Lenovo Legion Go vs ASUS ROG Ally - Just buy a Steam Deck?

I've reviewed a lot of these handheld gaming devices from iono from 1X player and to the big players like the Asus R Ally and now the Lenovo Legion go and I still think at the end of the day if you want the best software experience the best battery life the best price you should still go with a steam deck as long as you're okay with having the majority of your games in the steam Library this is the device to get but look the windows gaming handhelds have come a long way and I was actually just going to do a video on the Lenova Legion go by itself but I feel like the Asus Rog Ally has come a long way as well and there's only one of these two devices that I personally prefer over the other one now before I continue I have partnered with Samsung to give one of you a brand new Galaxy Z fold 5 I've already reviewed it but as you guys know it's an incredible phone that offers so much functionality compared to most other smartphones on the market the 6.2 in cover display lets you do quick everyday phone things but then you can unfold a massive 7.6 in interior display which is perfect for watching content gaming and getting work done Flex mode allows you to go handsfree for photos or video calls and the Snapdragon 8 gen2 processor is more than powerful enough to handle anything you throw at it the Galaxy Z fold 5 is durable with gorilla glass victus 2 protecting the displays and ipx8 water resistant in case you accidentally drop it in the pool but when you need a full desktop experience you can connect it to a larger display and use Samsung to truly get work done now to enter all you have to do is head over to the Samsung us Discord server find the Matthew monus Channel and just let me know what you'll be doing with the Galaxy Z fold 5 I'll place a link in the description down below so on paper the Lenova Legion go has a lot more going for it you have a higher refresh rate you have a bigger display you have a little touchpad on the right hand corner and that's all fine in Dandy but a lot of those little extra features are more of a flex rather than useful like don't get me wrong they both have a very similar Port lineup like if you look at the top of the devices you have your volume rockers at the top you have a USB 4 port on both of them but the Asus gives you a mobile connect Port that allows you to connect the device to their own external gpus but you don't have to buy their external gpus you can more than go ahead and use your own and this is only geared if you plan on using this in a desktop experience they both have Micro SD card slots the Asus one does get a little hot so speeds tend to slow down on it which is kind of unfortunate you do have a power button on both the one on the Lenovo kind of lights up whereas the one on the Asus does not but you do have a fingerprint scanner embedded at the top the advantage comes down to the bottom on the Lenovo device you have an extra USB port so theoretically you can be charging your device and also have an external drive connected to the bottom at the exact same time whereas with the r Ally you kind of have to use a dongle now the other benefit of the Legion go is you have detachable controllers so so the same concept as the Nintendo switch but I've done this before on a Windows console and it's cool but I'm worried about the longevity so for example like when you detach the controllers right you have to push this little switch on the bottom of the device and then you pull them down and the controllers come completely off which is cool and if you're right-handed you'll like the experience because you can take the right-handed controller put it in a little base and then you can move it around like it's a joystick for example and and I'm left-handed so this feature is kind of useless for me because it feels very awkward using the controller in a left hand when it was geared towards right-handed people and of course you do get a couple of extra trigger buttons on the back compared to the Rog Ally but I've done this before with the 1X player in fact the controllers that did come off of it were just as thick and I've already broken them like they're not very well made and I'm very worried about the longevity of these controllers specifically how you take them on and off like you have to push them down and I know for a fact at some point one of these things are going to break in fact with my 1X player I had to Crazy Glue it on and never use that feature again in order to continue using that device on top of all this it just adds thickness to the overall console like these things are supposed to be super portable and when you consider the weight of this Legion go it's over 800 G like that's not super super light for a handheld gaming console especially if you're you know planning on using this for a couple of hours it's going to fatigue your hands quicker than something like the Ally which only weighs around 608 G now for context the steam deck weighs 669 G which is you know a big device and some people actually called it heavy but this guy is going to be heavy overall now look you do get the bigger display on the Lenovo Legion go like this is an 8.8 in display it's much better for older people like me that wants to be able to see as much as possible on a tiny screen and it's great like they have 144 Herz refresh rate uh the color accuracy and color gamut is actually slightly better on the Lenovo Legion go but at the end of the day this is supposed to be portable right and I'm okay taking a hit on the screen size in order to reduce the overall form factor like when I pull this out of my pocket the way it's designed with the curved edges just feels much better in the hand like it's just a lot better designed than the chunkier legion go and don't let 144 HZ fool you like this is a Z1 extreme processor like this is not a powerful GPU you're never going to get 144 frames per second in fact you're not going to get 120 frames per second to match the 120 HZ refresh rate on the Asus Rog Ally most of the time you're going to be under 60 frames so having a high refresh rate on these devices is honestly not something to put on your top priority list but the button placement on both of these devices feel really really good again because this is smaller I feel like you know playing with the controllers just feels a lot more natural compared to the bigger ones on this and when you're holding it by the device you can feel these kind of loose right so these kind of bend inwards a bit so you don't have that same sturdy feel as the Ally or even the