Legion Go Review | The Best PC Handheld EXCEPT...

the gap between the PC desktop experience and the PC handheld experience has been pretty vast when it comes to peripherals I mean on one side of the spectrum you have your mouse and keyboard that's readily available and on the other side you have essentially whatever is put onto the handheld whether it be trackpads analog sticks gyroscope or whatever it may be obviously you can Dock and have a more PC like experience but I digress lenovo's Legion go tries to solve this problem by providing a mouse built right into one of what they call the true strike controllers arguably they're essentially just joycons that you can go ahead and have attached to your PC or your tablet but at the end of the day is this enough to actually differentiate it amongst the other PC handhelds that are out there and does it even work in terms of specs you're going to see more or less what you saw in the Asus Rog Ally so you have the AMD Z1 extreme chipset you have 16 GB of RAM though technically in the legion go it's clocked a little bit faster at 7500 MHz Herz then you have two storage options you have 512 GB or 1 tbte and to be honest that $50 difference you might as well go for the 1 terabyte that way you don't have to worry about taking things apart and putting them back together then with the battery you have a 49.2 wat battery which allows for long extended gaming sessions but this also has an 8.8 in screen it's humongous and it's beautiful to look at it can hit up to 500 nits it's 2560 x600 so that 16x 10 aspect ratio is great if you're emulating 4x3 titles but because of how big that screen is the battery is going to drain relatively quickly by comparison to other units that are out there thankfully if you're out on the road or whatever it may be and you aren't nearby an outlet today's sponsor ug green can help you with that with some of their power banks with their 145 wat and 20 wat power Banks you can choose the right amount of power for whatever it is that you need the 145 wat power bank is a massive 25,000 mAh battery it has power delivery 3.0 and Quick Charge 3.0 this also can provide up to 145 WS of power and can charge whatever device you throw at it with ease there's a smart little LED indicator on the side to show how much power is left in your power bank before you leave out of the house that way you don't have to worry whether or not you have enough juice left in there and this is compatible with oh so many devices the 20 W power bank is 10,000 milliamp hours and has this Nifty little stand that props up the battery so it can act as a stand for your phone and it can charge wirelessly on top of that to boot with multiple ports and options for charging this can be your go-to charger while on the go check out ug Green's Black Friday deals and get up to 50% off following the link in the description below and thanks to ug green for sponsoring this video there are a lot of things that you can do to extend the battery life obviously you can turn down the TDP you can decrease the refresh rate from 144 to 60 htz you can also decrease the brightness of the screen hack you can even turn off the vibration Motors that are in the true strike controllers it really just depends on whatever it is that you prefer while you're gaming I'll be honest with you most of the time I'm either in bed or I'm near an outlet plugged in so I never really have to worry too much about battery life consumption I just want to be in the same room as my family and you know not bother them while I'm playing balers Gate 3 or whatever other game I'm playing on my PC handheld that being said the screen is by far one of my favorite features on this handheld it's bright it's beautiful and despite having technically 7% less RGB and the color gamut in comparison to the RG Ally I still think it's pretty it looks nice the one thing that I don't like about it when it comes to everything aside from not having vrr is the fact that it's very reflective I mean pretty much looking at any sort of angle in daylight even moderate daylight you're going to see some form of a reflection also this grabs any sort of fingerprint that you throw at it like it can be in the same room and it'll go ahead and stick right on which sucks but but I would invest in a microfiber cloth of some kind that way you can go ahead and you know protect your handheld and wipe it down and make sure that it's nice and clean the same thing can be said about the body whether you're using those joy-con like controllers or you're just touching the backside to open up that kickstand whatever it may be you're bound to leave a fingerprint behind I don't know what material they used it feels metal-ish I mean I don't know but it feels really nice it just it gets dirty extremely quickly so whatever is just again make sure that you get a fiber cloth a microfiber cloth that way you can go ahead and wipe things down and keep it nice and neat ergonomically the legion go feels good in your hands I mean at least at first because when I first took it out I was like oh okay cool this kind of feels like the steam deck it has that curvature nature of the controllers where it can feel comfortable over long extended periods of time but as I started playing for long extended periods of time there are two things that I noticed first and foremost this bad boy is heavy this thing is probably one of the heaviest handhelds that I've held in recent times especially in contrast to the steam deck and the Asus Rog Ally secondly these controllers are very angular by Nature so when you're holding the uh Legion go for a long extended period of time this starts to dig into the center of my palm so it just it didn't feel comfortable to hold it for a long extended period of time that being said I'm still gaming on it I'm still enjoying my time I'm currently