Lenovo Legion Go 2 review: The most beastly portable handheld yet

Lenovo seems to have a pretty clear mission in the handheld gaming PC stakes – it aims to be the biggest third-party name in the market, and it knows that it has to beat the likes of Asus to take that crown. When Asus is off making collaborations with Xbox directly, that makes life a little harder, of course.

Still, it's pretty clear that Lenovo's approach is nimble enough to stay relevant, with last year's Legion Go S (SteamOS) standing as my favourite PC handheld that I've ever tested. Its latest handheld, the Legion Go 2, goes even bigger on power and size, though. The brand will make a SteamOS version later this year, but, for now, the only option is a Windows beast that stretches the definition of portability, but excels where power is concerned.

I've used it for a fortnight to see how the Legion Go 2 stacks up to the competition, and my time with it was a pretty perfect test-bed for a gaming handheld of this type.

Price and Availability

There are two distinct tiers of the Legion Go 2 – and they have quite big price differences. No matter what you opt for, though, the floor here is £899 or $899 for the standard version featuring an AMD Ryzen Z2 processor. Directly from Lenovo, that version now costs £1049 at the time of writing, so prices are a little unstable.

If you want the more powerful Ryzen Z2 Extreme chipset for an uplift in power, that version will set you back £1,300 or $1349, for an even pricier outlook.

All this comes against the backdrop that while you can easily order the handheld in the UK, at the time of writing things are tighter in the US, where the Legion Go 2 is listed as "Available Soon" when shopping directly with Lenovo.

Design and Features

The first-generation Lenovo Legion Go already stood out as basically the biggest mainstream PC gaming handheld that you could pick up. It was a beast, no two ways around it, and Lenovo hasn't upended its approach for the Legion Go 2.

Once again, the machine is all built around an 8.8-inch screen, and once again, it's just a monster in the hands. Compared to the Nintendo Switch 2, in particular, it feels gargantuan, a couple of centimetres thick and weighing way more (at 930g). This has one major outcome: the console might not be the best for those with smaller hands, and it also means that its portability is effectively in the eye of the beholder.

That said, one crucial feature is a really durable kickstand that makes it easy to prop the Legion Go 2 up, with detachable controllers ensuring that you can use it much like you would a Switch 2. The latches that detach those controllers are way less slick, though, and take some getting used to.

The console is also jam-packed with extra buttons compared to many of its competitors. Alongside the face buttons, joysticks, d-pad and shoulder buttons, you also get two extra buttons on the back of each side of the handheld, plus two that are on the sides, along the edges.

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This means you can customise your controls in games to have a lot more options than otherwise, and also helps to make one of the controllers work in its optional mouse mode. This sees it clip into a little stand and work as a vertical mouse, and is an acquired taste – I found it quite imprecise and uncomfortable. Again, Nintendo's equivalent mode on Switch 2 seems ergonomically superior as a solution.

That said, since the Legion Go 2 is, for now, exclusively a Windows 11 machine, it's pretty useful to have a full mouse when you need it (toggled by a switch on the bottom of that right-hand controller). You can also use the little touchpad on the same controller if you prefer, which is much like that on a Steam Deck.

This is the smoothest version of Windows I've ever encountered on one of these handhelds, which is impressive, but it's still not the best experience via a touchscreen exclusively.

That brings us to the display, which is really the star of the show. It's an 8.8-inch 144Hz 1920 x 1200 OLED panel, and it's quite frankly gorgeous. It's the best panel I've ever used on a portable, as I'll get to later, and it goes a long way towards justifying the handheld's bulky size. For some this'll be where Nintendo's Switch 2 missed a trick.

Under the not insignificant hood, the Legion Go 2 is a super-powered version of the handhelds that came before it. It comes with either the AMD Ryzen Z2 or Z2 Extreme, depending on your spending, but 32GB of RAM no matter what.

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The cheapest version comes with a 512GB SSD, but it can go up to 1TB, and the Z2 Extreme version can be bought with 1TB or 2TB of storage. Those are the only differences, though – all versions have the same screen, 74Wh battery and software offering.

