Is the Lenovo Legion Go Worth It? | In-Depth Review

this is a Lenovo Legion this is the Rog Al this is the Amber this is a Playstation portal this is a Playstation portal hi my name is tired and I'm Joseph and let me be clear this video is a review of the Lenovo Legion go and I can compare it to the Asus Rog Ally I have here but we need to talk it's been an interesting couple of years for handhelds but as a small Channel I'm just as much of a customer as you but not everyone has the luxury of collecting them all for some people the first one they get is the only one they get for better or worse I acknowledge that this is a very first world problem to have but it's crazy that when you get a new handheld a new competitor is announced not even weeks after what I'm getting at is I've spent 2 weeks with the Lenovo Legion go and I like it but I don't love it let's talk about that and ask if this could be the handheld for you as well as what you should do as someone who keeps wanting to get a handheld in a year where they just keep coming out if you're coming in from the 3-month Rog Ally review that I did over a month ago welcome back back thanks for sticking around I appreciate all of you that were looking forward to this Legion go review and hey so was I but a state the obvious the OLED steam deck is the newest handheld available at the point that this video comes out it was announced not even 2 weeks after the legion go came out and the consensus is that it's basically a slight upgrade in every way a slightly bigger screen that's now OLED a slightly higher refresh rate from 60 HZ to 90 HZ more battery life up to like 30% more maybe 50 a slight performance upgrade and a modernization of everything else like like Wi-Fi Bluetooth brightness and even the speakers on the flip side it's still running a custom Linux OS called Steam OS it's still only running at 800p but it's still the cheapest device available especially for a handheld of the scale so why does it sound like I'm selling you the steam deck in a legion go review it's because with the OLED steam deck fixing and improving on some of those things that made the LCD version the less appealing option you may want to consider the options a bit more before that announcement I could easily tell you to get the legion go over the steam deck at least but now I'm not sure and with the legion go at roughly the same price as the top spec Rog Ally we should look at what the legion go has going on for it and really see if it can stand out for more than just its size I'll also be comparing it mostly to the rag Ally since a it's the windows competitor and B well it's the only one I have in the Rong Ally review I mentioned that the Ally was my first handheld PC and the Ally reignited my love for handheld devices in a way that the Nintendo switch never really could and in a way that I haven't felt this deeply since the PlayStation vaita so how does Aion go do against those standards from the moment I opened the box I was delighted to see how big sleek and Powerful it looked and turning it on for the first time made me even forget how it felt to turn on my Ally for the first time too the very existence of this device nearly eclipsed my memory of the switch and hey is that a case wow imagine that okay packaging inside what's this thing got going on full disclosure we're going to be coming at this purely from an everyday user kind of vibe I'm not a super technical reviewer I mean we'll get into battery and like performance a little bit but I can recommend some cool people to get better info from but I can't keep up with all that Tera flop and Megazord nonsense I'm just going to tell you what it is what it's like to use it and give you my raw feelings here if you have one of these bear with me because I want to start with everything I don't like about this device so we can end the conversation on a good note because I overall still really do like this device so I'm going to get the biggest con out of the way it's the software on this thing it comes with the legion space app which is the legion sort of control panel equivalent to the Asus Armory crate it's a bit clunky and it really only tries to sell you games before even trying to show you your library it doesn't even give you curated recommendations people on the Reddit for this device have even gone as far as to remove Legion space from the startup programs but thankfully with a new update in week 2 Lenovo lets you disable it from opening on Startup India still you do need it to do some pretty basic stuff like turning off the RG GB on the controllers or enabling resolution scaling which apparently doesn't even work at least right now the other part of what makes this device so difficult to recommend is how much time and research you need to do to bring it up to its full potential the rag Ally at launch had like a 2hour setup really most of that was installing Windows updates and the Asus updates since then I haven't really had to do much other than updating the BIOS every once in a while but that's super simple Legion go though I feel like every day there's some new Quirk or something thing to tweak even 2 weeks in I don't really feel like I'm as settled as I was with the r Ali 2 weeks in Armory crate had its own issues at launch but for the most part it was usable and welld designed today if you wanted me to update the rock Ally bios I can start that process in less than a minute but if you pointed a gun to my head and ask me to update the Lenovo fireus drivers I'm dead I I don't know maybe it does it on its