Lenovo Legion Go

[XeNoNF50]

Personally won't touch anything made by Asus. The appeal for me with the Legion Go is the versatility - if you purely want a gaming handheld there are arguably better options but the Legion Go is so handy for a wide range of uses.

I ordered the Legion Go 2 earlier this week. Was £990 for the Z2 Extreme version with 1TB in the end via my work discount.

 

[XeNoNF50]

It seems the £1,300 Legion Go 2 is due to Lenovo's £300 charge for 2TB storage.

If you want the Z2 Extreme Legion Go 2 for £1,000, just configure with 512GB SSD. £1,100 for the 1TB.

Still happy with my Z1E Rog Ally...

They did not have a 512gb option the other day when I ordered. But it is definitely not enough storage. +£300 mark up is insane for 2tb, even for +£200 more than 1tb.

 

[Rroff]

I don't find 500GB too much an issue on the Go myself - personally I only tend to keep a relatively select number of games installed and a few other apps, though it might be an issue for someone who likes to keep a well stocked games library for travelling, etc.

 

[degen]

Prices of these devices are too much now. Better off buying the z1e consoles. Performance increase isn't enough.

 

[XeNoNF50]

Prices of these devices are too much now. Better off buying the z1e consoles. Performance increase isn't enough.

They do feel expensive but the only ones that are oled HDR vrr and having 32gb ram and better battery life is also nice.

 

[adamg64]

Hello people.

I finally took the plunge and bought a Legion Go yesterday a certified refurbished one from currys ebay for £399 thought the price was ok and others reporting it was pristine when it arrived and im hoping for the same.

i knows its two years since launch but does anybody have any advice on what i should and shouldn't change about it, software or apps that are a must?

Watched a fair few reviews after i purchased and looked to have a few issues at launch also, track pad issues and right clicking were these ever fixed?

Does it run its own software or is it just really a laptop in handheld format? runs regular windows? or a tone down version?


Hope to get some help

 

[apostolis_kt]

Hello people.

I finally took the plunge and bought a Legion Go yesterday a certified refurbished one from currys ebay for £399 thought the price was ok and others reporting it was pristine when it arrived and im hoping for the same.

i knows its two years since launch but does anybody have any advice on what i should and shouldn't change about it, software or apps that are a must?

Watched a fair few reviews after i purchased and looked to have a few issues at launch also, track pad issues and right clicking were these ever fixed?

Does it run its own software or is it just really a laptop in handheld format? runs regular windows? or a tone down version?


Hope to get some help

I bought one for the Mrs on December 2023 for xmas present.
I also read a lot of reddit posts, Legion Go official posts etc.

I will write some thoughts and tips, I can write a whole thesis about this but I will try to make this short.

In my view it is basically a windows laptop with an 8.8 inch screen and detouchable controllers ala Switch 1. You can put SteamOS to it, though I haven't tried it because we have a lot of windows games on various shops (Steam, Epic, GOG, Uplay, Gamepass).
When you turn it on the first time it even does the windows 11 installation steps with all the crappy apps MS wants you to install. It took away from being a gaming console to be honest.
To me it was a bog standard win11 experience and thats how we treat it.
I uninstalled anything we werent going to use on this device like MSTeams, excel and quite a few more bloat. There is a guide on reddit I think on how to debloat it better but never bothered.

They do have the Legion Space app which should have shortcuts for your games/ gamestores but has also its own recommendations and prices. I only use this app when i want to setup the controller profiles and another useful setting is to not charge the device above 80 when plugged since the mrs plays on the sofa plugged in all the time anyway. It is assigned to the left controller top button to open the app.
Same on the right controller top button is a side overlay that pops up with the quick settings for performance mode, efficiency, balance on gpu and cpu, resolutions brightness fan curves etc, that i use constantly. This and especially the Legion Space app can be a bit slow in turning on though but overall i find this quite useful.
Also there are useful shortcuts with the top buttons (left button and one of the right gamepad buttons brings the keyboard up, or the task manager etc).

Mrs loves the detouchable controller, uses it to play games likes Sims without needing to bring a mouse.

One major tip for you, go into the bios settings and set the Vram to 6GB ram. By default i think its 3 and its not enough. They later added an Auto mode but i think people reported issues with that.
You could set it to 8GB but then you might be running out of memory - remember this is shared ram and takes from your 16GB ram that the system has overall (I just wish they had released this device with more ram but heyho). Maybe a good debload of windows will save you some ram.