On paper that makes this clearly the most powerful gaming handheld out there (outstripping the ROG Xbox Ally X from Asus by a hair), but there's no getting around the downsides. The design is chunky in a deliberate way, but I won't pretend I like it much – it's thick and not nearly as ergonomic as smaller models like the Legion Go S.

Similarly, the money you might have to fork out depending on availability is absolutely massive – well north of the price of a PS5 Pro with at least one Switch 2 console thrown in for good measure. The target market might not be the same, but it's still worth making these comparisons to underline matters.

Performance and Display

So, if you're going to charge as much as Lenovo is for something like the Legion Go 2, and you're hoping that people can get over the chunkiness of its design, you'd better back things up with performance that can't be ignored.

Thankfully, that's exactly what you get from the Legion Go 2. The version I tested packed the Z2 Extreme chipset, so the more expensive configuration, but its gaming prowess really was something special.

While it's probably a fair assumption that many gamers considering this sort of purchase already know full well how to tinker in a settings menu, it's always interesting to see how this sort of handheld fares without much detailed customisation.

I was playing the excellent Resident Evil Requiem while reviewing the Legion Go 2, and loading up its Steam version I was hugely impressed with the results. Letting the game auto-detect my hardware and choose its graphical settings, I got to play at 1080p with mostly low settings and a very stable frame rate, and it looked absolutely phenomenal on the 8.8-inch display.

I was rightly impressed with Requiem on the Switch 2, but the performance uplift on the Legion Go 2 was massive, making for a way sharper experience and with more vibrant colours and better detail. If you buy a standard Steam Deck at this point you can't really expect to play the latest games easily, but the Legion Go 2 just let me play a huge AAA release without any issues whatsoever – that's brilliant.

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That display can't be talked about enough, either. It's so sharp and so vibrant, and having 144Hz as its ceiling means that if you do play games with lower power requirements, you can get simply brilliant performance from them in a way that really makes for smoother gameplay.

Another upgrade from the Legion Go to the sequel has been in the battery department, and you do get major benefits from it there. Where before the Legion Go might struggle to make it much past a couple of hours on a trying game, you can now expect to see more like three or four in the right conditions.

Of course, that might sound anaemic still, but there are certain realities at play that mean battery life can't go crazy for now – and having a portable power bank is probably something most portable gamers rely on regardless.

There are a whole heap of power modes and settings for you to tweak and choose between in Lenovo Legion Space, the bundled management software that Lenovo houses its settings in. This is a relatively slick and easily-launched app that does indeed let you tinker to your heart's content, and some of the settings have real impact on your battery life or performance, which is great.

Lenovo Legion Go 2 review: Verdict

The Legion Go 2 is in many ways exactly what it says on the tin. Lenovo has taken the formula that worked the first time around, added the next generation of AMD silicon into the mix, and boosted the battery life and RAM to round out the offering.

That leaves the Legion Go 2 as an absolute beast of a gaming handheld, and also keeps it as the physically largest option out there. I still have reservations about the size, which makes it less convenient to carry around, but it'll be down to personal preference.

I also can't ignore the chunky price tag attached. For all we know, further inflation is possible given the volatile market, too. Which might be reason to double down and get in fast if you're keen on buying the best big portable gaming handheld right now.

Still, those doubts are fairly easy to banish when you turn on the Legion Go 2, load up a flagship gaming title and get to play it on the best handheld display on the market, at frame rates that beggar belief. If you've got a big budget, why not go big on your portable gaming?

Also consider

I look at the Legion Go 2 and see two major alternatives for most buyers. One is to get the other extremely premium Windows gaming handheld out there: the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X. It's also got the Z2 generation of chips at its heart, and has a very different design and some Xbox integrations, but is slightly less powerful.

Another option is to slash your costs massively and get the Lenovo Legion Go S (SteamOS) – my favourite PC gaming handheld to this day. It's smaller and more convenient, much cheaper, and skips some of the optional extras that aren't really necessary. That said, it is also significantly less powerful, so it can't do as much.