As a game lover, I got my hands on many interesting devices, such as this new Lenovo Legion Go handheld gaming console, first of all, I am very happy that a big company like Lenovo is willing to launch such a niche product. Indeed, the Legion Go is a quite special but impressive handheld among all the newest candidates.
Unboxing
Let’s take a look at the packaging, the Legion Go’s outer box doesn’t have anything special, but the accessories are quite good, a pretty well-made carrying case, please don’t underestimate this case, when I put the device into it, it fits very well and protects the device perfectly when I use it on the go. And there is also a magnetic hole in the carrying case for convenient charging: you can easily charge the Legion Go through it – Kind of a thoughtful detail.
A power adapter that supports up to 65w, it’s worth noting that the power cable is quite long. On top of that, there’s a strange plastic piece that no one would know its function without reading the manual again, it can merge with one of the joypads to turn it into a mouse, just like a flight steering rod. Awesome!
Design
In terms of design, the most attractive thing to me is of course the screen. This 8.8-inch LCD screen is the largest among the current handheld consoles with the Windows system. Comparing it to the switch, the difference in screen size is very obvious.
When you actually get your hands on the Legion Go, the screen is even bigger than what you see in the commercial. I have to admit that a bigger screen does lead to a better gaming experience, and as far as graphics go this device has no rivals. But the weight of 860g deserves careful consideration by all of us before buying, can your arms and wrists live up to this machine for a long time?
In terms of exterior design, I have to say that the Legion Go is very much in line with my taste, the lines are full of energy, the body looks very sharp, like a muscle car. Combined with the RGB effect on the joystick, this is the coolest gaming handheld console as far as I’m concerned.
The Legion Go’s design incorporates many features of handheld consoles on the market, such as removable controllers, touch pads on the controllers, brackets on the back of the mainframe, etc.
Of course, the Legion Go also has its own unique design, the right controller can be removed, you can conveniently use it as a mouse, for fps games obviously，it’s not the best, But I really like what Lenovo has been trying on Legion Go.
At the same time, just like the Switch, Legion Go’s controllers can be paired with the console separately, allowing two person playing together without additional controllers when playing some old games, which is the first in windows handheld consoles, It’s great.
My only complaint in terms of appearance is that the black plastic shell is very prone to fingerprints. The controller part is fine, the main unit was covered in grease after I used it for only ten minutes. And it’s very hard to clean.
Performance
The Legion Go comes with an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, which is one of the most powerful processors currently available for Windows handhelds with 8 zen4 cores, 16 threads, a Boosted clock of up to 5.1 GHz, and 16MB of L3 cache, in short, it is an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U optimized for low-power performance.、
In the test, it has a good performance at 30w power consumption. Even at 15w of power consumption, the performance is still strong.
In terms of GPU performance, the Z1 Extreme is equipped with a Radom 780M core graphics card, which scored 2,782 points in the time spy, this is an amazing result, and almost doubles the 96eu Intel XE graphics card, which is close to GTX-1650 max-Q performance.
Overall, the Z1 Extreme is a great processor for such devices, and in daily use, even when running high-performance demanding games, the Z1 Extreme delivers a very smooth gaming experience at 800p-1200p resolutions and low graphics. Some may argue that the resolution and graphics presets are too low, but in real life using the lower graphics is acceptable in an 8.8″ screen size.
In terms of power consumption, I first did a stress test at 15w TDP and the results were excellent with CPU temperatures below 70° the entire time and the fan noise being very minimal.
At 30w TDP, the power was maintained at 30w for the first 2 minutes of the stress test, after which it stayed at around 25w, with higher fan speeds and noticeable fan noise.
Game
I first tested Horizon 5 at 1200p with the low frame rate preset, and to be honest, I was very happy with the result, and even with the low frame rate the performance was excellent.
In Cyberpunk 2077, in the same 1200p, low-graphic preset, it still had good framerates, which was great.
I also tested my favorite game Ganshin Impact, at 2560×1600 resolution, low graphics preset, with an average frame rate of 53fps, and because the resolution is high enough, the game has great graphics, even better than the highest graphics on mobile platforms.
Finally, I also tried running Tears of the Kingdom on Legion Go and it almost always stayed at 1080p 30fps, a much better experience than it on switch.
Screen
The Legion Go uses an 8.8-inch LCD display, and if you’re familiar with Lenovo’s products, you’ll notice that the Legion Go uses the same screen as the Lenovo y700 tablet, which is a very good screen as far as display is concerned. But it’s not perfect, First of all, since it’s an LCD display, it has a high power consumption. At the same time, the screen does not support variable refresh rates. In other words, the screen has a serious impact on the battery life of the Legion Go.
Battery
Although the Legion Go has a large 49-watt-hour battery, the battery life performance is very average, with a TDP setting of 15W, you can play games for 2 hours, and with a TDP setting of 30W, it can only run for 1 hour, and 30 minutes. When playing some games with lower performance requirements, setting TDP to 5-10w can make it run for 3-4 hours. Of course, this is not a problem for Lenovo, most windows handheld consoles on the market have very average battery life, so when running games with high graphic requirements, I would connect it to a power adapter, the good news is that Legion Go supports bypass charging.
Speaker
The Legion Go’s speakers are located on the top of the console, and they are not that great.
Software
This console has very good hardware, but Lenovo didn’t do the best job in the software. First of all, let’s talk about the Legion space, when I was using the Legion Go, I never launched any game through the Legion space, I didn’t have a way to put my favorite games on the homepage, honestly, it’s more like an advertisement slot. As for the quick settings interface, you can quickly adjust brightness, power consumption, volume, etc., but you can’t lock the frame rate of the game, you can’t record the screen conveniently, and even the data of the performance monitor is incorrect. I hope that Lenovo will improve these issues in the next update.
Conclusion
Overall, the Legion Go has very good hardware, a powerful and balanced CPU, a good quality screen, and a controller full of highlights, but also many shortcomings. I think this handheld console is more suitable for heavy gamers and geeks.
If you are interested in having a new way to play on PC, just check the Legion Go handheld out here.
