Deal | Affordable Lenovo gaming laptop with 16 GB DDR5 RAM, RTX 5060 sees $650 price cut

It appears that the RTX 5060-powered Lenovo LOQ Essential gaming laptop is once again available with a massive $700 discount on Best Buy. This brings its price down to just around $1,200, making it quite a decent purchase considering the present market conditions.

The laptop comes equipped with a decently powerful Intel Core i7-13650HX CPU with a 14-core setup, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 laptop GPU with 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, and 16 GB of DDR5 RAM. A 512 GB SSD takes care of storage requirements.

The LOQ Essential is a no-frills gaming laptop with respectable specs

Our detailed review of the Lenovo LOQ Essential gaming laptop paints a bittersweet picture. While the laptop is definitely quite affordable and packs healthy specs on paper, its real-life performance, especially in the GPU department, lags noticeably behind its peers.

In our Cyberpunk 2077 gaming benchmark, the laptop even fell behind a different laptop equipped with a nearly 4-year-old RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. However, we did find its CPU performance to be adequate, even in sustained workloads.

Another major drawback happens to be the RTX 5060 Laptop GPU's paltry 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, which might not be enough two or three years down the road. Needless to say, the VRAM is not upgradable. 

Speaking of upgradability, the gaming laptop relies on single-channel memory out of the box, leaving one SODIMM slot empty for future upgrades (Corsair 16 GB DDR5-5600 currently $229 on Amazon). The storage can also be upgraded courtesy of its M.2 2280 slot. 

Last but definitely not the least, our review revealed that the LOQ gaming laptop's 15.6-inch display covers almost the entire sRGB color gamut and sports a speedy 144 Hz refresh rate. Color accuracy is very respectable, even without calibration. 

Gamers might find the panel's peak 322 nits of brightness to be on the lower side, which is true, but it should be perfectly usable in environments with controlled lighting. Moreover, certain professionals might also be disappointed by the panel's 71% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. 

The I/O on offer is quite healthy, consisting of HDMI 2.1, USB-C 10 Gbps, dual USB-A 5 Gbps, as well as a gigabit Ethernet port. Other notable details include dual 2 W studio speakers, a 720p front camera, Wi-Fi 6, and a 135 W power supply. 

At its current price on Best Buy, the LOQ Essential gaming laptop definitely brings quite a lot of value to the table for folks with modest performance expectations. As always, potential customers are requested to check out our in-depth review of the laptop before pulling the trigger.

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.