- It seems like this is the
year of the PC handhelds. If you're in the know, PC
handhelds are nothing new, but this year they seem to
have really hit their stride. The Steam Deck certainly convinced gaming laptop manufacturers
to try their hand at this new emerging PC handheld market. Before the Steam Deck, we
usually just saw PC handhelds from newer Chinese or
Hong Kong tech companies and usually for well over $1000. Now, we're seeing much
bigger tech companies try PC handhelds for
much lower price points. The latest big player in this
PC handheld market is Lenovo. It was very shocking to see a Nintendo Switch-like PC handheld come out of this giant
laptop manufacturer. I'm saying giant a lot. Look at this thing. Yeah, that's the big difference here. It's got detachable controllers. You might also notice it's massive; it kind of has to be though
to accommodate this screen. 8.8 inches, QHD, and an
absolutely absurd 144 hertz. Otherwise, it has pretty
close to the same internals as an ROG Ally at the
exact same price point, so it is competitively priced. But where does this fit in the market compared to the ROG Ally
and even the Steam Deck? Besides detachable controllers, what has this got that those don't got? One thing that I love about it is that it comes with a case. The Steam Deck does too,
but the ROG Ally does not. And that's kind of a problem for the Ally because at least at the time of launch, there were no cases out for the ROG Ally, so I pretty much had to raw dog it until third parties started
making cases for it. It costs these companies almost nothing to include a cheap case, so
the inclusion is very welcome. It also comes with a 65 watt charger that has a bunch of paper around it. Why would you do this? This is such a bad idea, wrapping the charger
in paper in such a way where it looks like it's ready to go. I mean, save the environment
or whatever, but this ain't it. This is gonna burn down the environment. If you want an extra charger
to throw in your bag for travel or maybe you just want something that can charge multiple devices at once, you can check out this
video's sponsor UGREEN. The ASUS ROG Ally and
also the Lenovo Legion Go both come included with 65 watt chargers. If you need a backup, you've
got UGREEN's Nexode robot, which is also a 65 watt charger
that supports fast charging. This thing can charge my
new iPhone 15 Pro Max to 50% in about 30 minutes
according to their lab tests. It can charge the Steam Deck from 0 to 50% in about one hour and one minute. Plus, just look at the guy. Look at him! Look at the guy. Look at the little man!
He's just a real guy. Look at him. Look at the little guy. That's a little guy. It can also charge multiple devices, so it might be better to have
this one charger in your bag as opposed to multiple chargers, one for each of your devices. If you want even more slots, there's also their 65 watt
seven-in-one charging station. This is a power strip and USB-C and USB-A charger all in one. This can charge a whole lot more stuff. Check out those products by UGREEN at the links in the description below. So anyway, this is a
very beautiful device. It's the most premium feeling out of the three I've talked about. It's still plastic, but
it's very nice plastic, whereas the Steam Deck
and the Ally feel like they're made of a lot cheaper stuff. Those feel like toys. This feels more like an
Xbox Series X I guess. Is this metal? This might be metal. I mean, this is plastic. I heard it's a fingerprint magnet and I didn't believe it at first, but it sure is, especially the screen which takes up a majority of the unit. But I could see even the plastic collecting grease pretty easily. I've been afraid to even take
off this little protector on the track pit. The button layout is pretty standard. I love the big D-pad placement on here. It's also nice and big and clicky. The thumbsticks are probably
the best thumbsticks I've felt on a handheld this year. I think that's mostly thanks to the smoother ring around the gate. The Ally has a very bad grinding problem, probably the worst feeling stick gate. And the Steam Deck isn't as
bad, but it's still not great. It's honestly hard for me
to compare on the Steam Deck because I'm using a newer shell, but I don't remember it being that great on the older shell either. The Lenovo uses Hall Effect sticks, which means that they shouldn't drift, at least not as easily as normal sticks. I personally think Hall
Effect is a buzzword that everybody's rolling with right now. People get really excited
when they hear that. I think that it's just as easy to make bad Hall Effect sticks as it is to make bad regular old sticks; so just because they're Hall Effect doesn't mean they're great. But I'll say these Hall
Effect sticks are great, not because they're Hall Effect sticks, but because they just feel nice. The face buttons on the Lenovo kind of feel like Xbox face buttons: membranes but clicky. And there's just an
absolute mess of buttons all over the back and the sides. I hardly ever use the extra back buttons these devices have been coming out with. The right controller has
a majority of the buttons, but that's because this
controller can be used as a mouse. We will get to that,
but we have a lot more to go through here. This whole thing is just
so ridiculously large it makes even the Steam Deck look small, and the Steam Deck is not small. Look at how small the tablet
of the Nintendo Switch is compared to the tablet
of the Lenovo Legion Go. It's also so heavy. The weight is evenly distributed
across the whole device, so it's not uncomfortable
to hold or anything, but we're getting really close to losing the convenience