Another tip, a lot of people us included complained about the sound of the device. It is really tiny and doesn't help that they are top firing speakers. If you search on reddit there are some settings you can do to the Equilizer and makes it way better.
It wont be like front firing speakers but will sound way better than factory.

SSD i have been wanting to change for quite some time but was waiting in case we sold this to get the Legion Go 2 that has full support for 2242 and 2280 ssds. Plus i noticed the mrs plays one or max 2 games at a time so the 512 is ok - bought also a 1tb micro sd Lexar A2 card which helped.
But in case you want to change, it supports 2242 ssds. You can get a 2230 (smaller) and make sure you get the little extender in order for you to be able to screw it down. Do not buy the adapter that plugs on the nvme slot and then plug your ssd to it people have had issues with speeds not being the advertised speeds etc.
Also it supposedly cannot take 2 sided 2242 ssds because under the ssd is the wifi antena and some people have crashed it a bit using a very nicely priced KingSpec 2tb 2242 ssd. I am not sure if its true or not so i didnt bother getting one although at some point it was really tempting at £90.
I think the Corsair MP600 Micro is a really fast ssd (not sure if double sided or not) people have used this one, its just a tad expensive at £170 i think but then its the only Gen4 from a reputable brand atm as far as i know.

The screen is gorgeous on this device. I can't believe an IPS display looks this nice. I never bothered with setting it to 60hz, in fact some games that run at 40fps ish i never noticed stutter (maybe helps that it was set at 144). And being a 1600p means you can drop to 800 and not have horrible interpolation especially if you use integer scaling.
We personally play at 1200p to get smoothness but also good eye candy, i cannot unsee how meh games look at 800 generally speaking. I will always start a game, put the settings i want to see and see if it runs at 1600p decent. If not then we drop to 1200p.

One negative of the screen and possibly extends to some problems this device has, they used a tablet panel which is on the portrait orientation, hence also why 1600p.
They did set it to default at landscape so you should not see it often if at all but you will spot the odd weirdness happening when you swap resolutions.
When i plug it to my tv and try to extend monitor etc sometimes the Lenovo monitor will be in portrait, and the tv landscape but for some reason will make Netflix etc feel like they drop frames, if only shown on tv. Problem dissapears if i just extend and use both screens and also the Lego monitor returns to landscape.
Also the fact that it has a portrait native screen means that Lenovo has to make drivers for the GPU. So you will see AMD releasing drivers for the 780m gpu (which essentially the Z1e has) but Lenovo has to go and make their version for the Lego to properly work. And that means that Lenovo are really really slow in releasing drivers.
There was a point where we waited 8 months. New Legion Go 2 gets its drivers directly from AMD supposedly for the chip because its a landscape oriented monitor.

We had a small issue where I had to use the warranty for ours, the controllers were wobbling a bit especially the right one. The mrs didnt mind but it bothered me.
There is a small issue with the rails that technically if you screw them a bit better then it solves it. I sent the whole device to Lenovo, came back supposedly fixed and they did nothing, issue was still there.
Second call i asked them to send me new rails and i would do it, they accepted and sent me the parts. Now it is rock solid i cant believe how much better it is now. I think this issue was with the early release models and was rectified later from the factory.

I think for £399 its a really good device. Especially since the Lego 2 with the Z2extreme processor starts at £999 with 512gb.
Feel free to ask me anything, I am no guru but i have spent quite some time tinkering with the device and every game the mrs asks to play i go and try to find the best settings for it.

 

[Rroff]

Does it run its own software or is it just really a laptop in handheld format? runs regular windows? or a tone down version?

It runs regular Windows it is basically a laptop in handheld format but you have options, including if you want to installing stuff like the Steam OS, to make it more gaming oriented. Lenovo has a few customisations through the Legion Space software as well if you want to go more gaming focussed.

The only caveat software wise is that due to a complication with the screen it uses customised display drivers and installing the regular AMD ones is non-trivial so there is potentially a delay there if Lenovo don't release new drivers soon enough. Some people find software like Lossless Scaling dramatically improve the gaming experience on the device.

