Lenovo Legion Go 2 Appears in Review Video Ahead Of Launch After Production Facility Closes Shop

[Cpt.Jank]

The Lenovo Legion Go 2 was officially revealed at CES 2025 earlier this year, confirming that the new device would be launching later this year with the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme. Now, however, it seems as though prototype units of the Legion Go 2 have started leaking in China, with one Chinese content creator on Bilibili managing to publish a video review of the device on the social media platform. The reviewer gives us a look at the internals and specifications of the device, confirming that it will ship with a 144 Hz OLED display with a resolution of 1,920 × 1,200, a peak brightness of 500 nits, and 97% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space.

The review unit in question was apparently sold on a Chinese secondhand marketplace called GoFish after the production facility where it was produced shut down—according to one Redditor's claims, at least—and it apparently had the regular AMD Ryzen Z2 SoC, not the Z2 Extreme that is expected to power devices like the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally gaming handheld when that eventually launches. As expected, though, the Legion Go 2 features 32 GB of LPDDR5x-7500 memory and an AMD Radeon 780M iGPU. The battery capacity also seems to have been given a substantial upgrade to 74 Wh, compared to the 49.2 Wh in the original Legion Go. Judging by the stickers on the back of this particular pre-production unit, it was manufactured in November 2024, so there have likely been significant changes to the design and internals since then, and the information presented in the Bilibili video can be taken with a healthy helping of salt.


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[Space Lynx]

I'm very excited for the Z2 Extreme handhelds. I hope these companies don't blow it... ironic that they are downgrading their screen resolution, especially after my article here: haha

First legion go had 1440p resolution I think... with an APU... lol

 

[colossusrageblack]

I'm very excited for the Z2 Extreme handhelds. I hope these companies don't blow it... ironic that they are downgrading their screen resolution, especially after my article here: haha

First legion go had 1440p resolution I think... with an APU... lol

The original LeGo screen was 1200p, not 1440p.

 

[jungleogre]

The original LeGo screen was 1200p, not 1440p.

Google Search

2560x1600, 1600p right?

 

[Space Lynx]

The original LeGo screen was 1200p, not 1440p.

oh yeah? interesting. 1600p I was wrong and so were you, but my point proven even more so, they realized their foolishness and backtracked, just as my topic i linked in previous post points out all along.

 

[Cheeseball]

I'm very excited for the Z2 Extreme handhelds. I hope these companies don't blow it... ironic that they are downgrading their screen resolution, especially after my article here: haha

First legion go had 1440p resolution I think... with an APU... lol

It was 1600p but it was portrait-native, which was taken from their Y700 tablet. This is why the camera is on the right side and not top-centered. Also, because of this orientation it lacks VRR support and causes problems for certain games in Windows.

Besides, 1600p was overkill for the iGPU in gaming (except for the Radeon 8050S/8060S) and it still is for the 890M.

 

[Space Lynx]

It was 1600p but it was portrait-native, which was taken from their Y700 tablet. This is why the camera is on the right side and not top-centered. Also, because of this orientation it lacks VRR support and causes problems for certain games in Windows.

Besides, 1600p was overkill for the iGPU in gaming (except for the Radeon 8050S/8060S) and it still is for the 890M.

ya, that is why I made the thread I linked a few posts up. just was proving my point was all

 

[Cpt.Jank]

It was 1600p but it was portrait-native, which was taken from their Y700 tablet. This is why the camera is on the right side and not top-centered. Also, because of this orientation it lacks VRR support and causes problems for certain games in Windows.

Besides, 1600p was overkill for the iGPU in gaming (except for the Radeon 8050S/8060S) and it still is for the 890M.

I think the Legion Go didn't get enough credit for being able to do picture-perfect downscaling to 800p, which is a little sharper than the 540p of the ROG Ally doing the same and identical to the Steam Deck's native resolution. Not sure at this point if Lenovo did that on purpose or if they were just reusing display units they already had, but it's a good balance nonetheless.

