Legion Go changed my mind about handheld gaming

This is how a perfect handheld  should look like, or at least that's what I thought when I bought it. I've been using it for over 2 months now, pretty often and in very different conditions:  at the airport, on a plane, on a volcano crater, in a park, at the sea, feeding ducks at the  lake, and of course, at home. But even at home I experimented and replaced my PC with a Legion Go,  of course with eGPU connection. And today I want to share this experience with you without going  too far into the

technical aspects of the device. I don't have anything to compare it to, but I used  to have a Steam Deck. I liked the handheld itself, but it didn't stay with me for too long,  because I'm quite spoiled by my home PC, and the picture and performance that Steam  Deck offered was not enough for me. Of course, now there is also OLED version and it could  partially change my opinion, but only partially. I wouldn't have bought Legion Go either if it  wasn't for my curiosity to test the Windows hand

held with my own hands and a 30% discount  for the unpacked model at a local store. And since I was planning a vacation, I decided  to give a handheld gaming a second chance. And first that I want to discuss here  is a screen resolution. On one hand, it's significantly larger than its  competitors, but on the other hand, it's not large enough for such a high  resolution. 2560x1600 on almost 9 inches... that's gonna demand a lot of resources from  the hardware. It all depends on your gaming prefe

rences. When I had a Steam  Deck, I knew I would be playing mostly indie  games But sometimes I want to run a more demanding game, and that's where the Steam Deck  struggled, not just in terms of performance but also in providing an immersive experience on a  small screen. Just to clarify, I had the LCD version of the screen, not the OLED. In the case of the Legion Go, With such a screen, I don't even mind playing games that I  previously wouldn't run on a handheld. I played a lot in Divinity Or

iginal Sin and Sifu  on it. Both games aren't the most demanding, but I could play them at the screen's native  resolution and with playable FPS. And to get the smoothest picture - I always can reduce  resolution to 1200p and change performance mode. There are different power consumption modes,  and most of the time, I had it on the 15-watt power-saving mode. In this mode, I see nothing but  positives: excellent performance, longer battery life, less heat, and quieter fans. But even in  performa

nce mode, the handheld surprised me. Yes, it will be noisy, and it will get significantly  hotter, but you will not feel it in your hands. Because your hands will be holding detachable  controllers and there's nothing to heat up. All the heat will be concentrated around  here. Seriously, detachable controllers are one of my favorite features of the Legion  Go. Although, because of this connection, the controllers wobble, with the right one wobbling  more than the left, but it didn't bother me mu

ch. Just a few words regarding the FPS mode.  I started by going through the training in Apex Legends to get used to the controls but  immediately ran into a lack of buttons for all the controls. I simply don't have any unused  buttons left to switch grenades. But In games with fewer control buttons, it works fine. But  this way you distance yourself from the screen, and it already becomes small for  a shooter like that in my opinion. And while I didn't detach them often,  I appreciated that on

a the plane. But what I didn't appreciate was how long the  battery lasted. I played Sifu on a 15-watt profile for 40 minutes at the airport,  just a little over an hour on the plane, and that's it. Luckily my flight was only  2 hours long, so it wasn't a problem for me. But is it the portable gaming experience  we’ve been asking for? For longer flights, you'll need to bring a power bank, and  not every power bank will work. My old one couldn't charge it at all. When  I connected to my monitor v

ia type-C with a 15-watt power delivery, it was also  completely ignored. So keep that in mind. Fortunately, the Legion Go has 2 USB4 ports,  so I could connect a charger separately. But it ends up being such a weird setup, and you  can't use the kickstand anymore if you want to place it on a table as a second monitor. By the  way, you might notice that in most of my footage, the kickstand is extended, and this is done  intentionally so that I can lean the handheld on my leg and not block the ai

rflow for cooling,  or just so I can put it somewhere at any moment. So if you have a monitor without a power delivery  and you want to connect the handheld to it, I recommend preparing a USB hub. This way, you  can get quite a powerful mini-PC that handles many games quite well. And if you want a more serious  performance, you can always connect this... For those who don't know, this is an eGPU  dock from AliExpress. It has appeared in my videos several times before. Inside is an  RTX 2060 and

a power supply for it. But now it will be in a nice case. The monitor serves as  a USB hub, with all peripherals connected to it. This way monitor and USB from it are connected  to the eGPU. The eGPU has 2 Thunderbolt ports, one of which has a 65-watt power delivery.  So I was connecting my Legion Go to it, which allowed me to use just one cable for  charging, monitor, GPU, and all peripherals. For me, it was one of the most interesting use  cases for the Legion Go—an attempt to replace my PC wi

th it. For the sake of the experiment,  I literally set aside my high-end PC and used only the Legion Go for about two weeks. The first thing I noticed was how Legion Space was displayed on my ultra-wide monitor. But  was not using it anyway, so who cares? But I need this one and to make all menu items visible, I  had to make the handheld screen as a main one, but that way once you start a game, it will start  on that screen. So, after changing the necessary settings, I had to change the main sc