own when you boot the legion space and that sucks because these updates at this handheld level usually mean significant performance improvements at least over time it's not entirely fair to bash Lenovo for this kind of stuff on week 2 when the Ally is on month 5 but even recently Asus added the option to assign 6 GB of vram and scale resolution to 900p when Reddit users who hacked those settings in found that it offered the best performance for the device Lenovo has come out and at least confirmed the 6 GB option coming to the legion and hey shout out to Ben Meers the PM for this device he's doing a really great job posting on all the support forums and letting us know about what changes are coming to the legion still I wonder how much of their priority queue is just playing catchup to devices like the rala the legion go also did not come with an FPS limiter option or with the ability to choose your own fan curves but Ben says it's on the list the next biggest gripe is that you do get a 144 HZ and 60 HZ mode that you can swap between but not on the Fly you can weirdly go from 60 to 144 HZ mode unplugged but not the other way around this is the first device to ask you to plug it into a power source before you can toggle the refresh rate so if you're stuck on a plane with no outlet and and you forgot to bring your device down from 144 HZ down to 60 tough luck there's people that are hacking in refresh rates like 90 HZ and 40 HZ but it's causing issues with the touchcreen so time will tell if Lenovo actually wants to patch in a 90 or 40 HZ mode later there are so many weird quirks to this device like how the OEM Graphics drivers are months behind the official AMD drivers which makes quite a few frames of performance difference the only options right now are to wait until Lenovo wants to give you the latest drivers themselves or remove the included Graphics drivers alt together and install the latest ones from AMD yourself however once this is said and done it apparently breaks a few things that comes with the legion like the built-in performance monitor or the rsr functionality Red Dead Redemption 2 apparently has issues with the screen because a legion is configured as a portrait mode display rather than a landscape display there's a ton of good videos about this stuff so do your own research to see if you can foresee any of these issues coming up for games you play and again Ben and Lenovo says that they're looking into this but it's not really guaranteed that we'll get a fix or we'll even get it soon okay so bashing of Lenovo software aside this thing is still running Windows you can easily download Steam and use Big Picture Mode like you would on the steam deck and everything I said about Windows in the Ally video still stands I'm glad I get to use all sorts of launchers and emulators just fine compared to the workarounds I've seen for the steam deck one more thing I didn't know where to put this but hey Legion go did not burn out the SD card reader I used the same SD card from the Ally and it works just fine so congrats Legion go you pass my bare minimum SD card test one more small nitpick uh the Rog Ally comes with a fingerprint reader on the power button it saves your fingerprint when you turn it on and when it works it's nice like it automatically signs you in when it doesn't though you have to put in your PIN for the device and that's a that's kind of the default experience on the legion there's this weird looking camera thing on it which I thought was like Windows hello but it's apparently not a camera people speculate that this is a light sensor but no one has had their device automatically set their brightness or anything so let me know if you know what this is moving on to the conversation about ergonomics the conversation is going to bleed into a little bit about the software because the fun thing about this is the joycons and that's what I'm going to keep calling them I have some complaints for example can you guess where the start and the select buttons are if you guess right next to the screen on either side then you'd be wrong what would normally be the placement for start and select is actually the Lenovo software hotkeys the left one opens up the full Legion space app and the right one opens up the side panels where you can do quick access settings like display resolution and refresh rate and all that you can also use the left one as like a preconfigured hotkey thing so for example the legion button and triangle swaps the power mode on the fly now you might think that's odd but so then where are the select and start buttons on this thing oh well wait there oh in order to make room for a trackpad on this thing which the Ally didn't have and the steam deck does I guess they still had to make the device look kind of decent so Lenovo put both of those standard buttons towards the bottom of the left controller face it's an uncomfortable adjustment that's still still kind of weird after a week but Ben from Lenovo says that they're looking into letting us remap them so there's hope but okay so surprisingly I'm done bashing the leg and go those were basically my biggest complaints about everything there's a bit more stuff that's weird but we'll get into that so okay what's good on this device and still on ergonomics I'd argue that everyone wants the best experience quote unquote for their device and for some that means the biggest device since it can fit a bigger battery a bigger screen and maybe even do better Cooling for the ergonomic sck though it's 50/50 I have thicker hands so I