Originally published at: Review | Lenovo Legion Go - XboxEra
I have been using a Lenovo Legion Go for the better part of two weeks now and I am in love with the new handheld PC future. I’ve used a Steam Deck and tried out the ROG Ally on display, but neither of them has the versatility that the Legion Go does. Featuring a gorgeous 8.8” display, powerful internals, an excellent kickstand, and a well-done detachable controller system it all sounds like a winner. The Achilles heel for many will be its battery life, which isn’t the best in those AAA titles when you’re pushing performance at all. Let’s dig into the details and go over the specs and see why I love it so much and if it’s for you.
Specs
- CPU: AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme (8 cores, 16 threads, 3.3GHz)
- GPU: AMD Radeon (RDNA™ 3 Architecture)
- RAM: 16GB LPDDR5x-7500 (soldered)
- Storage: 1TB M.2 2242 SSD
- Display: 8.8” WQXGA (2560×1600), Multi-touch, IPS, 500nits, 16:10, 144Hz, Corning Gorilla Glass 5
- Speakers: Stereo speakers (2W x2) and dual-array microphone
- Wireless Connectivity: 802.11ax 2×2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth® 5.1
- Touchpad: Buttonless Mylar® surface touchpad (on the right controller), 28.5 x 28.5 mm (1.12 x 1.12 inches)
- Sensors: 6-axis Gyroscope sensor, Ambient light sensor, Mouse sensor (on right controller bottom)
- Ports: 1x microSD card reader, 1x Headphone/microphone combo jack (3.5mm), 2x Pogo pin connector (5-point), 2x USB4 40Gbps (support data transfer, Power Delivery 3.0, and DisplayPort™ 1.4)
- Battery: 49.2 Wh, supports Super Rapid Charge (10min charge 0~30% capacity, 30min charge 0~70% capacity, 80min charge 0~100% capacity)
- Dimensions & Weight: Gamepad with controllers: 298.83 x 131 x 40.7 mm (11.76 x 5.16 x 1.60 inches), less than 854 g (1.88 lbs)
- Operating System: Windows 11 Home
Out of all of the handheld gaming focused PC’s I’ve seen I think the Go takes the cake for the best overall specs. Having a user serviceable SSD, microSD port, headphone jack, and everything else listed up above is a fantastic value for the cost of the machine.
The Out of Box Experience
The Legion Go runs Windows 11 Home. It had no bloatware that I saw with the only included software being Lenovo’s own Legion Space application. Your Legion Left and Legion Right buttons on the top front of the device are shortcut keys. Left brings up the app itself and right brings up a shortcut menu that is extremely handy. Legion Space will set to auto-start when windows loads up, and speaking of that. Windows loads incredibly fast on this device. With a cold boot take roughly 20 to 30 seconds on average.
Your initial startup will require a typically lengthy windows installation where you can login with your Microsoft account or use one of the workarounds to bypass creating one. (google how to do it!) The first thing I noticed was the incredible brightness and color quality in the QHD 8.8” LCD display. OLED is my favorite for gaming, but this is the best LCD I’ve used, with gorgeous colors and excellent contrast. Using the Legion Space software you can quickly swap between three resolution settings, 1600p, 1200p, and 800p as well as either 144hz or 60hz refresh rates.
While you can change the resolution at any time you will need to have the device plugged in to change the refresh rate, no clue why. Alongside those options are base settings to govern the power made available to the Go’s included AMD chipset. The TDP governs how much juice the CPU/GPU combo, aka APU, can draw at once and you’ll need to change this up depending on the type of game you want to play. Less demanding titles can run fine in the balanced setting with a high resolution and refresh rate. Newer triple A graphical behemoths like Starfield will demand performance mode.
You can go in and set a TDP setting yourself anywhere from 1 to 30. With any number 20 and up suggesting you keep the device plugged into the wall because they will burn through whatever charge your battery has in it quickly. Unlike the Steam Deck this is a Game Pass powerhouse right out of the box, though it is much more of a computer experience than the Steam Deck’s console-like one. The Legion Space software has handy shortcuts to all of the different PC launchers out there and I quickly had Steam, Xbox’s app, Ubisoft Connect, EA Play, Epic Games Store, and the Rockstar Launcher installed and ready to go.
The User Experience
If you haven’t done PC gaming in a while, it is surprisingly cheap to get a massive library right away. Thanks to a ton of humble bundles, steam sales, game pass, xbox play anywhere, and more I have roughly 1400 PC games ready to install between all of the launchers. For any Xbox fan the most important launcher is going to be Xbox’s own and it works ok with a controller. A new compact mode has made things easier to read on smaller screens but it still lags behind the ease of use that you’ll get with Steam’s Big Picture mode. For all the others (I’m looking at you EGS) you’ll want to use the Go’s touchpad. Located on the right joystick below the excellent analog stick (more on those next), the touch pad feels great and offers satisfying haptic feedback when used.
