The Lenovo Legion Go ad just leaked early, and we have the details on what the ad reveals.
We credit vTuga over at Reddit for finding and sharing this ad. We can’t share any screenshots or video directly, but given that we also got leaks of the Legion Go out of nowhere, there is a non-zero chance that Lenovo might be pretend leaking this themselves. Either that, or this ad is set to officially release in the span of a few hours.
The Legion Go ad starts off very similarly to the ASUS ROG Ally ad, which in turn took a few notes from the Nintendo Switch’s original marketing all the way back in 2017. It’s a handheld gaming device, that you can take with you on the go, and they make a point to show young adults playing with it, of different races, genders, etc.
This early on, we get the elevator pitch for the device’s basics, and they are very good. A 144hz VRR 8.8″ QHD+ display, makes it a better quality display than what the ROG Ally has. It shares Ryzen’s Z1 processor, which is as of this writing the most high end portable CPU that AMD can ship.
And then, 30 seconds in, it duplicates Nintendo’s Joy-Con moment. Lenovo’s Legion Truestrike controllers, much like the Joy-Cons, are detachable, allowing you to lay your Legion Go on a table while you freely move your hands. But there’s more to it than that, as I’ll discuss below.
Lenovo also touts two very good options for the Legion Go, a Micro SD slot that will accept 2TB MicroSD cards, as well as whisper quiet fans and icy cool thermals. There is a lot unmentioned here though, such as what temperatures the Legion Go will actually reach, the db the fans reach, and what default storage the Legion Go will have.
Now here’s the interesting part. They demonstrate something called FPS mode, though it isn’t completely explained. We do see a player sit his right arm on a table, and the movements of his entire arm (note, not the wrist or hand) enable motion controls on the right controller. We also see a few seconds of the right controller on a base, that would make it more ergonomic to play this way. There is a note that the controller base is included with the Legion Go, but isn’t needed to use FPS mode.
We have seen gyroscopic motion controls on other devices like the Switch, of course, but apparently this is not the same as the FPS mode Lenovo made. It’s also interesting that it doesn’t look like it uses the right controller’s touchpad. So, it naturally makes us wonder: why did Lenovo make their own motion control solution? Is this supposed to emulate moving a PC mouse with the arm? Is there some promise of greater accuracy? For now, we can only ask.
We are then touted the 49.2 WH battery and lightning fast charging, which promise a high capacity and short charging times. None of these AMD based devices have yet to rival the Nvidia based Nintendo Switch consoles, on this regard, nor many high end and even middle range smartphones and tablets. So we’ll see just how good this battery is.
Finally, we get a look at the Legion Glasses AR Glasses, compatible with the Lenovo Legion Go. Lenovo did not invent the idea of using AR glasses with Windows handhelds, but rumors of this device have been going around for a while too.
This has all the makings of a dream device. If anything, the only thing missing is Oculink support for external GPUs like the GPD G1. FWIW, it could have that too and it just wasn’t part of this elevator pitch.
As note above, the ad leaking sure seems like it could be revealed very soon, in the next few days if not in a matter of hours. If that’s the case, whatever remaining questions we have after this leak could be answered very soon as well.