 

[Cheeseball]

I think the Legion Go didn't get enough credit for being able to do picture-perfect downscaling to 800p, which is a little sharper than the 540p of the ROG Ally doing the same and identical to the Steam Deck's native resolution. Not sure at this point if Lenovo did that on purpose or if they were just reusing display units they already had, but it's a good balance nonetheless.

Yeah, that was/is one of the advantages of the 1600p panel, being able to downscale (more importantly, integer scale) perfectly to 800p which at 8.8" is not an ugly affair at all and a good resolution that the 780M can take advantage of.

 

[watzupken]

The original Legion Go tried to differentiate itself in many wrong ways. Personally, I feel the key issues are,
1. Too big a device - This translates to it being heavier and less suitable as a handheld device.
2. Display issues - Ignoring the known problem with the display orientation, my biggest gripes with the display is the high resolution and size. Generally, I won’t mind higher resolution and size, but in the context of the modest hardware, most games will not run smoothly even at 1080p, much less at 1600p. Lowering resolution on a bigger screen also makes the image look worse. Glad Lenovo seems to have sorted this out with the newer Legion Go.
3. Lenovo “joycons” - while an interesting concept, there are no games that makes use of it. It almost feels like they had to separate the controller from the main device due to the weight. But in doing so, they probably added more weight to the overall package making it even less portable.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

I've owned the Legion Go for almost 2 years now and I took it with me all around the world, so here's my wishlist for the Go2 by my order of importance:


1 - RAM: 16GB unified RAM the #1 culprit for my problems with the device. Games on windows are made with minimum 16GB system RAM and 6GB VRAM, so there's never one single sweetspot for all games. Auto RAM allocation is a thing in the BIOS that doesn't always work, and having to go to the BIOS to manually change VRAM allocation on a per-game basis is a drag.

2 - Maximum Performance: The Z2E is some ~20-25% faster than the Z1E at 20-30W which honestly isn't great for a successor coming 2 years later. I wish we had a Strix Halo based SoC instead.

3 - Support for USB4 V2: I often use my Legion Go docked with an eGPU to make it my living room PC. USB4 V2 doubles the data rate from 40 to 80Gbps meaning the performance hit goes down significantly.

4 - Battery capacity: There's no reason for a device this big to have a battery below 80W.h especially considering how small the Ally X is with that capacity.

5 - OLED: The screen is awesome, but everyone is just spoiled with perfect blacks on OLED panels. This makes a bigger difference when we're playing in a dark room (i.e. in bed) when light bleeding is much more noticeable.

6 - Driver Software support: The Z1 series have no official driver support from AMD (part of the reason they're sold for much cheaper than the 7840U / 8840U). Lenovo needs to pay AMD for a custom driver every single time they release one for the Go, but then they do it like once every 10 months so the official driver stack is constantly lacking support for the latest games. I need to manually sideload the official driver which is another drag. Plus, the official driver has a bunch of shortcomings, like not supporting FSR3 frame generation (which unlike Lenovo's statements has nothing to do with screen orientation because the sideloaded driver does it flawlessly) or not supporting eGPUs from AMD (!!!).

7 - Performance at low wattages: I use it plugged more often than not, but for older or indie games I whouldn't always need to set the SoC to 20W. Problem is the Z1E using Phoenix simply breaks performance/watt below 20W and performs worse than a Steam Deck. This was fixed first in Hawk Point and further improved for the Strix series.

8 - Sound speakers: I rarely use my Legion Go without in-ears, but damn the upwards-firing speakers in the Legion Go 1 make it sound really bad.

It was 1600p but it was portrait-native, which was taken from their Y700 tablet. This is why the camera is on the right side and not top-centered.

There's no camera on the Legion Go, and probably not on the Go 2 either. Are you talking about the camera in the Y700?

Also, because of this orientation it lacks VRR support and causes problems for certain games in Windows.

I've yet to find a game that doesn't work in my Legion Go because of the screen (very rarely I just need to switch between bordered window and fullscreen but that's it).
To be honest, VRR is kind of unnecessary in a small screen running at 144Hz, mainly because of the orientation. Vertical lines are smaller so harder to spot, central vision is more accurate but slower, and at 144Hz the refresh is quite fast.

