The Lenovo Legion Go is NOTHING Like We Thought

have you ever looked at a Nintendo switch and thought man I just wish this thing could play Counter Strike well the Lenovo Legion go may look like a jumbo switch but it really isn't anything like it so today we'll be going over how it subverted our expectations why it isn't just a PC and a switch's body and whether you should pick one up for yourself on paper the legion go has the same AMD Z1 ultimate Apu used in the Rog Ally and many other gaming handhelds the difference stems from the 16 GB of 7500 megga transfer LP ddr5x memory and the Big 49.2 W battery it makes sense that Lenovo opted for a bigger battery since the legion go has to power a larger higher Fidelity screen than its competition however now with the launch of the steam deck OLED it is falling behind by6 wat hours and also remember that a bigger battery doesn't necessarily mean longer life you can get a Solid 5 or 6 hours at a lower TDP on the legion go but don't expect to play Allen wake 2 for more than 90 minutes thankfully the the battery can use super rapid charge to get up to 30% battery life in 10 minutes or up to 70% in 30 and you'll have plenty of space for game downloads with up to 1 tab of SSD storage though you'll have to spend another 50 bones to get that after the $700 base price and while the ram is soldered onto the board you can manually upgrade the SSD storage so long as it's compatible with the Gen 42242 form factor now Lenovo calls its detachable joy-con like gam pads true strike controllers and upon First Look you'd think these things would act like joycons however we quickly found out that the controller's detachable nature is the only feature shared between the two devices while you can play games in Split Gamepad mode you can't have another person use one of the true strikes as a separately registered controller like you can with the joycon it's understandable given how the two controllers aren't symmetrical in either design or function these controllers do have gyroscopes though so you can use them as like a wiot and nunchuk if you want to emulate Wii games however the gyroscopes aren't turned on by default and you'll need to go into the drivers to enable them at the moment unless Lenovo makes it easier in a software update and both controllers form a standard Xbox controller scheme with the abxy face buttons in a clicky directional pad the right true strike has a touch pad similar to the steam deck and two macro buttons on the grips on the side are two additional buttons mostly used for FPS mode the face buttons look and feel similar to a dual sense or Xbox meaning they are solid and large enough to not fat finger the left true strike complim ments the right with a clicky d-pad the start and select buttons and two more macro buttons on the grip both controllers also have a dedicated button that interacts with or opens Legion space lenovo's front- end software which we'll talk about later Lenovo also sprung for hall effect triggers and thumb sticks so you won't have to worry about durability or stick drift if you look at the switches controls you get the same amount of buttons on either side symmetry helps make the case for each joyon to become a separate controller but the legion go has more functions on the right than on the left if Lenovo wants to make this function happen it'd probably want to follow the steam deck symmetrical layout another difference between the controllers compared to the switch is that these controllers are substantially more comfortable to hold unlike the joycon small form and almost totally flatb the true strikes are ergonomic big and great to hold they also feel lighter than the joycons even with the amount of hardware and buttons I especially like the well right underneath the triggers as it just feels natural to rest your fingers underneath them it's probably the most comfortable handheld game pad we've used thus far as we don't get the same level of comfort holding the rag Ally the steam deck does come close but the legion go has the edge here this Comfort also applies to the wireless Gamepad mode thanks to Legion Go's built-in kickstand unfortunately it doesn't ship with a grip connecting the two controllers as the switch does but we have some creative options for you later in the video if you're interested in something like that in addition to detaching the legion go one of the controllers can turn into a mouse on the bottom of the right true strike controller is a switch that changes from gam pad to FPS mode and an optical Mouse sensor flipping the switch turns on the sensor which brings up a cursor on the screen after a few seconds Lenovo ships a magnetic base with the device that the controller can snap into which makes it akin to a vertical Mouse the mouse sensor isn't going to match that of traditional gaming mice but you can get it up to 1,800 DPI on it most people use a DPI level within this range anyways FPS mode also enables the two side buttons on the right controller which are the right and left buttons for the mouse additionally the controller has a clickable scroll wheel tucked right underneath the trigger you can use the scroll wheel while in game pad mode too though it is a little tricky to reach while the controller is attached if you don't have long fingers like I do now you usually use a mouse with a keyboard obviously the legion go does not have a physical one you can use instead you can use the left controller like a nunchuck from the Wii unfortunately you can't use the left controller to type you'll need to use the touch keyboard or connect the physical one as you'll see