Category: Gaming

Lenovo Legion Go Handheld Gaming Console: A Powerful Device with Some Shortcomings

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. It comes with a pretty well-made carrying case that fits the device perfectly and protects it when on the go. The carrying case even has a magnetic hole for convenient charging. The power adapter that supports up to 65w is also included, along with a long power cable. Additionally, there’s a strange plastic piece that can merge with one of the joypads to turn it into a mouse, which is a thoughtful detail.

Design

In terms of design, the most attractive thing to me is the screen. This 8.8-inch LCD screen is the largest among the current handheld consoles with the Windows system. When you actually get your hands on the Legion Go, the screen is even bigger than what you see in the commercial. A bigger screen leads to a better gaming experience, and as far as graphics go, this device has no rivals. However, the weight of 860g should be carefully considered before buying, as it may strain your arms and wrists during long gaming sessions.

The Legion Go’s exterior design is very much in line with my taste. The lines are full of energy, and the body looks 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. It incorporates many features of handheld consoles on the market, such as removable controllers, touch pads on the controllers, and brackets on the back of the mainframe. The right controller can be removed and used as a mouse, which is a unique design choice by Lenovo.

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. It has 8 zen4 cores, 16 threads, a Boosted clock of up to 5.1 GHz, and 16MB of L3 cache. 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, almost doubling the 96eu Intel XE graphics card.

Game

I tested several games on the Legion Go and was impressed with the performance. Horizon 5 and Cyberpunk 2077 ran smoothly at 1200p with low graphics presets. My favorite game, Ganshin Impact, performed well at 2560×1600 resolution with low graphics presets. Additionally, Tears of the Kingdom ran at 1080p 30fps, providing a better experience than on the Switch.

Screen

The Legion Go uses an 8.8-inch LCD display, which is the same screen as the Lenovo y700 tablet. It is a good screen in terms of display quality, but it has some drawbacks. First, it has high power consumption due to being an LCD display. Additionally, it does not support variable refresh rates, which impacts the battery life of the Legion Go.

Battery

Although the Legion Go has a large 49-watt-hour battery, the battery life performance is 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 games with lower performance requirements, setting TDP to 5-10W can make it run for 3-4 hours. The Legion Go supports bypass charging, which is a convenient feature.

Software

The software on the Legion Go has some room for improvement. The Legion Space, which is supposed to be a game launcher, feels more like an advertisement slot. The quick settings interface allows for adjustments to brightness, power consumption, and volume, but lacks features like locking the frame rate and convenient screen recording. The performance monitor data is also incorrect. Hopefully, Lenovo will address these issues in future updates.

Conclusion

Overall, the Legion Go has very good hardware, a powerful CPU, a good quality screen, and a controller full of highlights. However, it also has some shortcomings. It is more suitable for heavy gamers and geeks. If you are interested in having a new way to play on PC, the Legion Go handheld is worth checking out.

Source: Gizmochina