playing Alan Wake 1 and balers Gate 3 trying to kind of alternate between the two of them and it feels great I love my experience on here but anything more than like an hourish hour and a half just start you start to feel that dig into the palm of your hand and that's really where kind of things start to like fall apart in terms of like immersion and the handheld experience I mean the this screen alone is so big and so massive that it kind of starts to hit that borderline of what is considered you know a portable handheld gaming PC versus having a tablet with you know controllers attached to the side that are detachable and then all of a sudden you have something that is more Akin towards a Microsoft uh surface than anything else when it comes to the face buttons and the whole interface that's tier I love the fact that the hall sensing joysticks feel great I mean they're very smooth I don't have to really worry too much about things for those of you that don't know Hall sensing technology they use magnets instead of potentiometer u based uh inputs for the analog sticks so there's uh less of a chance that you're going to get drift uh the face buttons here the xyb and a they feel like I don't know like PlayStation and Xbox had a baby and uh it feels good it kind of feels closer to me to the Xbox side of things and the PlayStation side of things but I'm not complaining this feels great this feels awesome the d-pad it's interesting because it's very clicky and there isn't that much travel distance between you know actually pushing down and having that input actually go into place especially in contrast to other d-pads that are out there kind of like the apido controller um XBox controller is kind of similar to this actually so you have that clicky nature that comes in I haven't experienced any sort of Mis inputs with the d-pad on this and I don't I don't foresee myself having any issues with it I do think that this d-pad is better than the steamex d-pad uh I would put it kind of on par though it feels very different than the Asus Rog one so it really just depends on uh you know what you're looking for in terms of things but again one of the benefits of this being sold in a brick and mortar store is that you can go ahead and go to the store and test this out and see if it feels good and see if this is something that you can see yourself playing for long extended periods of time one thing that I don't like about this whole setup with the controllers is that the start and select button or the menu and select button is all on the left controller and I guess that made sense because they wanted to go ahead and put their Legion stuff over here it just feels odd it took me a while to get used to it because I kept on reaching up to push the Le button and what I ended up pushing was the quick access menu button it's just it's weird I would have rather had them you know similar to the steam deck had these down here and had the start and select button where they are on pretty much every single controller interface that's out there on the market I get that they're trying to differentiate themselves but yeah why the trackpad that's here is fantastic there's a haptic feedback whenever you're actually using it to move around windows OS and honestly this is probably the first time that I've ever had a handheld like this where I haven't had to actually attach a mouse in order to move around and you know interact with the OS whether it be Linux or Windows it just it feels awesome and it's pretty accurate there is no clicking functionality to the trackpad you actually have to go ahead and just tap in order to register a single click if you want to double click you have to go ahead and hold down on the trackpad in order for it to register as such something that I do want to mention with the quick access menu when this first came out in order to access the quick access menu you had to push this button three times one to open up another menu then for that to close and then for the actual quick access menu to open up there have been an array of patches that have come out since this Legion go came out and they've been changing a lot of things based on the feedback of the community because of that they've went ahead and changed it to where a single press will bring up the quick access menu which is honestly awesome I like the fact that they're updating their drivers and updating things in order to smooth out that experience for the user end the Triggers on this handheld feel awesome especially in contrast to other units that are out there there is a little bit more travel distance than I'm used to but it isn't anything to really call home about it feels awesome and you'll get used to it as well the left button and the right buttons they honestly they register great you don't really have to worry too much about it but on the right controller there's this M2 button that's there and that's really for that FPS mode that comes into play and I'll talk about that later on in the video there's also the uh well what would be considered the left triggers and the right triggers and on the right they're you know they're next to each other versus being up and down there's a horizontal instead of being vertical so it feels odd at first also the travel distance on these Triggers on the back they're like minimal the the back paddles there's absolutely nothing that's there preventing you from just holding it so thankfully uh when you actually have these connected to your tablet on the legion go they're not mapped out to anything by default so you're not accidentally you know putting in Crazy commands or anything like that you can obviously change that if you want to but uh it's nice that you know it just it doesn't do anything by default so when it comes to the io of the Legion go on top you have two volume buttons then