reen every  time. It's also strange that there is no keyboard shortcut to access this menu, it's only accessible  via a button on the Legion controller so far. The Legion Go controllers couldn't replace  my gamepad at home. I mean, they are super convenient to use in handheld mode, and it's  great that occasionally you can detach them, but they are not convenient to use at  home in that way compared to the gamepad. But when you connect an Xbox gamepad, in  some games like Rocket League or Sufu,

it just doesn't work, even though  it's connected and can be used in Windows. And the reason is that it is  detected as an additional gamepad. I tried changing the settings of the main  gamepad in Windows, but that didn't help. The workaround here was quite amusing: turn on  FPS mode on the Legion Go, and our controller turns into mice for Windows; then connect the  Xbox gamepad, and now everything works now. If I turn off the FPS mode the controllers from our  handheld will detect it as an addi

tional gamepad. If someone is interested in using this as  a mini-PC, they should be prepared for the fact that 16GB of RAM isn't really 16 gigs, as  by default, only 12GB is available since the rest is allocated for the integrated GPU. And the  lack of RAM can be a problem. In my daily usage, 80% of the RAM is occupied most of the time. And  when I launch Adobe Premiere Pro, it becomes a nightmare. Timeline editing is slow, browser tabs  get unloaded to free up memory, and Premiere Pro itself c

rashed a couple of times for me; after  that, I gave up trying to edit 4K video on it. But in games, I didn't encounter any issues  with my list, but I mostly played Divinity Original Sin, which is quite an old game.  Although, I launched demanding games when I connected the RTX 4090 to the Legion Go for one  of the previous videos; if you're interested, here's an example of performance you can  get from this tandem. Just to clarify, 4090 is an overkill for the eGPU, and I do not  recommend doin

g this because you'll lose a huge chunk of performance. If you want to learn more  about eGPU - check my video where I covered real Thunderbolt bandwidth speed or when connected eGPU  directly to a Desktop PC to compare performance Throughout this time, I had the RTX 2060  connected, and it handled my games perfectly. Even with the eGPU connected, I almost  always used the 15-watt power-saving mode, so the noise from the eGPU was much more  noticeable than from the handheld itself. I like that w

ith such a setup, I could disconnect  one cable, and now you have a portable device with the same list of games and saves (just let me  remind you that not all games have cloud saves, and when I played Dark Souls 3 on a PC,  I couldn't continue on a Steam Deck). I play some games exclusively on the eGPU,  so to avoid wasting internal storage, I store these games on an external SSD and  connect it to the eGPU. That way, when I connect the eGPU to the handheld, the external  SSD with the games is

automatically detected. When I was using a handheld In this scenario, I  noticed another downside—a slow charging speed when the handheld is turned on. My cable  can charge up to 65 watts ( same as in the power supply that comes with a handheld), but  charging can take hours if the handheld is on. Can't say that it is a big problem for  me. During my gaming sessions at home, Legion Go doesn't have enough time to discharge as  I usually play for 30-60 minutes. And sometimes, the charging cable is

nearby, and nothing  is stopping you from connecting it. I had such a cable ready near my  bed, only it wasn't just a charger, it was an eGPU. And it was amazing. But from time  to time I saw this error, and in special cases, this (blue screen). The error indicates that  the GPU is disconnected, but it's still visible in Device Manager. Apparently, there was a  mini disconnect due to handheld movement, although the connection looks reliable. I  won't blame the handheld port specifically, as it

could be a problem with the cable  itself, I just don't have another one to check. And when the handheld stood still on  the table, there were no such problems. But to sum up all my experience with  this handheld compared to the Steam Deck, it gave me many more positive emotions than  negative ones. The enlarged screen increased immersion in the game, the powerful hardware  expanded the list of possible games I would like to play on this handheld, and the  comfortable grip of the controller and

its lack of heating prevented me from quickly  putting the handheld aside to sit down at my PC. But Legion Go runs on Windows with all the ensuing  consequences. Plug in the charger in sleep mode - it turns on, put it back to sleep - it might  wake up randomly in the middle of the night to illuminate your entire room, you installed a new  game? - be prepared to search for optimal graphics settings. In Steam OS, you won't have most of  these problems, but there are some games you just won't be ab

le to play on it. Aside from Steam,  I also have a game library on Epic Games and a subscription to the Game Pass. Therefore, for  me, Windows is more of a benefit than a drawback. The experiment with the eGPU and PC replacement  can also be called successful... if we're only talking about games. Personally, though, I ran  into a shortage of RAM and weak performance in video editing, so for me, the Legion Go  won't be able to replace the PC for now. Also, I can't say that I  often used it on vac

ation, just like last time with the Steam Deck. I certainly took some beautiful shots and it was a cool experience. But, I think  you realize that right after the shoot it was all packed away because I don't  really want to play in places like that. Still, I don't regret taking the handheld with me,  if I had a less busy schedule or a longer trip, I would gladly use it more often. I just  wish it took up less space in my backpack. Even though I will not keep  the Legion Go for myself, it was abl

e to change my opinion  about handheld gaming for the better. If you found this interesting, maybe you'll be  interested to hear about the Steam Deck as well. Currently, I am waiting for the  delivery of the OneXPlayer X1, which could potentially be the  device I was searching for, and even with a larger screen size. So, stay tuned, and thank you for watching. what