of portability here. Ergonomically, it's great. There's a lot of buttons
you can accidentally press, but they aren't mapped to
anything by default anyway. The big grips on the back make the whole big heavy device
easy enough to hold, and it's all for this
gigantic beautiful QHD display that's 2560 by 1600, which
is slightly larger than QHD. It's a 16:10 aspect ratio, so
a little taller than usual. Here's the resolution compared
to the Deck and the Ally. You can see it's substantially higher res. We can also compare the refresh rate, which is again substantially
higher at 144 hertz. I was already blown away
by the ROG Ally's screen and this takes it even further than that, but that's also gonna amplify
some of my criticisms. For example, why do we need
all of that resolution? It's a handheld. This screen might be huge, but do we need that in our hands? Can we really tell the
difference that much? It's the law of diminishing returns. The higher up you get, the
less you're gonna notice it, and the less it's gonna be worth it. My problem here is that you're gonna have to balance visual fidelity and performance because, again, it's a handheld. It's got a lot of power,
but it's still a handheld, so it's not a 40 90 in your hand. Remember, this has
basically the same internals as an ROG Ally, the same Z1 extreme SOC, the same 16 gigabytes of RAM. The only real difference
is the speed of the RAM, which is significantly faster
on the Lenovo Legion Go. It's the difference between
6.4 gigabits per second and 8.5 gigabits per second, on paper. I'm not gonna be doing any
hardcore benchmarking on here; I'm gonna leave that to the
more tech-savvy YouTubers, like The Phawx, out there. I will continue to do my anecdotal, playing the same games
that I played on all of 'em and seeing which one runs them better. Having the same internals and
a slight bump in the raw power isn't all that you need to
have a great gaming handheld. A lot of it is firmware too, and the ROG Ally had a long time to kind of iron out that firmware. And ASUS kind of did
a lot of amazing stuff with that firmware. They even had a patch
when "Starfield" came out. But I think Lenovo has a
significant chance to catch up because they are also
a laptop manufacturer; they also know what they're doing. So it's gonna have different firmware, it's gonna have slightly
more RAM bandwidth. Is that bandwidth really gonna carry the rest of the weight
of this giant screen with all this resolution and 144 hertz? The thing is that much like the ROG Ally, most of the games that you're
gonna wanna play on here are not gonna run at the
full 1600p 144 hertz. You're gonna have to down clock them by a significant amount, which is fine. It's kind of cool that the option's there. If a game does happen to run
at the full 144 Hertz 1600p, it's probably not gonna be
the best looking game anyway; it's not gonna have the best graphics. But I will say that on this 1600p screen cutting games down to 800p looks very good because you're getting
half the resolution, the scaling is very nice. So maybe that's why that's the size that they decided to go with. Luckily, you know what, it
does handle games pretty well, not out of the box though. Remember that firmware
I was talking about? It requires a firmware update
that isn't clearly available. I had to dig around on their website and manually download the
latest graphics drivers. Before that, "Valorant" barely ran at all. After the update,
"Valorant" ran amazingly. The Lenovo defaults to 15 watt TDP, which honestly is mostly fine, but bumping it up to 30
unlocks a bit of extra power. Again, they have very similar internals, but at 30 watt TDP the
Legion is way louder and so very hot. The ROG Ally is known
for being insanely quiet, but it also does have some thermal issues. It's famous for having a macroSD card slot that sometimes just
straight up doesn't work because it gets too hot. The Legion literally
gets hot to the touch, not enough to hurt, but
enough to be very concerning, especially on the left side over here. I don't think it's been out long enough to know if this is gonna cause any issues to the microSD card slot, but I will note that my USB-C hub
coincidentally stopped working and when I unplugged it, the USB-C metal tip was extremely hot. Why isn't this working all of a sudden? It's this whole thing not working. Oh my god, this is so hot. I think the USB-C just got hot. Okay, interesting. So that's something for
future buyers and reviewers to look out for. Keep an eye on that top USB-C port. It might become an issue down the road. Luckily, there is a backup
USB-C port right on the bottom, so just use that one. That one wasn't hot at all. It's also just so loud. Just listen to the
difference between the two. (Legion fan whirring)
(Ally fan mellows) The fact that the Ally is
smaller, can pull more power, and be that quiet and
cool is pretty remarkable. It honestly feels pretty much the same. Maybe some slowdown when
there's like an explosion, but the frame rate seems to be the same. But again, the Legion has faster RAM. Maybe it's that that's
screaming back at me. Let's take a break with something lighter: "Sonic Superstars" runs great. This shouldn't be that much of a surprise, but the game isn't exactly well-optimized, although I am running it at
just 60 frames per second. It does feel good to play on here. There's moments where I
have to jump back and forth between using the thumb
stick and the D-pad and that all works just fine on here. So ergonomically, good for 2-D games. "Resident Evil 4" is a game
that I had to drop down to 720p 30 frames per
second on the Steam Deck or else it sounded like a jet engine. On the Legion, we get over
