Lenovo Legion Go Handheld Review – Changing the Gaming Console Landscape

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The world of the handheld gaming console has always been contentious – at least to me. With modern smartphones and their respective hardware, many games are available for mobile gamers. And, for the more hardcore fan, the gaming laptop industry has produced some of the best options in 2024. Handheld consoles were initially the middle ground between the two. While it existed for many decades, even before the smartphone and gaming laptop, it wasn’t until the Nintendo Switch that we saw any movement in this segment again – which lay reasonably dormant since the release of the Gameboy over two decades ago. 

With the relative failure of the PS Vita, mostly in part due to cost, lack of titles to play and poor support, the handheld console market faded into obscurity until the Switch. Even with the success of the Switch and its subsequent OLED upgrade, there weren’t many entries into the race until Steam dropped its variant, the Steam Deck, in 2022 (or 2023 to the rest of the world). Since then, we’ve seen a slight uptick in demand for the handheld, followed by the release of the ASUS ROG Ally, PlayStation Portal, Razer Edge and the Logitech G Cloud, all in 2023. 

While a few of these may have grabbed the headline in recent months, there’s one that you might want to pay attention to if you’re in the market for a handheld console. That’s the Lenovo Legion Go Handheld. Unlike the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, which are no-doubt handheld consoles, the Legion Go and others fall into the portable PC category. In my opinion, this makes it highly worthwhile. So, let’s get into it.

It’s large. Very large. The Lenovo Legion Go is probably the biggest screen from the recent batch. With an 8.8” IPS panel, the visuals are stunning. You’re not going to beat the vibrancy of the OLED panel on the upgraded Steam Deck, but with a higher resolution (2,560×1,600px) on more significant real estate, you get a crisper image – and graphics. 

Added to its large size, it also supports HDR and has a