Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Steam Deck OLED vs. Lenovo Legion Go: Welcome to the Age of PC Handheld Gaming”.
Handheld gaming is back in a big way, but especially for PC Gamers right now there are two big PC gaming handhelds on sale, the steam deck, which has a new OLED display and a lot of other tweaks and the Lenovo Legion go now. These aren’t the first PC gaming handhelds, but it’s a trend, that’s continuing and with rumors of a new Nintendo switch next year and streaming devices like the PlayStation portal, there are all sorts of options. What should you consider in a PC gaming handheld, or should you wait? Well, here are my experiences after about a week playing with both. Now I should let you know, I am pretty apprehensive about PC gaming, it’s outside of my comfort zone and that may sound a bit embarrassing, but it’s true, I’m not much of a tinkerer when it comes to PC games, and that means you might prefer one of These over another I’ll get into that in a minute. What’S going on here is pretty different in terms of features.
The steam deck is a bunch of tweaks to the existing steam deck to create a much better overall product. It has a 7.4 in HDR display. That’S OLED this time and it also has better wi-fi and it has improved haptics and just an overall improved feel, but it’s still the same feel and size as the previous steam deck. No detachable controllers, although it can connect with monitors and keyboards. Now the Lenovo Legion go has an 8.8 in screen. It is 1.8 lb. So it’s big, it runs full windows and it has a kickstand and it even has detachable controllers, and the crazy thing is that one of these controllers actually doubles a mouse. There’S an optical sensor here and you can flip it on it – comes with a base that turns this into a throttle.
Uh Mouse controller – you snap it in here and then you can essentially use this as a mouse for the whole OS. So I could also scroll with the scroll wheel and click on things too. I mean, while this controller Mouse thing is meant to be used for games. This is where it starts to fill with Windows and Mouse controller that it’s not even really a game console at all. It’S really a super portable Windows, 11 device. So in terms of size, like I said, the Lenovo Legion go is a lot bigger.
I mean it’s not tremendously large, but it is much like a tablet with controllers the 1.8 lb size and the 8.8 in screen as big and nice as it is, means that you’re going to want to Lug this around in its carry case um and have a Big enough bag for it, the steam deck, is also pretty large, but it seems more portable in comparison. Not only does it have a smaller display, but it’s a lot lighter and it feels more like a super large switch to hold in the hand. Now, let’s get to games, because that’s what you’re doing on these things you’re gaming with the steam Deck The Proposition is everything running through Steam. This is really a game. Console for Steam and valve has optimized this wonderfully to run a ton of games, specifically using its AMD Z2 processor and its Linux operating system and doing it in a way that runs well and performance. Well for those games that say, you know that it can run on Steam deck. That means that there are some games that don’t – and there are some games like Madden football – that need anti-che, verification that doesn’t run on the steam deck, which is frustrating and you can get the steam deck to do other types of things like game streaming, but that’s Kind of going under the hood with it out of the box, it’s really meant to run everything via steam. Now the Lenovo Legion go is a full windows, 11 machine. This is a Windows device with controllers.
Lenovo does have a graphics software overlay that provides access like a little bit of a launcher to all sorts of game store environments. That means you can run Steam on this. You can run Microsoft Game Pass. You can run epic game store. You can run anything. It’S a Windows machine that gives a tremendous amount of flexibility.
However, the games that work for it are hit and miss. So far, I’ve launched some games that have run really slowly some games that have crashed some games. That said, I needed new drivers, some games that seem to work perfectly well now that may require some sort of tinkering with graphic settings with drivers with other things again getting under the hood with this device out of the box you’re going to have to discover what Games work best on this, like I have now that goes down to the OS.
The OS on the Lenovo Legion go it’s Windows, 11. So there’s a lot of flexibility there and a lot of frustration. I mean there are popup Windows. There are things telling you about Security checks.
There are, you know, different types of messages from different programs at the same time, which you don’t always want when you’re gaming and stuff like that and the display, while it’s big, is still small compared to a Windows laptop. So sometimes you have to hunt around and tap for things which can get annoying now the steam deck its OS is a custom design built on Linux. So it has a very nice conso like feel it’s very comforting. Yet surprisingly, it has a lot of under the hood features, a lot of ways to tweak a lot of different settings, a lot of things to satisfy somebody who wants to make their system a little more of their own.
But to be clear, it really does feel like a gaming console environment. You can’t easily run out of the box all sorts of other software, although you can – and you can look up – Alters of ways to do that. So there’s a lot of flexibility under the hood here, but on top feels a lot more comforting. Now, let’s get down to price price is kind of the same in some regards in that they’re, both in the over $ 500 range, but the steam deck is more affordable. The steam deck without an OLED display is only $ 400 and then, if you want to get the one with a 42 GB of storage and OLED display, that’s 550 go to the 1 tbte. That’S 650.
Now the Lenova Legion go. Has a 512 GB configuration? That’S $ 700, but the 1 tbte is 750, so you’d probably go for that, but $ 750 is considerably more expensive than the $ 550 entry level price here, um, even the you know, there’s about $ 150 gap on the storage differences. That means it’s. It’S creeping towards the uh, you know th territory, even if it’s in the $ 700 range.
These are definitely a far cry from the $ 300 of a Nintendo switch. What would I do right now? Well, there are going to be a lot of Windows handhelds coming. I think not just this one and Microsoft needs to get a lot more involved in making these easier to use and not so confusing. I think there are going to be more iterations coming the legion go feels experimental.
I would consider waiting and seeing what other stuff pops up. I think this is a nice first effort, but it’s a very buggy first effort, whereas the steam deck feels is very polished right now. I think it’s a great product right now to get. If you want to play games that are PC games, but again, will there be a steam deck to according to valve, probably not for a couple of years, so I think you’re safe, it’s kind of like the switch OLED that came out a few years ago. That’S the state of handheld gaming for PCs and there are a lot more handheld game systems like the switch 2 that we’re expecting next year. Good luck, holiday! Shoppers! If you have questions and comments below, please let me know, and thanks for watching .