there's a USBC 4.0 Port that supports display port 1.4 and then power delivery 3.0 then there's a Micro SD card slot which I'm a little bit concerned about because there's a fan uh exhaust fan that's right over here and then there's two intakes on the bottom or on the back so because of that I'm concerned that this might experience the same issues that were experienced in the Asus Rog Ally then there's a 3.5 mm Jack as well as the power button I don't like the fact that the power button is here because whenever I actually go ahead and take apart this controller I accidentally push this nine times out of 10 where I will literally go ahead and take this here and you know set it up to push up and I I just accidentally always put my finger here so uh it's definitely something that takes some time to get used to but you know it's pretty much there on the bottom side all you really have is an exact replica of that USBC 4.0 Port as well as the kickstand that's actually pretty awesome you can go pretty deep with this uh so you don't really have to worry too much about things when it comes down to it in your legion go case once you go ahead and open it up you take out the legion go there's actually this little thing that's right here and this is really part of that FPS mode that I mentioned earlier this is actually really really cool and I love how intuitive this is because this goes ahead and essentially changes the game in terms of the mobile PC market now all you really have to do is just take apart or take off this controller that's right here and then there's this little uh switch that's right here you toggle it off or from off to FPS and then from here all you really have to do is just go ahead and just Boop this connects magnetically so it just stays just like that and then you use this to go ahead and play you have your left click and your right click and then from there you have your mouse scroll wheel you can also use that trigger as well as the buttons that are right here that are mapped out to specific things uh you can technically remove this uh analog uh joystick head that's here but at the end of the day I haven't found myself needing to do that I do know that this can technically be you know uncomfortable having this little thing kind of just constantly going into your hand so uh I just kind of leave this here and it works it does the job I don't really have to worry too much about things uh when it comes down to the Comfort that's provided by that you don't have to worry about any of the face buttons being accidentally pressed whenever you're gaming in fps mode everything is just mapped out as it should be for the most part but there are still buttons that you need to bind to specific keys or buttons on your left and right controllers that would typically be mapped out on a keyboard that's kind of one of the things that I do like about just controllers overall is that whenever you connect them to a PC or a uh handheld or whatever it may be those buttons and the controller layout is pretty much Universal you kind of know more or less where everything should be the same thing can be set for keyboard and mouse of course but because of the unique layout of these controllers sometimes things aren't where they should be and you might need to remap out specific key bindings in order for gaming to feel a little a little bit more comfortable in what would be a semi or half controller half mouse setup it's very intuitive because the wsad key is essentially laid out to the left analog stick and you can kind of see everything laid out as it should be in the legion go software but sometimes even in the games that you're playing you might want to switch things up just so that they feel more comfortable for you it's a little bit of trial and error and it's a little bit of an extra step but if you're willing to go ahead and make the sacrifice in time in order to make things work then this is probably a viable option for you obviously you're not going to be winning any tournaments while you're playing an FPS game on the legion go but it is a nice option if you're find if you find yourself in a bind where you're traveling and you just want to go ahead and knock out a couple of sessions of Destiny or OverWatch or whatever FPS game it is that you're playing the speakers on the legion go aren't that great especially in comparison to the Asus R Ally or the steam deck which are forward facing the speakers on the legion go they're upward firing so they don't really have anywhere to go in terms of like audio uh delivery it kind of leaves a lot to bizard but even if I do have the speakers poting directly to my sound meter it definitely leaves a lot to be desired it doesn't hit the same highs or volumous levels that you could see with other speakers on other [Music] units the level of volume that is produced by the speakers on the legion go isn't helped by the fact that the fan that's there is ridiculously loud when you're hitting those 30 watt tdps that fan is cranking 100% And you can hear that extremely extremely loud in comparison to other things like the Rog Ally which is notorious for being quiet and even the steam deag now this thing does get hot and it gets almost hot to the touch whenever you're hitting that 30 wat TTP but it really just depends it's a give and take as to what it is that you want out of your hand handheld experience versus convenience and just overall your preference the legion go similar to the Rog Ally does not have a dedicated dock by any chance but I do have a bunch of docks that are just lying around from J so I decided to try some of them out to see if I could one download games faster over an actual connected ethernet cable or to just be able to charge in game and not really have to worry too much about things and get an actual display out turns out that doing so