At the beginning of the year, Lenovo gave us an early design preview of its next flagship gaming handheld — the Legion Go 2. Today, at IFA 2025, the company is fleshing out the rest of the system with more details regarding its specs, price and availability.
In terms of its overall appearance, not much has changed on the outside of the Legion Go 2. It has the same general shape and detachable controllers as the preview model, alongside an 8.8-inch OLED with a variable 144Hz refresh rate and VESA HDR TrueBlack 1000 certification. Lenovo has kept the ability to use the right controller as a vertical mouse (aka FPS mode) when paired with the handheld's included puck/stand. And as before, you still get Hall Effect joysticks, a built-in touchpad and kickstand and dual USB 4 ports.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
The only major change from what we saw in January is slightly different paint colors on elements like its shoulder buttons. That said, I do appreciate that unlike a lot of its rivals (aside from the Steam Deck), Legion Go 2 still comes bundled with a case, just like its predecessor. On the flipside, one thing I wish Lenovo had changed is the detachment process for Legion Go 2's controllers. Like before, you can press a button in back before sliding each joypad off a small hidden rail. And while it works, after using the new magnetic system for the Switch 2's Joy-Con, doing the same thing on the Legion Go 2 just feels clunky.
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Meanwhile, the Legion Go 2's internals are where most of its upgrades have gone. The handheld can now be equipped with up to an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage. And if that's not enough, there's also a microSD card reader. But perhaps the most tantalizing improvement may be its battery life, as the Legion Go 2 comes with a 74Whr battery that's 50 percent larger than the 49.2 Whr cell in the original.
The Legion Go 2 features a 8.8-inch OLED display with a 144Hz variable refresh rate. The Legion Go 2 features a 74Whr battery that's 50 percent larger than the one in its predecessor. In addition to support for up to 2TB of internal storage, the Legion Go 2 also comes with a built-in microSD card reader. By using the included stand, the Legion Go 2's right controller can also transform into a vertical mouse. Just like the original, the Legion Go 2 features Hall Effect joysticks. The Legion Go 2 features good connectivity thanks to dual USB 4 ports. 1 / 6 Lenovo Legion Go 2 The Legion Go 2 features a 8.8-inch OLED display with a 144Hz variable refresh rate.
Unfortunately, I only had a brief time with the demo unit and as it didn't have a lot of games already installed (especially more resource-intensive ones), so I couldn't really gauge how much better its performance was compared to the original model. However, I did notice that Lenovo's Legion Space app felt much snappier and more polished, though it probably won't be as seamless as the native game integration and new UI that's coming on the ROG Xbox Ally.
All told, the Legion Go 2 is shaping up to be a more refined, powerful and longer-lasting follow-up while retaining pretty much every major good feature from its predecessor like a big OLED screen, detachable controllers and solid connectivity. Granted, it's still quite chunky even with its curvier and more streamlined design, but that was always going to be the case considering its large 8.8-inch display. So if you can handle a Windows-based handheld (sorry SteamOS fans) that's on the heftier side, this is one worth keeping an eye on.
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