Lenovo is taking more design inspiration from Nintendo’s super successful Switch console for its $750 Legion Go. More than half a year after its release, Lenovo decided to drop several new accessories for the handheld that came with a built-in kickstand, including, surprisingly enough, a dock. More importantly, there’s a Joy-Con Grip-like device for turning your Lenovo handheld into a truly portable PC with a controller most gamers would recognize.
First, we have the $50 Legion Go Charging Connector, which will be familiar to you if you’ve ever held the Joy-Con Grip. It’s meant to charge each of the detachable controllers on the Legion Go, but it turns them into a controller that will be far more familiar to anybody who has played a single game in the past three decades. There’s a USB-C port on the connector to keep it charged up for longer.
Lenovo’s own Windows-based rendition of the Steam Deck already sports a kickstand and detachable controllers, but now it officially has its own specifically built dock. The Go has two USB-C ports, one on top and one on the bottom, but if you already have a dock built for a Steam Deck, you know how the cable is opposite where you need it for the Legion Go. The dock has the added benefit of an ethernet port, HDMI 2.1, and two USB type A ports.
There’s a $30 carrying case that’s larger than the one you get with the Legion Go, which may be better for schlepping around with all your new accessories. Ignoring some of the thumbstick caps, many of these accessories seem built to turn your Legion Go into a PC. Alongside the dock and connector, the PC maker is advertising that you should buy a Lenovo-brand keyboard or monitor to go along with your $750 portable console. If you consider the price of gaming PCs, turning your handheld into the mobile gaming device you take from room to room isn’t the worst idea.
It’s been more than eight months since Lenovo unveiled its Legion Go, and it’s a better device now than on release after updates to its software. Lenovo is still hoping to entice users to its device, especially since it’s been a few weeks since Asus’ $800 ROG Ally X found its way into our hearts and stole a big chunk of our wallets. Our benchmarks found that the Ally X has better performance and far better battery life than the Legion Go, even though Lenovo’s handheld has a bigger display.
Lenovo isn’t doing a mid-cycle refresh of its handheld, so instead, it’s opting to show how its device could be that Switch-like PC you’ve been looking for. Just like my Switch, I’d keep it on dock 90% of the time and only occasionally take it out when I know I’ll be traveling to a friend’s house to plug directly into their TV.
The Lenovo Legion Go wasn’t my favorite handheld when Asus released it late last year; it wasn’t my favorite device for playing my PC games on the go from Steam, Epic, or otherwise. Part of that was due to the bulky size and the overall feel of each grip. The unique thing about the Legion Go was how you could disconnect each handheld from the main body. You could then attach an extra base to one of the controllers to act as a pseudo-gamer mouse. This didn’t work as well as hoped, and unlike the Switch, you can’t pass off one controller to your friend to play someone of the many Mario Kart clones you likely have in the drunk drawer of your Steam library.
Perhaps a Lenovo Legion 2 with some controller cap and Bluetooth built into each individually would let us enjoy the best of Windows’ versatility and Nintendo’s landmark console design. However, Windows still needs to make a version of Windows 11 built for handheld. It would also have to compete with the Nintendo Switch 2.
The dock should be available this month, but we’ll need to wait until October for the Charging Connector to become available.