Why you can trust TechRadar
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9: Two-minute review
The Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 aims to take the lead as the best budget gaming laptop on the market, and in terms of performance for the price, it pretty much nails it.
At first glance, you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish it from any other workaday laptop. It lacks the bulk and RGB lighting of its rivals, which may be a positive or a negative depending on how you feel about the modern gamer aesthetic.
Regardless, it certainly looks and feels premium. Smooth materials with elegant finishes are featured all over, with the keyboard being a particular highlight, thanks to the solid placement and subtle texturing of the keys.
What’s more, the LOQ Essential 15 is pleasingly light, which makes it more portable than a lot of the competition. However, while build quality is good, the LOQ Essential 15 isn’t as sturdy as the best gaming laptops on the market, since there’s a fair amount of flex to both the chassis and the lid.
There’s a welcome selection of ports on the LOQ Essential 15, featuring all the interfaces a gamer would need. There’s even an SD card reader, which isn’t something you often see on a gaming laptop. Most of these ports are located on the left, and there are none on the back, which may prove inconvenient depending on your particular setup.
The LOQ Essential 15 comes preinstalled with Lenovo Vantage, a utility app for viewing system information and adjusting performance settings. This is one of the best utility apps I’ve come across, providing plenty of useful information and tweaks. It also has a very clear interface, and during my time with it, it ran without a hitch.
Less impressive, however, was the outright performance of my review unit. The Intel i5 and RTX 3050 combination in my review unit struggled to run the latest AAA titles smoothly, especially if you enable even the slightest amount of ray tracing. At least the heat and fan noise were kept to a minimum throughout.
Thankfully, the display on the LOQ Essential 15 is more impressive. Despite the 1080p resolution stretching across 15 inches, the interface always looked clear and sharp. There’s plenty of vibrancy, too, and although the maximum brightness isn’t particularly high, the worst reflections are kept at bay.
The keyboard feels a little cramped when gaming, and the lack of travel and dampening hampers feedback somewhat. It’s a different story, however, when typing, as the snappy clicks and ergonomic layout make this easy. And since the touchpad is quite small, it doesn’t get in the way when typing, either.
With its reasonable price tag, the LOQ Essential 15 is certainly a tempting proposition. While there’s plenty of quality here, the middling performance and keyboard hamstring its gaming prowess somewhat. If you can live with these drawbacks, though, the LOQ Essential 15 is still worth considering if you’re after a budget gaming laptop.
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 review: Price & Availability
- Starting from $569 / £689 / AU$742.35
- Available now
- Budget end of the market
The LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 starts from $569 / £689 / AU$742.35 and is available now in the US, UK, and Australia. Various RTX GPU options are available as well, from the RTX 2050 all the way up to the RTX 5050. There are also different Intel and AMD CPUs available. RAM capacities range from 8GB to 32GB, while storage ranges from 512GB to 4TB.
The starting price on the LOQ Essential 15 is about as low as I’ve seen for a laptop of this quality. Better yet, I’ve seen the latest models with their RTX 50-series GPUs on sale at a significant discount, making them an even better value despite being more expensive.
However, there might be cheaper gaming laptops out there, depending on your region. The MSI Cyborg 15, for example, starts at a cheaper price in the UK and is similarly specced with a high-quality design.
If you’re able to spend a little more, there’s also the Acer Nitro V 15, which—while more expensive than the LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 in the US—is a better gaming laptop right now, in my view, thanks to its more capable performance.
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 review: Specs
|
Price |
£799 |
|
CPU |
Intel Core i5-12450HX (2.4GHz, 8 Cores) |
|
GPU |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, 6GB |
|
RAM |
16GB DDR5 |
|
Storage |
1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD |
|
Display |
15.6″ FHD (1920×1080), IPS, 144Hz, Anti-glare |
|
Ports and Connectivity |
2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x RJ-45, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x SD card reader; Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 |
|
Battery |
57Wh |
|
Dimensions |
14.15 x 9.29 x 0.78-0.90in (359.3 x 236 x 19.9-22.95mm) |
|
Weight |
3.9lbs (1.77kg) |
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 review: Design
- Premium feel
- Not the sturdiest
- Great utility app
If you didn’t know, you could easily mistake the Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 for a mainstream laptop. It has the same form and looks, without any of the extraneous bulges or aggressive aesthetics typical of many gaming laptops.
