Lenovo Legion Go handheld gaming device first impressions

Lenovo has entered the handheld gaming market in India with its first dedicated console. This move follows a trend of established PC manufacturers like Asus and MSI venturing beyond traditional desktops and laptops. These companies aim to offer a PC-like gaming experience in a portable, handheld form factor. The device runs on Windows 11, which means it can run games that you traditionally play on PC.Here are the first impressions of the Lenovo Legion Go.
Lenovo Legion Go handheld gaming device price in India
The Lenovo Legion Go handheld gaming device is priced at Rs 89,990, making it on par with the price of a PC. It will be available for purchase from July 1.
Design and display
The Lenovo Legion Go comes in a black colour option and gets RGB lighting around the power button as well as around the joysticks. It is feels quite heavy in hands, and indeed it is weighing at 854 grams, while the ROG Ally, Asus’ gaming handheld which we tried last year weighs at 608 grams.
The device has an ergonomics design with triggers and buttons placed at natural hand/ finger position, and the device has rounded edges for comfortable use. The Legion Go comes with a hard case and a base plate for using a controller as a vertical mouse.
The 8.8-inch IPS QHD+ display on the Lenovo Legion Go gets up to 144Hz refresh rate and up to 1600p resolution. Other display tech includes Lenovo PureSight Gaming panel and 10-point touch support. The display looks great with crisp and colourful visuals, thanks to the 97% DCI-P3 colour space.
The Lenovo Legion Go also features a stereo speaker setup on the top of the device and a small touchpad that allows users to use the device like a PC. There are two USB Type-C ports, a 3.5mm headphone post and a microSD card slot for expandable storage.
Hardware and software
Under the hood, the Legion Go gets the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Processor (3.30 GHz up to 5.10 GHz) – similar to the one in the Asus ROG Ally that we reviewed. Z1 Extreme has 8 CPU cores, 12-core integrated GPU cores. The processor is paired with 16GB LPDDR5X RAM (7500Mhz) and 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD.
Coming to the software, the handheld runs Windows 11, which means that you will be able to do all tasks that you do on a PC. But we’ll keep this for our review. There’s also Lenovo Space where all the shortcuts of apps of major game stores are included. So if you have a Steam account, you can go to Lenovo Space and quickly tap the download button.
Coming to thermals, Legion Go gets the Legion Coldfront solution that includes ultra-thin heatsink fins to dissipate the heat. There’s also a Quiet Mode.
As far as the battery is concerned, the Legion Go offers a 49.2Whr battery. Users can quickly refuel the device with Super Rapid Charge Express and there’s a Power Bypass Mode that drops reliance on the battery power when connected to a power source.
What we think
Lenovo Legion Go is going to compete against MSI Claw and Asus ROG Ally. With whatever limited time we’ve had with the handheld gaming device, it has made a promising first impression. We specifically liked the small touchpad that essentially expands the usability of the device. Secondly, it has a display with 144Hz refresh, as compared to 120Hz in the competition.
However, it is a bit bulky with a large screen size and more weight but it looks to be a good gaming machine. We are currently testing the Legion Go and will talk about it more in our full review.