can grip this thing pretty all right however it's still a lot of device to hold on to especially when you're somewhere like in bed or just standing around in the line somewhere after a few hours with it you do get used to it and every other handheld starts feeling like what is this a handheld made for ants the r Ally from my experience well it has a smaller shell it has mushier buttons but it's also much more comfortable for smaller hands and it's also lighter my biggest complaint with the Ally was that the build is a plastic white shell it kind of feels Hollow and cheap almost like if you 3D printed a shell and if you dropped it it would break open like a Kinder Surprise egg or something the legion go is on the opposite end of that Spectrum it's big it's bulky and it's heavy but it's nice it feels more machined even though it's still plastic just better feeling plastic it could also just be that the black finish makes it feel more luxurious less cheap I don't know some reviewers are mentioning that the squared off edges of the joyon really dig into your hands but that hasn't been the case for me they're not seamless but it doesn't hurt or anything and the face buttons here on the legion go are more firm and less mushy feeling than on the Ally while still not being entirely clicky like on the switch the d-pad is clicky compared to the Allies sort of circular 360 d-pad and some people actually don't like this d-pad it's mostly because of the shape of it it's a cross-shaped d-pad so it's only really left up down right and maybe you can combine some of the buttons if you reach your finger over but it doesn't really allow for smooth transitions or cross- directional input like you would need in fighting games or even 2D Platformers I'm not a big platformer or even fighting games guy so I prefer this clicky d-pad over the more rounded omnidirectional mushy feeling d-pad on the Ally and more importantly for some the legion go has hall effect joysticks let me be honest I'm not sure that I feel the difference too much I don't get the hype and apparently you can do these really well or really bad but other than that I mean apparently they're more immune to stick drift so it's nice to have it they're comfortable maybe a bit small but that's all I have to say now the legion goes controllers in general are sturdy my biggest complaint about the switch was that the joy-con rail felt a little cheap like I remember the subtle but noticeable wiggling that the joycons do even when they sat on their rails uh the legion go learned that lesson and instead uses a much more fixed slot to slide the controllers into rather than onto the device as an aside I was playing with this device in the passenger seat of a car when suddenly we got rear ended um I was holding the thing in front of me and the impact made the right joyc sort of break off I thought it was done for and I would have to get it replaced but it actually came out fine and popped right back into the slot with no issues or damage maybe I pulled it in the right direction when we did that or maybe it was a miracle but it could also just be damn good engineering my only complaints with the joycons are two full one there's no real indicator of when these are coming off or when they're firmly back on I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid the first time that I thought I was breaking the device when I was doing this and yeah the switch has a nice click when you slide the joycons all the way in it's even part of their branding but something like that is missing from the legion go so you kind of have to to just trust that you've pushed them in all the way and two they're weirdly configured like since this is a Windows PC some games or emulators will have wonky controller mappings the way it seems as Lenovo configured these is with an Xbox 360 preset and an additional Xbox One preset mapping anything to these extra buttons on the back hasn't worked for me with that it only works in some games where you can get an explicit key binding like in OverWatch it's also really easy to accidentally press these back buttons so I'm glad they don't do anything in most games out of the box still the big selling point of these are for table mode and the FPS mode table mode being that kind of Nintendo switch mode where you can just take the joycons off and play with the tablet on its kickstand and then having the joycons in your hand then there's FPS mode where you put the console on a table and you use a right joycon like it's a mouse I'll be honest it was a cool gimmick but I only used it once in a casual OverWatch match to test it out I'm sure someone can find a reason to use it constantly to me I just found it less compelling since I wouldn't think to use this anywhere else maybe as a mouse when you're just browsing it like a tablet but I'm not going to go to a coffee shop and start playing Apex on the table with a cafe Wi-Fi if I'm at home I'll probably play Shooters on my keyboard and mouse but if you're a gamer on a budget or you're looking to get into the PC scene with a handheld like this then hey go nuts it works you may need to configure your buttons but it works but the rock Ally had some interesting developments in the fan area people thought that the Ally was super quiet at first but that ran warm and it later theorized that this was causing the SD card reader frying since all the heat would go over to that that general area since then Asus has done a lot of work to improve their fan curves and also balance heat and noise but hey for the most part