Personally I find that using regular Windows is both a blessing and a curse as I use the device a lot for purposes outside of handheld gaming as the CPU is reasonably powerful - competing with upper end AMD 5000 series desktop CPUs in full power mode, but Windows is a bit obnoxious when it comes to portable use - I usually use Windows Update Blocker to stop all updates behaviour outside of when I want to update and permanently engage energy saver mode, I'm usually plugged in when gaming, to tame some of Window's stupidity.

Personally never had any of the launch issues with mine but that doesn't mean you won't.

 

[adamg64]

I bought one for the Mrs on December 2023 for xmas present.
I also read a lot of reddit posts, Legion Go official posts etc.

I will write some thoughts and tips, I can write a whole thesis about this but I will try to make this short.

In my view it is basically a windows laptop with an 8.8 inch screen and detouchable controllers ala Switch 1. You can put SteamOS to it, though I haven't tried it because we have a lot of windows games on various shops (Steam, Epic, GOG, Uplay, Gamepass).
When you turn it on the first time it even does the windows 11 installation steps with all the crappy apps MS wants you to install. It took away from being a gaming console to be honest.
To me it was a bog standard win11 experience and thats how we treat it.
I uninstalled anything we werent going to use on this device like MSTeams, excel and quite a few more bloat. There is a guide on reddit I think on how to debloat it better but never bothered.

They do have the Legion Space app which should have shortcuts for your games/ gamestores but has also its own recommendations and prices. I only use this app when i want to setup the controller profiles and another useful setting is to not charge the device above 80 when plugged since the mrs plays on the sofa plugged in all the time anyway. It is assigned to the left controller top button to open the app.
Same on the right controller top button is a side overlay that pops up with the quick settings for performance mode, efficiency, balance on gpu and cpu, resolutions brightness fan curves etc, that i use constantly. This and especially the Legion Space app can be a bit slow in turning on though but overall i find this quite useful.
Also there are useful shortcuts with the top buttons (left button and one of the right gamepad buttons brings the keyboard up, or the task manager etc).

Mrs loves the detouchable controller, uses it to play games likes Sims without needing to bring a mouse.

One major tip for you, go into the bios settings and set the Vram to 6GB ram. By default i think its 3 and its not enough. They later added an Auto mode but i think people reported issues with that.
You could set it to 8GB but then you might be running out of memory - remember this is shared ram and takes from your 16GB ram that the system has overall (I just wish they had released this device with more ram but heyho). Maybe a good debload of windows will save you some ram.

Another tip, a lot of people us included complained about the sound of the device. It is really tiny and doesn't help that they are top firing speakers. If you search on reddit there are some settings you can do to the Equilizer and makes it way better.
It wont be like front firing speakers but will sound way better than factory.

SSD i have been wanting to change for quite some time but was waiting in case we sold this to get the Legion Go 2 that has full support for 2242 and 2280 ssds. Plus i noticed the mrs plays one or max 2 games at a time so the 512 is ok - bought also a 1tb micro sd Lexar A2 card which helped.
But in case you want to change, it supports 2242 ssds. You can get a 2230 (smaller) and make sure you get the little extender in order for you to be able to screw it down. Do not buy the adapter that plugs on the nvme slot and then plug your ssd to it people have had issues with speeds not being the advertised speeds etc.
Also it supposedly cannot take 2 sided 2242 ssds because under the ssd is the wifi antena and some people have crashed it a bit using a very nicely priced KingSpec 2tb 2242 ssd. I am not sure if its true or not so i didnt bother getting one although at some point it was really tempting at £90.
I think the Corsair MP600 Micro is a really fast ssd (not sure if double sided or not) people have used this one, its just a tad expensive at £170 i think but then its the only Gen4 from a reputable brand atm as far as i know.

The screen is gorgeous on this device. I can't believe an IPS display looks this nice. I never bothered with setting it to 60hz, in fact some games that run at 40fps ish i never noticed stutter (maybe helps that it was set at 144). And being a 1600p means you can drop to 800 and not have horrible interpolation especially if you use integer scaling.
We personally play at 1200p to get smoothness but also good eye candy, i cannot unsee how meh games look at 800 generally speaking. I will always start a game, put the settings i want to see and see if it runs at 1600p decent. If not then we drop to 1200p.

