Okay, "low settings" is a general description of graphic settings. What about the resolution? And specifically what games are you trying to play. Perhaps you should try
The Intel HD 4400 is capable of playing games as long as they are not too graphically demanding. For example, I recently installed Skyrim on my laptop because a friend of mine wanted to play but his laptop only had an Intel HD 4400 graphics core. I play the game on my desktop, but my laptop has very similar specs to his laptop. I installed the game and tweaked the graphic settings in the SkyrimPref.ini file and let him play the game on my laptop for a while.
I setup Skyrim at 1600x900 resolution and basically disabled shadows with some other tweaks it the above mentioned INI file. Running around outdoors resulted in frame rates between 25 FPS - 35 FPS, but mostly it was around 30 FPS. In Whiterun (a city) performance basically ranged between 29 FPS - 46 FPS, but was mostly in the 39+ FPS range. Lowering the resolution to 1366x768 probably improved performance by 7 FPS - 10 FPS on average.
I can play Star Trek Online with the intel HD 4400 at 1600x900 resolution, but I do need to deal with server lag from time to time which is typical for online games. The following Youtube basically focuses on games played using a Surface Pro 2 (Core i5-4200u + Intel HD 4400). You can use it as a guide for possible games you are considering buying. Or use it to compare the performance of a game you have tried if there is a video for it. According to the Youtuber, he is using a video capture device instead of recording software so you should be seeing the actual performance of the game.
https://www.youtube.com/user/microsoftsurfaceproG