operation on a single charge. At the same time, I performed the usual office tasks: surfing the Internet, browsing social media pages, typing articles, sometimes watching YouTube videos, editing photos for a review, and so on. But during the gameplay, just 45 minutes into the game, the laptop warned me that the charge level was low. Therefore, I advise you to play on Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 while keeping it charged.
A few words about the charger. This is a fairly powerful 170W power supply that supports Super Rapid Charge technology. This means that your laptop can be charged from 10% to 100% in less than an hour. This power supply really helped out when I needed to charge my laptop quickly.
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Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 to surprise me so pleasantly. Because I expected to deal with a pseudo-gaming laptop again, which has a lot of nuances and compromises. Yes, it’s not a super-powerful gaming laptop that you’re excited about, that can handle even the most demanding computer games. It’s a good workhorse that will allow you to have a great time playing a lot of games and solving a bunch of everyday tasks without any serious problems. I think that overall it is a great laptop for those who want to buy a reliable machine for both gaming and office work.
Are there any compromises or solutions that I didn’t like? Perhaps I would have added a few more USB ports, equipped the laptop with a Wi-Fi 6E module. It wouldn’t hurt to think about some design decisions. Frankly speaking, the laptop is bulky and heavy for a modern laptop. As for the processor and video card, advanced gamers may be disappointed, while beginners, on the other hand, will be pleasantly surprised. This set is enough to perform everyday tasks in the office and then enjoy the gameplay at home.
The Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 is definitely one of the best laptops in its price range, as it looks and feels closer to the more premium Legion laptops. If you need a reliable companion for all your daily tasks and gaming needs, the Lenovo LOQ 16IRH8 is a worthy choice that you will never regret.
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