One negative of the screen and possibly extends to some problems this device has, they used a tablet panel which is on the portrait orientation, hence also why 1600p.
They did set it to default at landscape so you should not see it often if at all but you will spot the odd weirdness happening when you swap resolutions.
When i plug it to my tv and try to extend monitor etc sometimes the Lenovo monitor will be in portrait, and the tv landscape but for some reason will make Netflix etc feel like they drop frames, if only shown on tv. Problem dissapears if i just extend and use both screens and also the Lego monitor returns to landscape.
Also the fact that it has a portrait native screen means that Lenovo has to make drivers for the GPU. So you will see AMD releasing drivers for the 780m gpu (which essentially the Z1e has) but Lenovo has to go and make their version for the Lego to properly work. And that means that Lenovo are really really slow in releasing drivers.
There was a point where we waited 8 months. New Legion Go 2 gets its drivers directly from AMD supposedly for the chip because its a landscape oriented monitor.

We had a small issue where I had to use the warranty for ours, the controllers were wobbling a bit especially the right one. The mrs didnt mind but it bothered me.
There is a small issue with the rails that technically if you screw them a bit better then it solves it. I sent the whole device to Lenovo, came back supposedly fixed and they did nothing, issue was still there.
Second call i asked them to send me new rails and i would do it, they accepted and sent me the parts. Now it is rock solid i cant believe how much better it is now. I think this issue was with the early release models and was rectified later from the factory.

I think for £399 its a really good device. Especially since the Lego 2 with the Z2extreme processor starts at £999 with 512gb.
Feel free to ask me anything, I am no guru but i have spent quite some time tinkering with the device and every game the mrs asks to play i go and try to find the best settings for it.

I really appreciate you taking this much time to respond, you have answered so many of questions & concerns.

I was getting abit worried as i chose this over the steam deck oled, a lot of comparisons pick the deck over this but there biggest point is the pricing as the retail of this is much higher but i paid £400 so think its a good deal and taking the pricing away im sure this looks to be a better and powerful all-round system.

I'll look to add a large SD card i think at this stage, can games be directly installed to the SD card?

 

[adamg64]

It runs regular Windows it is basically a laptop in handheld format but you have options, including if you want to installing stuff like the Steam OS, to make it more gaming oriented. Lenovo has a few customisations through the Legion Space software as well if you want to go more gaming focussed.

The only caveat software wise is that due to a complication with the screen it uses customised display drivers and installing the regular AMD ones is non-trivial so there is potentially a delay there if Lenovo don't release new drivers soon enough. Some people find software like Lossless Scaling dramatically improve the gaming experience on the device.

Personally I find that using regular Windows is both a blessing and a curse as I use the device a lot for purposes outside of handheld gaming as the CPU is reasonably powerful - competing with upper end AMD 5000 series desktop CPUs in full power mode, but Windows is a bit obnoxious when it comes to portable use - I usually use Windows Update Blocker to stop all updates behaviour outside of when I want to update and permanently engage energy saver mode, I'm usually plugged in when gaming, to tame some of Window's stupidity.

Personally never had any of the launch issues with mine but that doesn't mean you won't.

Looks like some of the issues were later fixed but that doesnt mean this is not a first gen unit before the fixes hopefully drivers/updates fixed most of these via software.

Again ty so much for the advice.

 

[apostolis_kt]

I really appreciate you taking this much time to respond, you have answered so many of questions & concerns.

I was getting abit worried as i chose this over the steam deck oled, a lot of comparisons pick the deck over this but there biggest point is the pricing as the retail of this is much higher but i paid £400 so think its a good deal and taking the pricing away im sure this looks to be a better and powerful all-round system.

I'll look to add a large SD card i think at this stage, can games be directly installed to the SD card?

No worries at all. Happy to add any info I gathered if it helps.

In our case we needed the biggest screen possible from a company that is known and has some support. Also it had to be 1080p, if not more, with Windows so steam Deck was not filling the criteria.

800p as I mentioned before is a nono for us. I believe the Lego is way better than the steam deck especially for the price you are paying, 8.8" 144hz, better processor, with option to use Windows and SteamOS is a no brainer for me.
And i can use it as a tablet - albeit a bit of a chonky one.

Yes you can install games on the SD card, just mind you it will possibly have a bit longer loading times. I would not put any game that requires an ssd though just to be sure i get the best experience.
I think the mrs played Dead Or Alive 6 and a few others installed on the SD card and she didnt notice anything wrong. Also emulators run great from the sd card.