60 frames per second on 800p just fine, and it's nice and smooth, not showing any frame
drops during heavy action. Although, it is a jet engine
and it is also very hot. I played on the ROG Ally at
60 frames per second and 720p and it's significantly quieter, but I think there may have been slowdown during some of the explosions though. Okay, I think it's time to
talk about the controllers, especially the mouse mode, which I think is the most interesting. So you can remove these two controllers just by pressing these buttons on the back and pulling it downward like that. I think there should be clear instructions on how to do this, maybe in
the box on a little document that's right on top of the thing. It should be the first thing
you should know how to do because it's one of the
flagship features of this thing. The thing is that even
before I turn this thing on, I wanted to take these controllers off, and if you have a Nintendo Switch, you're probably gonna try
to do this the wrong way by pulling it up, and that's a great way to break
your brand new $700 device. I also don't love where
the Power button is because I frequently put
my hand there as a support when removing the controller and that causes the device to go to sleep. And if you've ever put a
Windows device to sleep, you know it doesn't always
wake back up immediately. Now, why would you wanna
remove the controllers? Maybe for some tabletop mode gameplay? Maybe that will remove some
strain off of your wrists? I think the best use
case is the mouse mode. The case of the Legion has
this little disc in there and this magnetizes right onto the bottom of the right controller. Then, you gotta switch this
little switch right here, and then you have a mouse. These extra buttons that
were once on the side are now your right and left mouse clicks, and there's now a scroll
wheel where your thumb is. It's kind of a great idea. All right, I've had this
thing for barely any time. The right mouse button is like stuck, and I think it's because it
sits where your palm goes, so you're always pressing
it when you're playing. Maybe it pops out when
you turn the device on? Nope, it's stuck. It's definitely stuck. Here's something. Because this button is clicked in, it's just freaking out. Oh, see, I hit the Power
button by accident again; this is a disaster. It's honestly pretty awesome
that this is a feature. I wouldn't be able to play any competitive "Valorant" like this, but having the option's pretty cool. It's a Windows device that plays games that might be intended for
mouse and keyboard use. So the Steam Deck solved that issue by putting two touch pads in there. Whether or not this is a great solution is up to interpretation. ASUS decided the problem
wasn't even worth addressing in the first place, which I
kind of respect a little bit 'cause if a game really
requires mouse and keyboard use, I'd probably just not wanna
play it on a PC handheld. I'd probably just rather
play it on my desktop or on a laptop with a mouse. A touch pad isn't always
a good compromise. I argue a touch pad is
rarely a good compromise. Lenovo decided their solution was to just straight up give you a mouse. It's not the most perfect mouse, but it's kind of a really cool solution. And they also gave you a touch pad for those touch pad try hards out there, and that touch pad is also great for just navigating through bonk-ass windows. Even this mouse mode comes
with some compromises. I can see it being useful
if you're like in a bind and absolutely need a mouse for a game like "Neon White" or "Ghostrunner"; those are much better to
have an actual mouse for. And they're great to play just like this, but I'm not gonna be using this setup for anything competitive. I'd rather just bring an
actual mouse around with me. It would be a lot cooler if you can hold it like a real mouse, but that would require a flat back. So what? The JoyCon has a flat
back on the Nintendo Switch. I'd be perfectly comfortable
sacrificing some ergonomics for that sort of functionality. One of my biggest issues with
these detachable controllers is that they do not work
unless they have been attached to the device while the device is on. That's the only way to turn
the detachable controllers on. I guess that's how it pairs? In other words, you
cannot turn the device on with the controllers disconnected
and expect them to sync. You need them to be connected every time you turn the device on. So I don't think this would make for a good living room gaming rig, at least not a permanent one. Just like every other PC handheld, Lenovo needed to create
their own sort of launcher, their own little overlay for Windows, because Windows is not the best way to navigate through all of your games. And the Lenovo app is okay. The overlay menu doesn't seem to come up the same way twice. I think it alternates? It alternates. That
makes a lot more sense. But it has all the
options you would expect. This is how you set the
different power modes. Weirdly, Custom is how you
can get the most power. Performance just gets you 25 watt. Custom can get you to 30. People usually like to hear
me talk about emulation on handhelds like this. I just don't think there's really gonna be that much exciting stuff. It's gonna emulate
GameCube games beautifully. It's a really powerful Windows handheld, so of course it's gonna be able
to emulate like everything. I just immediately went right
to Nintendo Switch on here, and it did "Super Mario Odyssey" pretty much the best I've seen it. There's some stuttering, but
I think that's just Yuzu. What are you gonna do? I didn't tinker around with it too much. That was really the only game