didn't really work well whenever I connected a dock out of the many docks that I do have nothing really worked well because the system would recognize the USB connected device and everything would work for like 1 second and then it would disconnect then it would reconnect and disconnect and reconnect and disconnect so it kind of left a lot to be desired in that in that front the only way that I could actually get a video out is literally by connecting a USBC to either an HDMI out or whatever it may be to connect to a television or a monitor in order to get things to work and even then it definitely uh made me realize that I did need that extra USB port in order to connect the power in or the adapter to keep everything charged up and running and performing at the highest TDP possible similar to the Asus RG Ally Lenovo has given uh the legion go its own kind of like Forefront sort of os interface in order to make things a little bit easier especially when you have multiple games from multiple launchers if you go into your library all of the games that you have installed are going to pop up over here and and there are settings for Android games there's also a game store that's here so if you wanted to buy something straight from Lenovo you can as well as uh cloud gaming that's an option that's there but there's also several um launchers that you can just go ahead and download Straight from here it's a nice to have let me put it like that uh obviously for me I prefer to have things running through Steam Big Picture Mode that way things kind of run similarly to the steam deck and it's just a nice intuitive interface that I am used to and I just prefer that being said when you go into settings from here you have an array of settings that are available you can see how much dis space is there customize specific things have different controller setups and whatnot which is nice there is this function key shortcut which if you hold the left button and that it will go ahead and show you all of the different shortcuts that are available to you while um not only in uh gamad mode but also in fps mode you'll be able to see all of this which is readly available as well the cool thing is that for most people you can go ahead and access the settings that you do need in the Quick Settings menu and this is is essentially where you're going to see the uh brightness the volume Bluetooth so on and so forth there's also uh the resolution that's here that you can adjust depending on what it is that you want to go ahead and do obviously adjusting the resolution of the unit itself will save battery since there's less processing power same thing for the refresh rate one thing that I did not like is that if you are on battery and you're not plugged in and you wanted to go ahead and change the setting for the refresh rate it won't let you you actually have to connect to the power supply before you can adjust the settings which is something that I find a little I don't really understand why that's a requirement by any means but once it's connected you can go ahead and change uh the refresh rate which is I again it boggles my mind I'm not really 100% sure why it is that way but it is what it is so if you're going out onto the road and you're not really sure what you want to go ahead and do I would recommend the 60 HZ that way you can go ahead and save a little bit of battery as you're going you can go ahead and adjust the performance settings that are here you can also see the battery power that's left on both the controllers as well as the tablet uh it's nice to I do like to have everything that's here there's the uh frame monitor that's there so you can adjust uh the sizing and kind of what is available there and uh there is three different thermal modes you have your quiet your balance and your performance these pretty much go ahead and change depending on what it is that you want to go ahead and do but in order to actually hit the 30 wat TDP which is the most power you have to actually go into custom so you can go ahead and adjust that you can also adjust the um OS power mod mode so you can adjust how much power is actually going into processing the OS and in Windows there's also an option here to put on the full fan speed so you can hear how gloriously loud this fan can get pretty loud if I do say so myself but that being said everything that you need in order to adjust at least for like the majority of the settings are in this quick settings menu similar to the Nintendo switch this has an opportunity to create custom controllers or true site controllers in order to customize the experience that the users get in terms of what they want from a gaming experience if they wanted a more robust d-pad they could get that if they didn't care for the trackpad but wanted something else to integrate into that controller they can go ahead and do that as well with the flexibility of Windows this is something that technically Lenova could go ahead and do not only that but let's say you didn't want to have that vertical Mouse setup but wanted to sacrifice some of the ergonomics that are there for a I don't know a better Mouse EXP experience that's something that you can do as well or if you wanted more buttons on the back sides of these you can go ahead and do that too it's just I feel like there is a lot of missed opportunity and a lot of potential in terms of what you can do with these controllers and how you can adjust them to better fit your needs as a gamer so let's go over our likes and gripes I love the screen on this thing guys I it's a little bit bigger but it is that 16 X10 ratio so if you want 16x9 I would obviously recommend the Asus RG Ally but the beautiful color the beautiful screen the size the brightness Everything is Awesome obviously vrr would have been a nice to have if that's something that could be