You’re remembering it correctly, Louis didn’t really test his own powers in IWTV in the way that you’re describing bc he was too busy existential angsting :[

He doesn’t seem to have gotten any substantial powers anyway, being Lestat’s 3rd fledgling and made such a short period of time after Lestat’s 2nd fledgling. There is also some speculation that the blood transfer needs to be exchanged more than once (how it was done w/ Louis) to ensure a stronger fledgling. Marius, for example, exchanged blood with his maker multiple times when he was turned.

A maker needs to wait a good long while between making fledglings; too much frequency will make subsequent fledglings weaker than they could have been. Plus, even though Lestat had the blood of a much older and stronger vampire when he was turned, Lestat himself was only a decade into vampiring himself. It seems the vampiric spirit discourages the transfer of powers from young vampires to their fledglings. 

Armand did coerce Louis into climbing up a building once, tho!

“`Listen to me; we are going to climb to the tower,’
Armand was saying.“ 

`I cannot . . it’s impossible … I-‘ 

‘You don’t begin to know your own powers. You can climb easily. Remember, if you fall you will not be injured. Do as I do.’ ”

And he did climb it, but he didn’t seem all that thrilled about doing so. 

Lestat tells us in TVL:

“I never revealed to
him half my powers, and with reason, because he shrank in guilt and
self-loathing from using even half of his own.”

Louis says to Armand in IWTV:

“I don’t see our
life as powers and gifts. I see it as a curse. I haven’t the courage to die.”

In later canon, we still don’t see Louis testing his powers, but it’s fanon that he has some and seems to have no interest in exploring them.

There’s fanon that his sense of smell is stronger than the other vampires, so that’s something!

More under the cut. Cut for length, also mild spoilers.

In TVL, Louis does admit he felt something when Akasha was in the neighborhood, so either he was sensing Akasha or sensing what other vampires were able to sense of her:

“I don’t have your powers,” he said unobtrusively, “nevertheless I felt
this thing. And I tell you it was alien, utterly uncivilized, for want of a
better word.”

Armand describes Louis’ lack of powers here in TVA:

“…unable to read minds, or to levitate, or
to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an
immortal with whom mortals fall in love.”

Marius considers upgrading Louis in QOTD: but he is not authorized and you know Lestat would throw the hugest tantrum if it happened

This one was so gifted yet not gifted at the same time; [Marius] wondered if the human light would go out of
Louis’s eyes if he ever gained more power, if he ever had, for instance, a little of the blood of Marius in his
veins… 

Just a little blood, and Louis might be stronger, true, but then he might lose
the human tenderness, the human wisdom that no one could give another; the gift of knowing others’
suffering with which Louis had probably been born.”