Well… I’ve had it since Monday, and in that time I was able to set it up, install some games, do some short playtests of a few, and spend about 4-5 hours in Starfield.
The long and the short of it is that I really liked it, there’s a lot of good here, but on Wednesday I ordered a ROG Ally. I received it yesterday, and spent yesterday and today doing the same kind of stuff that I did on the Legion Go.
I’m currently factory resetting the Legion Go, and will be returning it to Best Buy tomorrow.
In terms of gameplay performance they’re more or less identical. I have no complaints about that from either of them. They both ran what I tested beautifully.
But why did I even give the ROG Ally a try? Well, I think the Legion Go is great. For the right person. But that person isn’t me. I have a few different concerns with it, but it mostly boils down to it being too big for me.
Weight-wise it’s fine. It never became uncomfortable to hold. But my hands simply weren’t big enough to hit all buttons without sometimes shifting the unit around, which wasn’t a problem with the Ally.
I also just didn’t enjoy the heft of it. I basically have to use both hands whenever I handled it, and I didn’t want to hold it by the controllers, since they’re removable and I was concerned that it would weaken the clips.
It’s simply less of a portable device.
And while the screen is absolutely massive and the stand is great and the idea of removable controllers work really well, and the FPS mode is pretty cool… none of these are things I ended up really caring about.
Then there’s the software. The experience is night-and-day when compared with the Ally. I put a bit less weight on this, since Lenovo is already making changes and rolling out updates.
But at the same time the fact that the Ally was a joy to use, while the Go wasn’t, did impact my decision in the moment. Basically, the software on the Go will likely improve, but the Ally already has improved and is great. And I wanted to have a great experience right now, not at some potential time in the future.
Anyway, I’ve typed quite enough.
Questions?
edit: I just remembered that @SpiderLink had some specific questions. I think I’ve already answered about ergonomics, but let me know if there’s something you’d like to know. In terms of battery life, I got a bit over 2 hours in Starfield without plugging in. As far as I’m concerned that’s perfectly acceptable. You can probably extend that by doing things like reduce brightness, shut down background apps, and so forth.
As for heat dissipation… I’m not sure what you want to know. It never got hot to the touch or anything, and the fans never were too loud or sounded like they were struggling.