All I do is simply turn VSync off, the frames come as fast as they're ready and I never notice any tearing whatsoever, unless the game is running at 20FPS or something (at which point the problem isn't just the tearing).

Besides, 1600p was overkill for the iGPU in gaming (except for the Radeon 8050S/8060S) and it still is for the 890M.

One thing that often goes unmentioned is how good fast and dense panels handle aggressive upscalers. I personally use integer scaling only as a last resort.
Doing e.g. 600p with 4x temporal upscaling FSR2/3 to 1200p and then FSR1 to 1600p works pretty well on the Go because its panel does a great job at hiding all the blurriness and ghosting you'd notice on a larger screen.

The Legion Go has a bunch of problems, but IMO the screen orientation and density aren't really among the bigger ones.

3. Lenovo “joycons” - while an interesting concept, there are no games that makes use of it. It almost feels like they had to separate the controller from the main device due to the weight. But in doing so, they probably added more weight to the overall package making it even less portable.

I disagree with this a lot.
Taking the joycons off makes it immensely more portable than a Steam Deck or a ROG Ally (I still own the first and used to own the second).
With the joycons off you get a 9" tablet and two small volumes you can easily fit in any tiny backpack or bag.

 

[CyberCT]

I've owned the Legion Go for almost 2 years now and I took it with me all around the world, so here's my wishlist for the Go2 by my order of importance:


1 - RAM: 16GB unified RAM the #1 culprit for my problems with the device. Games on windows are made with minimum 16GB system RAM and 6GB VRAM, so there's never one single sweetspot for all games. Auto RAM allocation is a thing in the BIOS that doesn't always work, and having to go to the BIOS to manually change VRAM allocation on a per-game basis is a drag.

2 - Maximum Performance: The Z2E is some ~20-25% faster than the Z1E at 20-30W which honestly isn't great for a successor coming 2 years later. I wish we had a Strix Halo based SoC instead.

3 - Support for USB4 V2: I often use my Legion Go docked with an eGPU to make it my living room PC. USB4 V2 doubles the data rate from 40 to 80Gbps meaning the performance hit goes down significantly.

4 - Battery capacity: There's no reason for a device this big to have a battery below 80W.h especially considering how small the Ally X is with that capacity.

5 - OLED: The screen is awesome, but everyone is just spoiled with perfect blacks on OLED panels. This makes a bigger difference when we're playing in a dark room (i.e. in bed) when light bleeding is much more noticeable.

6 - Driver Software support: The Z1 series have no official driver support from AMD (part of the reason they're sold for much cheaper than the 7840U / 8840U). Lenovo needs to pay AMD for a custom driver every single time they release one for the Go, but then they do it like once every 10 months so the official driver stack is constantly lacking support for the latest games. I need to manually sideload the official driver which is another drag. Plus, the official driver has a bunch of shortcomings, like not supporting FSR3 frame generation (which unlike Lenovo's statements has nothing to do with screen orientation because the sideloaded driver does it flawlessly) or not supporting eGPUs from AMD (!!!).

7 - Performance at low wattages: I use it plugged more often than not, but for older or indie games I whouldn't always need to set the SoC to 20W. Problem is the Z1E using Phoenix simply breaks performance/watt below 20W and performs worse than a Steam Deck. This was fixed first in Hawk Point and further improved for the Strix series.

8 - Sound speakers: I rarely use my Legion Go without in-ears, but damn the upwards-firing speakers in the Legion Go 1 make it sound really bad.






There's no camera on the Legion Go, and probably not on the Go 2 either. Are you talking about the camera in the Y700?


I've yet to find a game that doesn't work in my Legion Go because of the screen (very rarely I just need to switch between bordered window and fullscreen but that's it).
To be honest, VRR is kind of unnecessary in a small screen running at 144Hz, mainly because of the orientation. Vertical lines are smaller so harder to spot, central vision is more accurate but slower, and at 144Hz the refresh is quite fast.

