Lenovo announced the start of sales of the Legion Go portable set-top box. The new product will compete in the market with such solutions as Steam Deck from Valve, ROG Ally from ASUS, as well as numerous consoles from AyaNeo. Legion Go has something to attract buyers.
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The console is equipped with an 8.8-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2560 × 1600 pixels, which is twice the screen resolution of the same Steam Deck. Notably, the Legion Go display supports a 140Hz refresh rate, while the ASUS ROG Ally console’s screen has a 1080p resolution and supports a 120Hz refresh rate. Lenovo’s console screen also claims 97 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space and support for 10-point input.
The device is based on an AMD Phoenix series processor. This is a custom chip, optimized in terms of energy efficiency and differs from regular mobile processors in the Ryzen 7040 series with a lower TDP . Legion Go will be available in two variants: with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor or with the Ryzen Z1 processor. The first is equipped with eight Zen 4 cores with a frequency of up to 5.1 GHz. The second uses a different Phoenix 2 crystal and has six cores ( Zen 4 and Zen 4c) with a frequency of 4.9 GHz. The integrated graphics of the chips are also different. Ryzen Z1 Extreme has 12 execution units on the RDNA 3 architecture with a frequency of up to 2.7 GHz, while the Ryzen Z1 received only four units on the same graphics architecture and with a frequency of up to 2.5 GHz, which is hardly enough for modern games in resolution 1600p.
The set-top box also offers 16 GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory. It is faster than the RAM of the ROG Ally (LPDDR5-6400) and Steam Deck (LPDDR5-5500) consoles. In addition, Legion Go is ready to offer SSD capacity of 512 GB or 1 TB. A version with a 256 GB drive was previously mentioned by the manufacturer, but did not go on sale. The console uses M.2 2242 format drives with a PCIe 4.0 interface. The permanent memory of the set-top box can be expanded by supporting SD memory cards up to 2 TB.
An interesting feature of Legion Go that further distinguishes it from ROG Ally and Steam Deck are the removable controllers, similar to the Nintendo Switch. These controllers can replace a computer mouse, increasing the accuracy of aiming in shooters. In addition, the set-top box supports connecting external GPUs via the USB Type-C connector, which is an advantage over the same ROG Ally, which also supports connecting external video cards, but only from ASUS itself through the proprietary ROG XG Mobile connector.
Overall, Legion Go is an interesting alternative to other portable consoles. The new product will be able to impose serious competition on consoles from ASUS and AyaNeo. The Legion Go version with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of permanent memory is priced at $699/€799, the version with a 1 TB SSD received a price tag of $749/€799. Competing with the aging but still relevant Steam Deck will be more difficult. Mainly due to the latter’s affordable price.