The joysticks on both controllers are Hall Effect, which means they use a magnet-based system to determine their positions which means far less (if any) stick drift concerns. In games where I could set the dead zone I would put it at the lowest settings and have zero issues. It feels incredibly responsive and the included (toggleable) RGB looks nice, though it’s far too bright at default for night time use i.m.o. The face buttons, bumpers, and triggers are of a similarly high quality with a number of extra buttons available on both sticks that you can program within the Legion Space app to behave however you want.
The Go’s biggest party trick though is its FPS mode for the right joystick. Using the switch on the bottom of the stick you can detach it and then swap to FPS mode. Using an included plastic disc this turns it into more of a flight stick setup and has it act as a mouse within Windows. There is a small mouse sensor on the bottom of the stick and it legitimately felt great to use once I dialed in the settings and set the extra buttons to behave how I wanted. I used this mode a lot when the power supply in my PC exploded during a live stream. Waiting for a PSU to come in from Amazon (and praying it worked, don’t worry it did!) I turned to the Legion Go to produce the Xbox Era podcast for that week.
Thanks to the Go’s 2 total (1 top and 1 bottom positioned) USB-C 40mbps slots I hooked up a USB dock which I used for HDMI out and daisy chained to a powered USB hub. The bottom USB I used to keep the device powered up and set the TDP to its max at 30. The Go was a beast, handling two external monitors set at 1440p and 1080p respectively. I hooked up my mouse, keyboard, USB camera, USB webcam, & 3 external hard drives with zero issues. This thing is a legitimate PC replacement when needed, and while it pumped out a ludicrous amount of hot air through its top vent the system itself was never close to overheating.
Games
The most important thing with the handheld though is gaming on it, and it’s awesome as long as it lasts. The Go has a just under 50 watt hour battery, but it lacks the fine tuning that Valve has put into the Steam Deck to maximize its performance while not draining the battery too quickly. If you’re used to Windows 11 and willing to tinker with both the game and performance settings you can get a decent amount of time from most titles.
With the display set to 1200p and performance on balanced I got nearly 3 and ½ hours out of Dave the Diver. A more demanding title like Forza Motorsport however needed the resolution lowered to 800p and settings to low if I wanted to play on anything below performance mode for the Go itself. It’s perfectly playable for a few hours at those settings but I admit I parked myself next to the wall outlet by my couch so that I could race around at a mix of medium and high settings and at 1200p resolution while in the max 30w TDP setting.
Setting everything to the lowest power usage and turning on YouTube at roughly 1/3 peak brightness I hit over 5 hours before getting any battery warnings. The included speakers are rather weak though, as they’re up firing and unless you’re aiming them at a wall you need to have them near max volume to hear anything clearly. Thankfully the Go includes Bluetooth 5.1 and a 3.5 mm headphone/microphone combo jack.
Going back to that display, while it can run up to 1600p and look gorgeous doing so, I never used it above 1200p for any serious gaming sessions. At only 8.8” large it really wasn’t that noticeable until I dropped all the way to 800p, and the loss to FPS and battery life was far too large of a trade-off. Weight wise the Go in a chonky boy, and there is no getting around it. After an hour+ of use depending on the position I was in my hands would be a bit tired. Thankfully the ergonomics fit me well enough that it was manageable, and I stopped noticing the weight after a week or so.
As long as you have some decent Windows knowledge and are ok with tinkering a bit you can get stellar performance out of any PC game. I played Starfield, Forza Motorsport, Baldur’s Gate 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Immortals of Aveum, and tons of other graphically demanding titles and I could play them all. The most demanding, like Immortals of Aveum, did require low settings and no higher than 1200p on the performance setting, but they still looked great and ran at a consistent 30fps or higher. I did have to visit Lenovo’s website and find their new GPU drivers for the best performance. The ones out of the box had numerous issues in Starfield and other new titles, once I manually updated them everything ran without issue.
Wrapping Things Up
Starting at $699 US for the 512gb model and going to $749 for the 1TB they sent me, the Legion Go is an excellent value even at that high price. It has an incredible display, great feeling controller (for my giant hands), and if you know your way around Windows 11 it is an insanely versatile device that could become many people’s entire PC if need be. If you want to game on the go with Windows this device is exceptional, for as long as the battery lasts.
Recommendation: Buy