sometimes I forget that the r Ally even had fans that turn on with the legion go though I definitely noticed them especially in the first few days it got to the point where Assassin's Creed Mirage that I felt bad playing this at night and I didn't trust it to not wake up my girlfriend sleeping next to me yes they were that loud I don't mind the fans during the day but at night I prefer if they were a bit more quiet without having to sacrifice performance all the way down to the quiet 5 Wat setting okay so sitting in between the choons the next obvious thing is that this device is massive with a big screen and with a great screen comes don't you dare finish that sentence don't do it I'm sick of it Bion go is rocking an 8.8 in IPS screen capable of running at 2560 x600 at 144 Herz I'm going to give you a minute to think about that sentence because what is that doing on a handheld device and get this after the steam deck OLED the Ally will technically have the smaller screen assuming that you don't take the non-oled model into account and the legion go will still have the biggest screen of the bunch I don't think any manufacturer after this should be making a bigger display than this that being said the DNA of the Legion go is part gaming handheld and part tablet like it looks like someone just glued joy-cons to an iPad mini and fattened it up a little bit but it's actually not terrible since you can use this as a tablet if you kind of just want to browse the steam store or even do web browsing or hell even play Marvel snap however the legion go is running the same chipset as the Asus Rog Ally and the Rog Ally rarely got to take full advantage of its own more modest 1080p 120 HZ display unless you were playing indie games or emulating older game as a handheld the device doesn't have the power to run most AAA games at the full potential of this display but at 8.8 in I'd argue that you're not going to notice much of a difference from 1600p and 1200p also the legion is running with a taller 16x 10 aspect ratio like the steam deck as opposed to the standard 16x9 that's on the Ally in most monitors so some games or emulators will run across the issue of black bars on the top or the sides of this device but more important than that Lenovo didn't include a vrr display on this device for those that don't know what it means cuz I actually didn't before this vrr stands for variable refresh rate basically it means that this device can raise or lower its own refresh rate according to the content on it so that you're running at a lower frame rate it just becomes less noticeable I didn't get the controversy behind this decision to not include it but after I launched disco elesium on both this and the Ally which the Ally does have variable refresh rate the difference was a bit jarring Lenovo argues that by having a higher refresh rate the amount of drop frames will be less noticeable due to how many refreshes the screen is doing but they're just flat out wrong in my opinion the steam deck OLED is making the right sense out of all these devices sure it's still only 800p but the refresh rate on the OLED is coming in at at 90 HZ if you ask me that's perfect I've never gotten more than 90 frames on most games like Spider-Man unless I'm cranking the power settings and lowering the resolution ultimately losing some of that portability and Pizzaz of the device on the topic of portability one of the more important things about a handheld is a battery life again for the sake of not getting too technical I want to cut right to the chase the Asus Rock Ally will die before the legion go in most cases I tested the battery by running Spider-Man remastered on the three different performance modes of each device and the results were that in the best case the Legion go will last 3 hours and 15 minutes and in the best case the Ally will last 2 hours in the worst case the legion go will last an hour and 30 minutes while the Ally will die closer to 50 minutes these are all slightly estimated but mostly rounded down uh but you get the gist the Ally has been known for having the worst battery between itself and the steam deck but now it's third place however I have to explain some things that I found on the performance side that may be causing this because again both devices are running the same AMD chipset but both devices are also choosing to use the power of the Chip and their batteries differently first thing I noticed was the way that the lowest presets behaved the main difference being that the rag Ally uses a 10 watt TDP mode and the legion go uses 8 watts still the legion go does have a larger battery and it uses it less on this setting which would explain the insanely large 1H hour gap the next preset up gave us even more things to notice and I'll have to jump ahead to the emulation section a bit here but I was trying to run tears of the Kingdom through the USU emulator which I've done on the Ally successfully I've always gotten a steady 30 FPS at the 15 WT mode on the Ally give or take a frames on the more chaotic sections of gameplay or when Yuzu needs to cash a Shader but I've been really happy with it on the legion go though even after I gave it time to run and ran around to cat some shaders in the test area I rarely got over 20 FPS with Vulcan when again the Ally using Vulcan ran 30 comfortably I switched to openg GL and I got a few more frames but that doesn't really solve the discrepancy that's going on here I was a bit dumbfounded at the difference though nearly putting it down to the driver's not being as fleshed