It looks quite elegant, owing to the subtle sheen of the finish. It’s also impressively thin and light for a laptop in this class, which makes carrying it around easier. The materials look and feel fairly premium, although the LOQ Essential 15 isn’t as sturdy as others, with some flex to various panels and the display enclosure.
The keyboard is a more premium affair, with a smooth yet noticeable texture to the keycaps. They have the typical Lenovo ergonomic shape, although they seem less indented than other models from the brand.
There are plenty of handy shortcuts on the F row, including one to open Windows 11 settings, which I wish would feature on every laptop. There are also some unlabelled Fn shortcuts, such as Fn+Q, which toggles performance modes. I only happened to chance upon it when looking at Lenovo’s website.
You can also find it listed in a pre-installed app called Lenovo Hotkeys, in addition to a plethora of other useful shortcuts. For instance, you can also instantly toggle the refresh rate between 60 and 144Hz with Fn+R.
One of the most disappointing aspects of the keyboard, though, is the lack of backlighting. Higher spec models have it, but it’s still a fairly egregious omission on base models. Not only does it add spectacle, it also serves a practical purpose by helping with key location when gaming in dimly-lit rooms, as is often the case for many.
What won’t disappoint is the number of ports on the LOQ Essential 15. All those relevant to gamers are present: there are two USB-A ports and one USB-C, as well as ethernet and HDMI interfaces. There’s even an SD card reader, which isn’t always seen on gaming laptops, but it’s great for creator-gamers who might use their laptop for both work and play.
The placement of the ports might prove more divisive, though. All but two are loaded on the left-hand side, and there are none on the back. This layout might be inconvenient for certain setups; personally, I like to see at least the power port on the back.
The LOQ Essential 15 comes preinstalled with Lenovo Vantage, which is one of the best first-party utility suites I’ve come across. It contains a wealth of useful information and settings to tweak, especially the gaming section, which naturally has various cooling and performance modes to choose from.
What’s more, Vantage is clear and easy to navigate, and I didn’t experience any bugs or glitches when using it—not something that can be said about every first-party software.
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 review: Performance
- Middling 1080p performance
- Vibrant, non-reflective display
- Keyboard lacks gaming prowess
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 benchmarks
Geekbench 6 (Single Core): 2,207; (Multi Core): 8,297
Cinebench R23 (Single Core): 1,588; (Multi Core): 9,774
Cinebench R24 (Single Core): 94 (Multi Core): 562
Crossmark Overall: 1,441
3DMark Night Raid: 37,229; Fire Strike: 11,392; Steel Nomad: 998; Solar Bay: 23,855; Solar Bay Unlimited: 25,530; Solar Bay Extreme: 4,391; Solar Bay Extreme Unlimited: 4,436
BlackMagicDisk Read: 3,502MB/s; Write: 3,063MB/s
Civilization VII (1080p, AMD FSR, High): 200fps; (1080p, High): 136fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p, Highest, Balanced upscaling): 98fps; (1080p, Highest, SMAA x4, no upscaling): 53fps
Total War: Warhammer III: Mirrors of Madness (1080p, Ultra): 28fps
Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, Ultra, Balanced upscaling): 57fps; (1080p, Ray Tracing: Ultra, Balanced upscaling): 34fps; (1080p, Ultra, no upscaling): 37fps
Marvel Rivals (1080p, Ultra, Balanced upscaling): 33fps; (1080p, no upscaling, Low): 49fps
My review unit of the LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 was equipped with an Intel Core i5 CPU and an RTX 3050 GPU, so as you might expect, gaming performance wasn’t exactly top-tier. When I played Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ray Tracing: Low preset, fps figures were in the high thirties and early forties on average, with some significant stuttering in busy scenes.