steam deck I do like the inclusion of the mouse but sometimes I don't even see it like right now I'm moving it on the display I don't see my mouse like where is it you know things are opening up CU I'm clicking down but I don't see my cursor and this has what been one of the biggest problems of the Legion go is the software experience like I haven't had a good software experience with this and I've had this screen kind of like get Warped or glitch out where I'll see like two menus on it and then sometimes like getting out of it doesn't work or other times I'll be in a game and it will completely like take over the game and ruin The Experience now don't get me wrong the Asus Rog Ally had a ton of software and hardware issues when it first came out in fact it was a big dumpster fire when this product was first announced but I hate to say this cuz Armory crates never been great it's significantly better on the Ally in fact it's the closest you're going to get to a steam deck like experience so far their quick setting menu works much better and same with their Armory create also works much better when you press their buttons on top of all this the speakers do sound better on the Rog allly like both of them are using 22 watt speakers but because these are upward facing they just sound a lot better compared to the top facing speakers on the Lenova Legion go but here's the weird thing Lenovo decided to stick a QHD plus display on a handheld that's this small and it's fine if you're using Windows you get to see more but for gaming you're never playing games at QHD on a device like this the hardware inside of here is just not powerful enough plus if you're playing at full HD or even just regular HD you technically have to push more pixels because it's a 16 by10 display so when you drop it down from 2560 by 1600 you have to go to 1920 by 1,00 instead of 1920 by 1080 so even if all things were equal between both of these devices because the resolutions are slightly different the Ally is going to be able to push out a few more frame rates per second this was 100% a marketing flex but in reality it doesn't benefit the user because most games I'm playing on these devices I'm dropping the settings down to medium I'm changing the resolution to 1280 x 720 or 1280 by 800 just so I can get more frames per second but the hardware inside pretty much equal like they're both using AMD Z1 extreme processors they both have 16 GB of RAM the difference though comes down to the price the Asus Rog allly starts at $5.99 cuz it's on sale right now compared to $6.99 for the legion go but performance was interesting because I was expecting the go to outperform the Ally like it's a bigger device there's more room for cooling l had more time to push the processor that's inside of here but the Ally is actually faster doesn't matter what I test it if it was just regular CPU performance the Ally beat out the go if it was gaming performance regardless of whether you were gaming at full HD Plus or full HD the Ally was always faster the other thing I didn't like was the fan noise the fans on the go are significantly louder than the fans on the Ally the Allies is actually pretty quiet you know even at full blast like you will hear them but you don't hear them nearly as much as the go in fact when the go is going at its full extreme it's loud and on top of that I heard coil wine which is not something you want to hear on a device this small and this close to your face now thankfully both companies made it extremely easy to access the internals and once you're in you can see that you have a spot for your mvme SSD on the go it's right here and for the Ally it's right over here they're both upgradeable they're both 2230 drives but the big difference comes down to the cooling system like you have a long copper heat pipe with two fans on the Ally compared to only one fan on the go this fan has to work extremely harder to keep this device cool where you can kind of split up that process between two of them give yourself a quieter experience and obviously a cooler one at the exact same time the advantage the go has is a slightly faster mvme SSD but you can always replace the one in the Ally if you want something bigger or faster and the battery size like we're talking about a 50w hour battery in the go compared to around 40 watts in the Ally and battery life has been kind of inconsistent like it's Windows right if you're running this thing at 30 Watts like you're getting 1 hour of battery life if you're running this thing at 15 watts you can push it to two to 2 and 1 half hours depending on the game you're playing I should also mention the one thing that I like about the Ally is that it comes in white I feel like a lot of people are going to be taking these things outdoors and gaming and if you're in like a hot country with the Sun out and everything white doesn't attract sunlight or heat as fast as black so I feel like this would be a better option for outdoor use so here's the thing at the end of the day if all you want to do his game and you don't want anything to get in your way get the steam deck especially if you're buying this for someone who's not like a hardcore Enthusiast this is the one to go for Steam OS is meant for gaming you get instant access to your steam Library and it just works even little things like the Sleep states are so much better on the steam deck like when you put this thing to sleep it's a sleep whereas on these other two devices with Windows sometimes the Sleep State Works other times you power on the device and it's completely dead it's also a lot more affordable now if you want a Windows device 100% go for the Ally over the go not only is it $100 cheaper you're just getting a better product it's more portable it's lighter it feels better in the hand it actually performs better and it solved all those little issues that the legion go is currently having right now I feel like there's just too many little things that would irk me if I was to use this on a consistent basis now make sure to check out Samsung's Discord I'll place a link to that in the description down below also if you have any questions let me know as well like the video if you liked it subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Matthew Moniz

Views: 93,073

Keywords: asus rog ally, steam deck, steam deck oled, lenovo legion go, lenovo legion go vs asus rog ally, asus rog ally review, lenovo legion go review, gameplay, steamdeck vs asus rog ally, steamdeck vs lenovo legion go, gaming handheld

Id: 5SInzUEE_Lw

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023