Deal | Affordable Lenovo gaming laptop with 14-core CPU, RTX 5060 GPU wins $700 discount

It appears that Best Buy's Labor Day sale is in full swing, with a bunch of gaming laptops being discounted to relatively affordable prices. One such laptop happens to be the Lenovo LOQ 15.6-inch, equipped with a pretty powerful Core i7 CPU and RTX 5060 Laptop graphics.

The gaming laptop also comes equipped with 16 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, 512 GB of SSD storage, and a 15.6-inch 1080p 144 Hz IPS display. Thanks to a sizable $700 discount, the entry-level gaming laptop can now be purchased for just under $1,150 for a limited time. 

The Intel Core i7 13650HX is a few generations older at this point, but still manages to hold its own, courtesy of its 14-core setup consisting of six powerful Raptor Cove P-cores and eight efficient Gracemont E cores. 

According to our detailed review of the laptop, the Core i7 chip should be around 40% faster than a newer Intel Core 5 210H CPU found in many entry-level gaming laptops.

In fact, there are plenty of gaming laptops with the same Core i7 CPU but substantially better performance due to better power and thermal budgets. At its current price, however, the CPU performance is more than acceptable.

Our review also indicates that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop with 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM performs roughly 13% slower than the class average. Once again, this can likely be attributed to the laptop's modest power envelope and single-fan setup.

The 15.6-inch IPS display features a resolution of 1920 by 1080 and a peak refresh rate of 144 Hz. The panel does cover almost the entire sRGB color gamut, although it only covers 71.8% of the wider DCI-P3 color gamut. For most casual gaming and content consumption, the panel should be more than decent. 

Brightness peaks at around 322 nits, which is more than enough indoors, but might not be sufficient outdoors, especially on sunnier days. Color accuracy out of the box is decent, with ΔE around 2.4. Gamers, however, might be disappointed at the panel's response times at roughly 20 ms G2G.

Hilariously enough, only one of the two RAM slots is filled, leaving one empty. This means that the laptop is running in single-channel configuration, which does leave a notable amount of performance on the table. At least the laptop will be cheaper to upgrade. 

On that note, the M.2 SSD is also upgradable, as is the Wi-Fi card. 

All told, the Lenovo LOQ Essential gaming laptop offers decent value at its current price. Of course, the laptop should have ideally been a lot cheaper, but this is seemingly about as cheap as it can get, given the current insanity surrounding DRAM and NAND prices. 

Disclaimer: Notebookcheck is not responsible for price changes carried out by retailers. The discounted price or deal mentioned in this item was available at the time of writing and may be subject to time restrictions and/or limited unit availability.