out but then I noticed that the legion wasn't using the full 20 W to the performance mode I plugged in the device to see if it was being drifty with power and that did yield surprising results it reached 30 FPS instantly and it stayed there also letting itself use a little more power than the 15 WT mode a question then arose in my mind is Lenovo purposefully configuring the legion go to use less of the power of the C1 extreme chip in order to come ahead in terms of battery life and Cooling and yes I say cooling because in most of the testing at 15 wats when the game was Heavy enough the Ally did allow itself to go up to 20 or even 25 watts sometimes even 30 which resulted in temp is peaking at 80 or 90° but the legion go rarely allowed itself to go past 15 watts and as a result stayed cooler at 60° C even in the 25 watt mode the Rog Ally lets itself use around 30 and Peak at around 45 Watts but the legion go actually rarely lets itself ever go past 20 and so the r Ally hits temperatures around 90° while the legion stays around 60 and 70 so I'm no longer doubting that the heating issues on the Ally are what cause the SD card R issue and yeah there's a huge difference to how these devices use their fans the Asus rarely uses them but the legion go is unafraid to crank them out and sound like a jet engine and it's controversial because it comes down to preference do you prefer a quiet device or a cool device do you prefer when your device gives a game everything it's got to run well or do you prefer if your device holds back a little bit to let you run the game longer I didn't even think that this would be a conversation to have but I guess we need to have it so here let me c to the Chase and give you everything you need to know about performance in most cases the legion can keep up with the Ally give or take a few frames which is impressive when you consider that the legion is using a lower TDP and also running at a slightly higher 16x 10 resolution but as a handheld device sometimes you're going to need that extra wattage especially when you're purposefully using a turbo mode to get the most out of the device which sometimes comes in handy when you're doing emulation speaking of emulation you've seen a little bit of it here already in the r Ally review I didn't really talk about emulation but since the legion go is basically a Nintendo switch handheld I figured I should talk about it at least a little bit my emulation consoles of choice are the GameCube the PS2 the PS3 and the S I'm happy to report that they all run fine on the legion given the context that I gave in the battery section but even unplugged Super Mario Ro Brothers Wonder runs perfectly fine I'm not an emulator Die Hard guy I don't need my PS2 games to run at 8K 240 FPS I just want to play some older games and it helps if they scale up a little bit playing Lollipop Chainsaw on the ra Ally at 10 watts 30 FPS in the car was an amazing experience and on a display like the legions it's even more amazing but there are a few differences in frames between the legion and the Ally overall I'm happy for the performance on this device for the ulators that I use I don't really emulate Game Boy games on these bigger handhelds ever since I got the Amber Nick so for PS2 GameCube and switch it's comfortable in okay so that's basically the bulk of the Legion go viiew and ultimately yeah I do like it and I think it does some things pretty well but I wouldn't say that it's a clear choice over the Rong Ally which I've had for 5 months it's not to the point where I'd consider returning the legion go but I'm keeping it for one main reason which may not make sense and that is that I like the potential that this device has if this device can mature by fleshing out its software and optimizing its chipset to the point that the Ally has 5 months in then I think it could be a clear winner again buying and keeping a device for the sake of potential is not the experience most people will be looking for in their first and only device with that in mind then if you have to pick one which one of the big three devices is best for you starting with the main character of this video the best thing about the legion go is the display and that's both in terms of size and resolution if we're being OS agnostic the steam deck OLED is going to have a more color accurate display and give you a longer battery life while having the most fleshed out of the softwares if you only want to play your steam library or are willing to work around Linux to get other launchers going or you want the longest battery life and you didn't care about performance and an 800p screen then get the deck OLED if we're talking about only the windows handhelds then consider what we talked about earlier you're going to have to choose a device that aligns to how you want to use it here if you don't care that much about a smaller display and you just want a device that can play every game your Windows PC does with as little fiddling as possible or you just want a smaller more portable device and mature device while we're at it then get the Rog Ally keeping in mind that it will run shorter and hotter for just a few frames of difference between the legion if you want a bit more battery life the biggest screen the highest refresh rate without brr great colors for an LCD display and you like the funny little joy-con thing that this device has going on then get yourself a leion go but consider everything we've talked about you're going to be taking a gamble with Lenovo support this device long term right now