Personally, this stuttering didn’t derail the experience for me, but it was certainly noticeable and will likely bother more elite players. Disabling Ray Tracing altogether and applying the Ultra preset barely made a difference to frame rates or the stuttering, albeit the latter occurred with slightly less frequency.
Almost as soon as I started playing, the area around the WASD keys warmed up, but thankfully, it never peaked above lukewarm. The rest of the chassis stayed cool, save for the portion above the keyboard – but even this area remained touchable.
There is some fan noise during heavy workloads, but it’s quieter than others in this category, and nothing the best PC gaming headsets couldn’t drown out.
The display is also quite impressive. It’s remarkably clear and sharp, especially when you consider its 1080p resolution is stretched out over 15 inches. It’s also pleasingly vivid, and although it isn’t quite as bright as I would’ve liked, it still does enough to fend off troublesome reflections.
Harder to praise is the keyboard. It’s great for typing, thanks to the light and snappy actuation, as well as the generous spacing and aforementioned shape of the keys. What’s more, despite the inclusion of a number pad, the layout doesn’t feel cramped.
For gaming, however, the keyboard is less fit for purpose. In the WASD position, my fingers suddenly felt more confined, perhaps due to the relatively small size of the keys themselves. They also have little travel and next to no dampening, both of which result in a lack of feel, certainly when compared to the best gaming keyboard switches.
Thankfully, the touchpad on the LOQ Essential 15 rarely gets in the way when gaming or typing, thanks to its small size. However, this also means that navigation is more awkward than with larger pads, although this may be a moot point, since even the best touchpad is no match for the best gaming mouse.
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 review: Battery Life
- Great playback result
- Power-hungry Balanced mode
- Very quick to charge
The battery life of the LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 is quite good by gaming laptop standards. It managed to last close to eight hours during our movie playback test, which bests many others in this sector. However, this is still below the standards of the best laptops for general use, as some can achieve more than double that time.
In my PCMark Gaming battery test, the LOQ Essential 15 lasted about 32 minutes, which is significantly down on rivals. This was with the Balanced mode applied in Vantage, which also applies the Balanced mode in Windows 11 itself (the same mode used for the movie playback test).
This score doesn’t seem to square with its playback result, so your day-to-day use will land somewhere in the middle of the two results. I can only presume this is because Vantage’s Balanced mode is more eager than its rivals’ counterparts to boost power to the GPU while gaming. Charging performance is much better, though, taking a mere hour to go from empty to full.
Should I buy the Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9?
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Notes |
Score |
|---|---|---|
|
Value |
The LOQ Essential 15 offers exceptional quality for its starting price, but different configurations will vary in overall value. |
4 / 5 |
|
Design |
Remarkably thin and un-gamerish with premium-seeming materials, though it’s not the most solidly constructed. |
4 / 5 |
|
Performance |
It won’t handle the highest settings in AAA titles, but it still just about suffices to have a good time. The display is good, too. |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Battery Life |
Good for this class of laptop, but still behind more general laptops. Vantage’s Balanced mode lets the side down a little, too. |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Total Score |
The Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 is a well-made gaming laptop that’s even more impressive thanks to its low starting price. The design quality makes up for the middling AAA performance, but overall it’s one of the best values you’re going to find in a budget gaming laptop. |
3.75 / 5 |
Buy the Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 if…
Don’t buy it if…
Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 review: Also Consider
How I tested the Lenovo LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9
- Tested for several days
- Gamed and benchmarked
- Wealth of gaming laptop experience
I tested the LOQ Essential 15 Gen 9 for several days, during which time I used it for gaming, working, and general entertainment.
I played AAA titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 at various settings, and ran our comprehensive series of benchmark tests. This included those for the battery life.
I’ve been PC gaming for over a decade and have experienced numerous systems and components during that time. I’ve also reviewed many gaming laptops before, ranging in their price points and specs.
Read more about how we test
- First reviewed October 2025
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/gvznzuEDNz9JcfhRhQDbAQ-2560-80.jpg
Source link
lewis.maddison@futurenet.com (Lewis Maddison)