there's a definite learning curve to using this control scheme but we found many more potential use cases than when we originally heard about this feature while most other handhelds are under or around the 7in mark for the screen size the legion go comes in at a huge 8.8 in QHD 144hz IPS screen like a lot of other handhelds Legion go comes with the gorilla glass touchscreen though this one is capable of 10-point touch and with a maximum resolution of 2560 x600 and a 16x 10 aspect ratio this is easily one of the best looking screens on a gaming handheld unfortunately valve didn't send us a steam deck OLED so this is coming out before that happened I had to buy the legion go myself and I have to buy a steam deck OLED myself but talking about the legion go since I don't have the steam deck OLED it makes games look great especially with its 97% DCI P3 color gamut and it helps with using Windows by making texts crisp and clear to read when browsing these resolutions can be scaled down from, 1600p to 1200p or 800p which helps save battery and game performance as Fidelity isn't as sharp you can also change the refresh rate from 144 HZ to 60 HZ though for us to be able to do that that required us to plug in the legion go and this isn't the case when we're increasing it to 144 Herz so it appears that either we have a bug in our Legion go software or it's something that Lenovo needs to figure out more broadly now as for the io you're getting two USBC 4.0 ports capable of using display port 1.4 to connect to an external screen these ports are split between the top and bottom of the device so you can charge it how you see fit you're also getting up to 2 terabyt of extra storage with the micro SD card slot on the top of the handheld though the one thing missing from the device is a fingerprint reader found on most other gaming handhelds it's not a necessary feature but it is something to note when compared to other handhelds like the RG Ally when it comes to looks I personally really like the Aesthetics of the Legion go despite the fact that looks a lot blockier than it actually is there isn't much in the form of customization besides the RGB surrounding the thumb sticks each LED ring is customizable with one of three breathing patterns and a full range of colors you can also adjust the color brightness and pattern speed respectively all these settings can be saved in up to three lighting profiles in Legion space at the moment you can only get the legion going black though it works well in contrast to the RGB lighting though I'd love to see more colors in the future since the controllers are detachable I mentioned earlier that these controllers were lighter than we expected which is important considering that they could have made the device much heavier with the controllers attached it's just under 2 lb at 850 4 G and without them it's under 1.5 lb at 640 G that weight makes it heavier than the RG Ally in the steam Deck with the controllers but given the size of the battery and the larger screen this thing has that's to be expected and like every other windows gaming handheld Lenovo has its own proprietary front-end software called Legion space to help manage game installs and adjust controller settings it's mostly because Windows is notoriously rough to use on handheld since gamepads don't work well with the UI and other elements I really want to like Legion space since it's very similar to steam's Big Picture Mode compared to like the Armory crate on the Ally and ipace from IO but it still has its quirks and bugs on the homepage you'll have the standard options to view your game library and settings in addition to tabs for cloud gaming a game store for PC games and another for Android games the game Library consolidates all of the games on your device from different libraries into one but you can't sort the game based on the library at the moment it'd be nice to see options to filter games based on genre or something similar but those things can always come later in an update in the settings tabs you can change system options like performance screen resolution and refresh rates many of these options can be changed within the quick menu by pressing the legion R button on the top right of the game pad this tab is also where you can change your key bindings for FPS mode or the regular Gamepad both true strike controllers can have every button reconfigured to fit whatever game or game type you're playing in fps mode by choosing the keys or Mouse buttons you want it's a bit daunting initially considering you're learning an entire L new controller scheme that you've never touched before and memorizing what keys you use for certain games but thankfully you can set up to four different FPS profiles that you can quickly switch between in the legion space quick menu cloud gaming is probably the least functional part of the Legion space app you can't use FPS mode on the Xbox cloud gaming as the service only recognizes officially supported or verified controllers the regular Gamepad mode works but you can't use it the way you want within the cloud gaming tab since controller inputs are registered both in game and on the UI and it's a really good idea to keep you the same app but you have to switch to the Xbox app to actually use the service properly otherwise you're going to get Miss inputs all over the place and as for the game store tab you're directed to the games Planet website by default to download different games directly into the legion space app Lenova provides you with discounts on certain games on this storefront but you can add steam epic game store go and others as well the