Another tip, make sure you buy an A2 microsd card, not an A1 apparently its way better for speeds. I think the new MicroSD Express (Switch 2) might work but wont use the full speeds.

 

[heman]

Prices of these devices are too much now. Better off buying the z1e consoles. Performance increase isn't enough.

Performance increase is marginal. Agree better to get an older device, the difference can be put towards a gaming desk/laptop.

 

[Besty]

the only major issue I have with My Z1E is that when using Steam OS, the LED controls for the joysticks do not work, even with plugins.

to get this control you need to be using windows.

does not sound like a big issue until you want to play it on night flight or, at home in low-light, the LEDs are blindingly bright.

 

[Haggisman]

Had a nice opportunity to have a play with one of these last weekend; my (non-techy) mate had an issue with his - one of his kids turned it off in the middle of an update and it corrupted the windows install, couldn't launch any game without getting a random BSOD (and would occasionally just randomly do so on the desktop). Tried the usually fixes, but nothing worked, tried to do a factory reset and even that wouldn't work!

So I suggested he give SteamOS a go, and he's really happy with it - says it seems a lot more responsive, better in games, and just generally snappier/smoother.

Installation process was pretty straightforward too, a few tweaks due to it not being a fully supported device, but got everything working eventually (I have a Steam Deck so already knew a few of the quirks, and how to set up Epic/GOG through Heroic etc.).

Have to say I was pretty impressed; certainly faster than the Steam Deck! Although it's only an IPS screen, it was close to the OLED on the SD. Found the battery life to be woeful though, it barely lasted an hour when running CP2077 (which I was using for benchmarking/testing); was down to ~30% when my SD was closer to 60% after running the same number of tests.

Think I still prefer the SD OLED though; it's more portable due to the smaller size/lighter weight/longer battery life, although I guess if you only use it at home and mostly plugged in (as my mate does), then I guess those benefits aren't so relevant.

the only major issue I have with My Z1E is that when using Steam OS, the LED controls for the joysticks do not work, even with plugins.

to get this control you need to be using windows.

does not sound like a big issue until you want to play it on night flight or, at home in low-light, the LEDs are blindingly bright.

Which plugin are you using? I installed Decky/LegionGoRemapper, and it works perfectly.

 

[apostolis_kt]

Think I still prefer the SD OLED though; it's more portable due to the smaller size/lighter weight/longer battery life, although I guess if you only use it at home and mostly plugged in (as my mate does), then I guess those benefits aren't so relevant.

Indeed, i think each device has its pros and cons.
We use the Legion Go mostly plugged in sitting at the sofa anyway for our use case and the ocassional flight we got a power bank to help.
If only GPD win 2025 was 8.8 inch i would snap that instantly with the 395 processor it has.

 

[ZXSpectrum]

I believe also valve are going to be integrating a LED controller app/option into the newer version of steam, i cant recall when it will be available though.

EDIT: It was actually added into the Beta Client on 14th July and is currently under testing. I believe its under Settings\Customization.

Official Steam News - Steam News Hub

Catch up with the latest news and announcements from official Steam news feeds.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Haggisman]

I believe also valve are going to be integrating a LED controller app/option into the newer version of steam, i cant recall when it will be available though.

EDIT: It was actually added into the Beta Client on 14th July and is currently under testing. I believe its under Settings\Customization.

Official Steam News - Steam News Hub

Catch up with the latest news and announcements from official Steam news feeds.

store.steampowered.com

That option doesn't appear to be there on the Legion Go (or at least I couldn't find it in the versions I tried)

 

[ZXSpectrum]

That option doesn't appear to be there on the Legion Go (or at least I couldn't find it in the versions I tried)

Have you got the beta client installed or are you running the official release?

 

[Haggisman]

That was on the beta client, I couldnt get the "steam" (Lenovo) or quick settings buttons to work either without the beta client

 

[sgavan]

Preview of the next Windows\Xbox app update coming to handhelds, probably the Legion go range as well. Could be good and I would prefer windows for ease of access to other launchers

We hacked the new Windows 11 Xbox Mode onto the old ROG Ally — how does it optimize performance?

Microsoft's new handheld gaming mode for Windows 11 is launching first on the upcoming Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, but it will be coming to all gaming handhelds eventually. Here's a first look at the experience running on an original ROG Ally.

www.windowscentral.com