I was able to get running. As you can see, Smash Brothers
is just frozen like that. Another neat thing is that the controllers show up as Xbox One controllers, so they just are gonna work with basically every emulation software
just right out of the box. They're gonna be great. And I have all my ROMs on a microSD card. I actually just took the microSD card I had from my ASUS Ally and
popped it right in here. I had to reset up EmuDeck,
but everything is great. I just realized I didn't
really talk about battery life. I usually don't. It's never
really a problem for me. These Windows handhelds usually don't have great battery life. This one isn't really an exception. I decided to just leave
this running off the battery and we're at 50% at 45 minutes. Which is honestly longer than I expected. I gotta be honest, I never
play these PC handholds off the charger anyway. I went on a Japan trip with my ASUS Ally and I only played it
plugged in the whole time. I'll also say in this video, I've been really harsh to this thing, the screen is really big and beautiful. So if you saw this thing in person, maybe go to a Best Buy, compare
it yourself to the ASUS, you might like this one more. But I'll throw another
thing to consider at you: it's 144 hertz, but it does
not have variable refresh rate. It means you might get screen tearing. It doesn't have variable refresh rate because the screen is native portrait, so the screen tearing you might get might be weirdly vertical. So the ASUS might only have 120 hertz, but you could do Vsync. I have to compare this to the
ROG Ally and the Steam Deck because they're the three biggest players in the PC handheld market right now. They're all great devices
in their own right and they all have pretty
great price points too. They all also make it very
easy to upgrade the storage. I've done it on the
Steam Deck and the Ally, and those were both super
easy to upgrade the storage. This also has exposed
screws on the outside. Supposedly, this whole
back piece pops off. I have not upgraded the
storage on this thing. You don't really need to
because 1 terabyte of storage is only a $50 upgrade
on the Lenovo Legion. So you could upgrade the storage yourself, but you don't really have
to because it's pretty cheap to just get it with the
most storage you can get. That's about as competitive
as the pricing gets. The Steam Deck is not a Windows device, but it's still considered a PC handheld. I still love the Steam
Deck for how cheap it is and it's so much easier to
use than a Windows device. Developers strive for the
Great on Deck checkmark, so games usually work great on there, but there's a lot of
games I'd like to play that aren't on Steam or come included in my
Game Pass subscription, so I understand the appeal of a more expensive Windows
machine like this one. The ROG Ally has much of the
same specs as the Legion Go, but I think I like the
Ally's form factor more. The Legion Go is just a lot. The Ally is also quiet,
which is a huge plus. The screen is really nice, but I don't think it's worth sacrificing all of those ergonomics for a screen that I probably can't
properly utilize anyway. Again, most of the games
I'm gonna be playing on here are gonna be downresed for
the sake of performance. The Legion Go's greatest
assets are its controllers. It makes this thing really versatile. I have a lot of ideas for
what I want to do with this to make it work a little better for me. You might have seen that I had this Raspberry Pi Pico keyboard attached to it for some low profile
mouse and keyboard gaming. I think the most exciting thing might be to have this thing around with
no controllers on it at all. That makes it as low profile and as versatile as you can get. We just basically have a gaming tablet and I can use any of my
wacky controllers on it. That makes it exciting. I think these detachable
controllers have the potential to make this thing a lot more versatile. Maybe it gives you guys some ideas on how you would want to use it. I would like some more ideas, but I have enough where
I already wanna make a whole nother video showing
how I can use this thing in a whole bunch of different scenarios. Full disclosure, this was
supposed to be a sponsored video, but I actually ended up
getting this from Best Buy. The pre-order came before
Lenovo's review copy came. And I had enough criticisms where I thought a full
unbiased review was warranted, so that's what you're getting. Hopefully, they still like me and we can do that second video 'cause I am genuinely excited about different ways I can use this thing. They'll just have to help me fix this, this button right here. Don't get me wrong, it's
still an incredibly impressive and capable device, and sexy too. We're just starting to
lose the convenience with how big and loud
and hot this thing is. This is definitely my
third favorite PC handheld. It's a close third though. What do you guys think
about the Lenovo Legion Go? Gimme some use cases for what you can do with it in tablet mode or with these detachable controllers. Leave it in the comments
below, add me on Twitter, any and all of this other
social media garbage. Hey, thanks, UGREEN for
sponsoring this video. If you need some chargers for your stuff, don't forget to check that out at the link in the description below. That also helps support this channel. The most important thing
you can do around here is just subscribe, and share
this video with a friend, a friend who is thinking
about getting themselves a PC handheld. Maybe they want something they can attach their own controllers
to, send them this video. Thank you guys very much. Have
yourself a very good week. Shut up, iPhone.