Android game tab however redirects you to the Amazon app store of course you'll need an Amazon account to access this but any downloaded Android games will appear in the game Library Legion space can be pretty intrusive especially since you can accidentally press the legion space button pretty easily others online found out that you can stop this by renaming the legion space executable or even having other apps open up instead like steam's Big Picture Mode the app is also pretty laggy when first opening it making it that much more frustrating when you're pulled out of a game by accident the button also enables some system shortcuts however for example pressing the button and pressing a at the same time is like hitting control alt delete on a regular keyboard it's both conven vent and annoying to say the least if you screw it up and while the main Legion space app is intrusive the quick menus are great by tapping the right Legion button once you can get a quick menu on the left side of the screen that gives you access to other tabs in the legion space app or your most recently played games it's pretty handy when you want to just jump back into whatever game you've played last tapping the button twice allows you to manage settings like the screen resolution TDP or your FPS mode profiles again really handy especially when troubleshooting what game settings you're trying to play at now windows on a handheld is easily the worst part of the handheld PC experience it's not intuitive because gam pads don't work well it's unoptimized so it drains the battery faster and using a touch keyboard with a split controller is cumbersome and slow unless you sit down somewhere just to type luckily this is a little bit easier with the legion go because you can use the touchpad to move the on-screen cursor but this device does give you something that's a GameChanger FPS mode with this turned on you can finally use windows with out all the hassle because you have a mouse to use instead of your finger I took some time to browse the internet using the mouse which is what helped us get use to the new controller unless vertical mice are your thing there still will be a learning curve here some of us here in the office are more familiar with vertical mice even then it took them a bit of time to acclimate to the button layout once we got used to holding the mouse we took it for a spin some FPS games since that's what the name implies it's made for R tried it in Apex Legends Counter-Strike 2 portal and control this introduced the biggest part of learning to use the FPS mode using the left controller to replace the keyboard there are 14 buttons that you can program on the left controller so you can have plenty of ways to figure out what's best for you I found this layout most comfortable for playing control after about 20 or so minutes I was able to use both The Mouse and the left controller to play like I usually would I was able to use all of the abilities I had at my disposal with no issues move around the way I wanted with the left stick and hit head shot with the mouse it was like having the best of both words the Precision of a mouse with the quick accessibility of a regular Gamepad the best part of this process was that I could go into the legion space settings and change all of my bindings on the fly all you have to do is pause the game go into Legion space pick the new bindings you want and it automatically updates without you needing to restart the game we made some adjustments to the controls when testing Apex but since you can save presets all we have to do is switch from fps1 to fps2 to see how they compared I wish you could rename these or have a way to preview the layout for each profile file but that could come in a future software update nevertheless the ability to reprogram the controller at any time is a great feature what's also great is that you have so much flexibility when using this mode to play how you want to we tried using the true strike Mouse with a regular keyboard and it worked perfectly fine as did using a regular Mouse with the left true strike controller this versatility lets you get the most out of your experience using the legion and go however I found myself enjoying the true strike controls far more than anticipated I would even say that I prefer having the left true strike in fps mode over a keyboard it's not something that you can really get until you've tried it yourself but Lenovo hit it out of the park on their first attempt with these controllers I was a bit concerned about whether left-handed users would have trouble using the true strike Mouse but we actually might have an advantage over right-handed users the reason is that when you hold the mouse with your right hand you almost have to claw grip it to use the face buttons using your left hand gives you full access to the buttons without compromising it's important to note this since you can still program the face buttons for FPS mode even though they're disabled by default now switching back to Gamepad mode there was something I noticed about the legion go that wasn't really marketed and that's surprisingly excellent haptics compared to the RG Ally and the io 2s this is easily the best use of haptic Rumble in a handheld we've used you can feel how powerful different weapons are in Apex and feel every minor or major bump against a rival car in Burnout it just feels so much nicer than the relatively static feeling haptics in the RG Ally it doesn't match the Dual sense in terms of immersion but we really appreciate how it was implemented here I really wish the haptics were turned on when the FPS