there's a road map going up until December for some of the improvements we need but not everything and again remember that in some cases the legion may be a little less performant than the Ally that being said I do have another flight coming up and I'm thinking I'll probably take the Rong Ally really I'm grateful to have the Ally here to rely on while I wait for the legion go to mature a little longer if I had to give you an analogy it's this the Lenovo Legion go is like having a car in your garage that you only really drive around on the weekend because you like the way it looks it may not be your fastest car it may not be your most reliable car but it's a joy you give yourself because you can knowing that you have a more efficient and reliable everyday driver which is the Ally in this case but again not everyone gets to fill out even a two-car garage and and if you're getting your first car choose carefully and remember that eventually there will be even more cars that will improve on what the cars of today are already doing so why hasn't the video ended just yet well I have a few more things that I want to say about the handheld industry and the community as well with the console Wars having seemingly died out and the handheld war is starting to wage in the foreground every device that comes out a Reddit or a Discord group Springs out and I think it's awesome to see how people support and hype each other up for their device that being said it's hard not to notice an interesting amount of tribalism that comes with each device and it's a weird Dynamic where some people will jump for the next best thing but others will find all sorts of things to bring the other device down I think that's just a point in the market if everybody made the same exact device then it would come down to Brand loyalty or Price or simply who does it first while it can be a bit confusing as a consumer that just wants to buy the one device to play your games on the go and relive that PSV to Nostalgia it's also good to have options with the release of the OLED steam deck coming as a complete surprise it's almost like any company can just pull the trigger and release their new handheld without a warning there were the Rumblings of the alien ware handheld and I'm surprised it hasn't already come out to be honest but it's like looming in the background kind of like an MCU Villain at the end credits there's always a possibility also of the steam deck 2 or the legion goto or even the Rog Ally 2 let's not forget that there's other small manufacturer devices like the GPD win or the io device whatever device you get know that right now at least there isn't one Perfect Choice only better choices for different people there are the people who mostly get these to mostly use around the house or since they share their gaming rig or their TV with someone else or maybe situations where you don't have enough space or your own space for a whole PC and even still you get to take your gaming device anywhere in the world with you and those differences are why I think handhelds are so exciting to think that everyone uses their device differently but we can all still come together to discuss drivers what games we're playing and all sorts of other stuff so mushy gushy talk aside for a second I do have something while the Ally video did really well and did a lot of good for the channel I don't want to only be a handheld review Channel this is video 4 for the channel and it's the second handheld video it just happened to be the timing of these videos and my decision to get the legion lined up pretty early with the creation of the channel and I just want to talk about video games in general and maybe some devices that I find interesting here and there while I may want to get a newer device like the OLED deck if it's not super interesting or I can't say anything about it then I don't really want to make a video like a month ago I got the am bernick rg35 xx and I love this little thing but for the life of me I just can't find anything to say about it other than the fact that it's a nice cute nostalgic but modern take on playing my favorite Game Boy games or the PlayStation portal which doesn't spark any desire in me especially when I already bought the PlayStation branded backbone one to use with PS remote play on my phone which just feels like a portal mini now so okay I've rambled enough and if you stick around this long thank you so much for listening and if you're one of the nearly 500 subscribers that we've gotten since the Ally video thank you for joining while I'm still figuring out my voice on this thing we call a platform we're going to keep talking about gaming and video games in general and while I do say that I don't really want to be a handheld Channel I also Say Never Say Never so there may one day come another device that makes me want to present it to youall and give you my perspective but until then if you like my style of review and digging deep into stuff check out my Spider-Man video I put basically the same amount of time of effort into it if not more and I want to talk about Spider-Man some more either way whatever Rings your bell subscribe if you want to like the video if you do and see you next time

Channel: Joseph

Views: 65,699

Keywords: Lenovo, Lenovo Legion Go, Legion Go, Handheld Review, Handheld Gaming, Gaming Handheld, Nintendo Switch, ROG Ally, ASUS ROG Ally, pc gaming, handheld pc, windows handheld, handheld gaming pc

Id: 32x5mVA6UW0

Length: 27min 20sec (1640 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023