All I do is simply turn VSync off, the frames come as fast as they're ready and I never notice any tearing whatsoever, unless the game is running at 20FPS or something (at which point the problem isn't just the tearing).




One thing that often goes unmentioned is how good fast and dense panels handle aggressive upscalers. I personally use integer scaling only as a last resort.
Doing e.g. 600p with 4x temporal upscaling FSR2/3 to 1200p and then FSR1 to 1600p works pretty well on the Go because its panel does a great job at hiding all the blurriness and ghosting you'd notice on a larger screen.

The Legion Go has a bunch of problems, but IMO the screen orientation and density aren't really among the bigger ones.




I disagree with this a lot.
Taking the joycons off makes it immensely more portable than a Steam Deck or a ROG Ally (I still own the first and used to own the second).
With the joycons off you get a 9" tablet and two small volumes you can easily fit in any tiny backpack or bag.

Interesting wish list. I have an ROG Ally since 2023 and it was great. Bought an OG Legion GO used (excellent condition) at Best Buy at such a steep discount, I couldn't say no. I LOVE that 8.8" screen. It's a big enough screen to be used as a tablet. My top "improvements" would be more RAM, VRR, higher capacity battery, and more performance. Also get rid of the annoyingly gimmicky "FPS" mode on the right controller. I keep hitting the extra buttons unintentionally. They shouldn't be there. Maybe keep the scroll wheel. It's super easy to pack a small mouse. No need to use the stupid controller as a mouse. Useless. It's great the controllers come off, though.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Also get rid of the annoyingly gimmicky "FPS" mode on the right controller.

I'm with you about the FPS mode. I only tried using the right controller as a mouse once, and concluded I needed to carry a mouse around if I wanted to use the console to play FPS or RTS games on a larger screen.
Having the two bottom buttons symmetrical on both controllers would be a lot better.

 

[Cheeseball]

There's no camera on the Legion Go, and probably not on the Go 2 either. Are you talking about the camera in the Y700?

I've yet to find a game that doesn't work in my Legion Go because of the screen (very rarely I just need to switch between bordered window and fullscreen but that's it).
To be honest, VRR is kind of unnecessary in a small screen running at 144Hz, mainly because of the orientation. Vertical lines are smaller so harder to spot, central vision is more accurate but slower, and at 144Hz the refresh is quite fast.

All I do is simply turn VSync off, the frames come as fast as they're ready and I never notice any tearing whatsoever, unless the game is running at 20FPS or something (at which point the problem isn't just the tearing).

One thing that often goes unmentioned is how good fast and dense panels handle aggressive upscalers. I personally use integer scaling only as a last resort.
Doing e.g. 600p with 4x temporal upscaling FSR2/3 to 1200p and then FSR1 to 1600p works pretty well on the Go because its panel does a great job at hiding all the blurriness and ghosting you'd notice on a larger screen.

The Legion Go has a bunch of problems, but IMO the screen orientation and density aren't really among the bigger ones.

Right, what I mean is the ambient light sensor where the camera would be on the panel. That same spot is where the Y700 front-facing camera would be, but its good Lenovo repurposed it for a light sensor.

It would be a bunch of older DX8/DX9/DX11 games that render based on Windows identification of the display panel. So if they launch and they detect that the default orientation is supposed to be portrait (e.g. 1600x2560), the games would attempt to display sideways or crash. Examples of this is Abe's Oddysee and even Apex Legends in DX11 mode when in Exclusive Fullscreen (I don't use DX11 in this game lol). This and certain overlays have a hard time rendering:



The Steam Deck avoids this in Linux(SteamOS/Bazzite/etc.) since Gamescope takes over and tells the game its on a landscape-native display even though it really isn't.

VRR is quite useful when the display supports the lower range (e.g. 48Hz) and you have FPS within that area. But yes I generally avoid enabling VSync for the lower input lag. I sometimes use RTSS or FRTC to limit frames for some games for a more smoother experience.

I generally avoid RSR or RIS, so I just have integer scaling enabled and set the game to full screen 800p.