mode is enabled at least for the left controller though this could be enabled in a software update now we had a good idea going into testing what performance at high and low tdps would look like since it shares the same Apu as the RG Ally and many other handhelds and while performance is largely similar to those devices we found that the higher resolution on the legion goat made games look better than the their competition with FSR upscaling enabled Z1 chips can't take advantage of FSR 3's fluid motion frames at least for the moment but they can use FSR 2 and rsr to get back some frames in more demanding games for example I could upscale control from 400p to, 1600p and get close to 90 frames with settings mixed between low and medium I wouldn't recommend this since you can see plenty of blurry pixels but you can do it to get the higher FPS if you want the best settings I found for control were to set the render resolution at 800p and then scale it to, 1600p and it was also able to handle the medium R tracing preset with the dx12 version of the game though you're only going to hit 30 FPS with it on less demanding titles like Apex Legends and Counter-Strike 2 hit 60 pretty easily and look great at 1600p older titles and emulation should be no problem for this machine now Lenovo bundles a carrying case with the legion go that fits the mouse Bay and the device itself but nothing else on the bottom of the case is a slot for the charging cable to route through so you can charge it with without taking it out of the case however you may want more storage space for more than just the leg and go there aren't many dedicated accessories out there yet but many of steam deck's accessory Suite is compatible with the legion go thanks to their similar sizes for example this case from Joo comes with lots of space for charging cables games and whatever else you need for your daily Adventures if you want a little more personality for your legion go or you just want to protect that big old screen from scratches you can't do wrong with dbrand like the RG Ally you can get scratch resistant skins that perfectly fit the console while giving it some personal flare to show off when you're out and about they aren't available right now but you can pre-order them on their website which I have done and I was hoping would be here in time for the review but they were not dbrand also makes tempered glass screen protectors that you can get right now now you may prefer to have a true mouse and keyboard experience but you don't want to Lug around a tkl board just to get that if that's the case consider a small form keyboard like this Proto Arc foldable keyboard you may not have access to mechan mechanical switches but you do get the compact full-size keyboard that will fold up and store nicely in whatever case or bag you're using you can snag this for $50 on Amazon alternatively you could also pick up the geod mayor Wireless compact tkl keyboard for about 30 bucks at the time of recording this keyboard folds up just like the Proto Arc but this one comes with a foldout touchpad to give you the full laptop experience it can also connect to up to three different devices using Bluetooth the last small form keyboard we found comes from Logitech and it's their K400 Plus Wireless travel keyboard it may not fold like the other options we provided but it's still compact enough to store in your bag you also get a touchpad right beside the keyboard so you can use that if you don't feel like using the true strike Mouse if you want to turn your legion go into a full desktop PC though you can do so with a dock JSO makes docks for the steam deck but they also work with other handhelds without issues we found a 5 in1 and a 6 in1 dock that each come with a 4K 60 HDMI port and a highspeed ethernet port both docks are also capable of 100 wat charging though you'll need to buy such a charger separately now the last accessories we have to show you actually come from Reddit on the r/ legion go subreddit several community members have 3D printable grips to snap the true strike controllers into a switch like grip there isn't a definitive grip out there just yet to print so your mileage may vary but given how popular gaming handhelds are becoming I expect there to be third party options available very soon so we can confidently say that the legion go is actually one of our favorite handhelds out right now it's actually way more versatile than we thought it would be by giving you multiple ways to play games and to use Windows it's super comfortable to hold no matter how you're playing a game and FPS mode is a complete GameChanger in handheld gaming when I thought it was just going to be a gimmick it may not be for everyone but that's okay because it's totally up to you to use you get to decide how you want to use it you have options however that may be kind of like buying a PS5 and disabling the haptics on the Dual sense you're missing out on a one-of-a-kind experience and if all of this sounds good to you I strongly suggest that you could pick one up for yourself but maybe that all seems horrible to you maybe you hate Innovation maybe you want something just a little bit more traditional then you're definitely going to want to check out the r Aly which we conveniently have a video on too so you can click right here to learn exactly how to set up the rag Ally for gaming or you can click right here to find out how to set up the legion go for gaming because we did that video as well

Channel: UFD Tech

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Id: UlmK4gXerxI

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2023