implemented via software that would be nice I mean Lenovo if you're watching if you're listening that would be kind of cool I do love the fact that there is a bigger battery in here it is kind of more or less the same as it is on the Asus RG Ali as well as the theme deck but having a larger battery is nice it's just counterbalanced by the larger screen the trackpad is so good I love the fact that there's a trackpad that is built into this thing because on the Rog Ally you essentially had to poke around on the screen and you know try to keep it as clean as possible with this it's a proper trackpad and I haven't had to actually connect a mouse to the legion go ever since I started playing and messing with it also FPS mode is awesome as somebody like me that doesn't play too many FPS games I can see the potential for this this is awesome and very intuitive for people that are out there the fan literally just stopped on the Le go I don't know if the mic got that but that is freaking hilarious how much quieter it is in this room that brings me to my gripes I think this thing gets way too hot like it is ridiculously way too hot obviously there's a huge fan that's there you can tell that there's a beefy heat sink that's inside in order to keep things cool but it's just way too loud I actually kind of really appreciate that the Asus RG Alli has a dual fan system to keep things as cool as possible and also keep that fan noise down so that it doesn't hinder your gaming experience I think the speakers are too quiet guys I know that technically they're smaller than the other speakers in other units but it's just if you're paying this much money I would want to have a an auditory experience as well this is something that a lot of people look over audio is extremely important in immersion whenever you're gaming on any sort of game whatsoever so it's nice to have and it should be there at that price point I think that the ergonomics are a little uncomfortable over long extended periods of time time obviously if you aren't gaming for long periods of time with this you should be fine but that angular nature that's there kind of uh made a hindrance in terms of like gaming for long periods of time this could be a byproduct of its weight or it could just be the design again if they were to design new controllers that you could order that are separate from the legion go that you could attach and play this would be awesome because you could have a more ergonomic experience it's just something that I don't know is a missed opportunity in my eyes I don't know if this is a bit of a gripe or a like or whatever it may be but we it's sad that we need more driver updates in order for things to get squashed I kind of feel like a beta user buying this so early on in the process of things but we'll see what happens I think as time progresses and more driver updates get released the legion go will be up there alongside with the Rog Ally and the steam deck overall the legion go is kind of trying to be a jack of all trades but a master of none I mean it's trying to kind of bridge this gap between the PC desktop and the PC handheld space and it does a good job I mean what it has done it's set out to do and it it is done well but at the end of the day I still feel like there's a couple of Kinks that are there a couple of things that could be refined and once it's there once the driver updates are there and the performance is there as well as the ergonomics that are there what if the legion goto is announced and it's a little bit more ergonomic or if they just announce new controllers that you can buy custom controllers that are different than the ones that ship with the Legion go that's going to be interesting that's going to be cool and I'm definitely going to be excited to check that out I also want to go ahead and say that if I didn't have a YouTube channel if I didn't have something like that I probably wouldn't get this I mean I have the Asus RG Ally to play my windows based games I have my steam deck to play the majority of my other games or less beefy titles I also have my PC here to play as I go and I also have my PlayStation my Xbox and my Nintendo switch down s i kind of didn't really need the legion go it was kind of like hey this is cool this has potential the gimmick is there but I still want to try it out I want to see whether or not this is good or not so at the end of the day I feel like there's this whole Camp of like the steam deck and the Rog Ally and now there's going to be a camp for the legion go from Lenovo but honestly it really depends on what it is that you want that's the beauty of the Legion go and the Asus R Ally they're actually in brick and mortar stores so you can go and try them out and see if this is something that works for you if this is something that you know brings your or elevates your gaming experience to the next level so what do you guys think of the Legion go is this something that you're interested in is this something that you just think is a waste of money are you going to stick with your Asus RG Ally or your steam deck let me know in the comments below I'd love to hear your thoughts on everything and if you want to hear my thoughts on the Asus RG Ally 5 months later click this video over here and if you want to hear my thoughts on the steam deck 5 months later click this video over here and until next time guys I will see you on the next one peace

Channel: Baldly Rudy

Views: 27,670

Keywords: lenovo legion go, legion go, lenovo legion go review, handheld gaming, legion go review, lenovo legion, lenovo handheld, hand-held gaming, handheld pc, lenovo go, gaming pc, handheld gaming pc, lenovo legion go setup, lenovo legion go unboxing, legion go gameplay, legion go battery life, handheld pc 2023

Id: mfs9fWym2T8

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2023