New Budget Gaming Laptop..

Associate
Joined
10 Nov 2006
Posts
1,316
A little help please, as laptops are not my thing.

Looking for a budget/midrange gaming laptop for my father in law. He is getting on a bit, and mainly plays train sim classic, hidden object and adventure games.
His current laptop is dying, and runs his train sim at around 15 fps :p

Budget of £800, give or take. Narrowed it down to the Lenovo LOQ, as these seem to review well, and are are little more reserved in the aesthetics.

I have 2 options @ 15"

Option 1 is the 8th Gen. (Last Years). I5-13500H, 16gb ram, 512g SSD, RTX 4060, FHD 45% NTSC screen.
Option 2 is the 9th Gen. Ryzen 7 7435HS, 16gb ram, 1tb SSD, RTX 4060, FHD 100% sRGB Screen.

I can get both for similar money, (Just over budget) and I am currently leaning towards option 2.
I have no experience of Ryzen cpus, and can find very little info, other than it does not have an iGPU.

Any thoughts?
 
mods ?
external screen usage?

tbh they are much the muchness.
the amd is lsited has 8 cores vs 12 cores. im ignoring threads.
the bace clock speed is better on the amd at 3.1 vs intel 2.6

not haveing an IGPU can meanpoorer battery life, but depends if using it on the go or not.

personally i think i would lean to option 2.

very little is using more than 8 core game wise as far as i know, and the increase base speed it better for overall performance over a long period of time on the AMD.
im just not to usre on the cache. L1 is questionable, L2 ok one per cove vers what appears to be total, L3 the intel has 2mb bette.


based on https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i5-13500H-vs-Ryzen-7-7435HS

there is pros' and cons to both.

long term the 8gb vram maybe a limiting factor.

i think i would go with the amd my self.
 
mods ?
external screen usage?

tbh they are much the muchness.
the amd is lsited has 8 cores vs 12 cores. im ignoring threads.
the bace clock speed is better on the amd at 3.1 vs intel 2.6

not haveing an IGPU can meanpoorer battery life, but depends if using it on the go or not.

personally i think i would lean to option 2.

very little is using more than 8 core game wise as far as i know, and the increase base speed it better for overall performance over a long period of time on the AMD.
im just not to usre on the cache. L1 is questionable, L2 ok one per cove vers what appears to be total, L3 the intel has 2mb bette.


based on https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i5-13500H-vs-Ryzen-7-7435HS

there is pros' and cons to both.

long term the 8gb vram maybe a limiting factor.

i think i would go with the amd my self.
Thank you.

He never moves from his chair, so it will pretty much always be plugged in. Battery life was low on Priority. (Something I should have mentioned.)
No external screen usage.

I think the better screen and larger SSD swing it for me.
I could easily upgrade the SSD of course, but the less I have to get "Involved" the better.
He is never going to play anything that will push the 4060.
Pretty sure a 3050 or even 2050 would suffice, but with certain offers, the 4060 is £50 more. This seems a no brainer, especially with the extra V-Ram.
Just wanted to make sure the CPU was not a lemon.
 
Last edited:
Hi, I've just received the LOQ 15 I ordered. I paid £700 for the version with the 7435HS, the 4060, the 512GB SSD, the 300 nit/100% sRGB/1080p screen & 24GB of DDR5. I didn't pay the extra £90 for Windows thinking all I needed was a cheap activation key but it's proving far more complicated than that so I'd definitely recommend you buy it with Windows installed.

My first impression is it looks & feels a nice laptop. I came from a 2020 vintage Lenovo Legion 5i & it feels very familiar. My laptop usage is primarily running AAA, graphics heavy games while hooked up to a plug socket. The fact that the 7435HS lacks an iGPU doesn't bother me. Right now I'm downloading The Last Of Us which my old 10300H/2060/8GB DDR3 Legion really struggled with. I'm hoping for better things from the LOQ!
 
Last edited:
Ordered the AMD version this evening. £824.00 delivered

Further inspection of my father in laws laptop this evening shows its got a "HP Hexacore" CPU. :cry:
The pass mark score for that CPU is around 1700

Think he`s in for a bit of a shock.....:D
 
There aren't that many reviews of the LOQ 15 with the Ryzen 7 7435HS & Nvidia 4060. However Tweakers, a Dutch site, appears to have done some decent benchmarking which you can find here...


And a Vietnamese site has done a YouTube review here...


Interestingly, despite the 7435's lack of an iGPU, Tweakers measured a battery runtime (presumably for web browsing) of 3 hours & 47 minutes which is easily sufficient for my needs.

Despite being miserly & not paying the extra £90 for the Lenovo factory installation of Windows, I have now got Windows 10 running okay. I got a kosher Windows activation key from Hypestkey for £16.54 which arrived by email right after placing the order & worked first time.

Hope this helps someone.
 
I’m in the realm for a new gaming laptop for travelling with work. I wanted an absolute max/top end of £1000.

Looks like I can get a Lenovo LOQ 15 with a 4060 for just below budget!

I’d never even considered a Lenovo, or knew they did gaming laptops.

What’s the better laptop CPU these days Intel or AMD? I’ve always done AMD Ryzen for my desktops recently.
 
Hmmm...you might have a problem there.

Gaming laptops, when playing games, tend to be very power hungry & noticeably noisy because of the racket you get from the fans. On a train, you don't have a plug socket & you're deffo going to annoy your fellow passengers!

You CAN play games relatively silently & on battery power alone by getting a CPU with as decent integrated GPU (iGPU). My CPU on the LOQ (the Ryzen 7 7435HS) doesn't have one. The best iGPUs are on AMD CPUs but even these will only manage AAA games at low settings & resolutions. Still, it's better than being bored stiff while you're sat there going nowhere, waiting for workmen to clear leaves from the tracks!

Hope that helps...
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom