It’s been two years since Lenovo released the Legion Go gaming handheld. It was big and heavy, sure, but it also had poor battery life, really loud fans and was saddled with Windows 11. To be fair, it was one of the first of the recent crop of Windows gaming handhelds, and the competition hasn’t exactly been exceedingly better. We may be turning a corner, though, with the Legion Go S earlier this year, the upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally and now, the Legion Go 2. 

Expected to arrive in October, with an eye-watering starting price of $1,049, the Legion Go 2 is bigger and better than the original — at least based on specs and the few minutes I spent playing with one. And when I say bigger, I mean it’s actually larger in all directions and tips the scales at 2 pounds. 

The design might not look too different from the original, but Lenovo actually made quite a lot of changes. For example, the bottoms of the detachable controllers have been rounded, so they’re more comfortable. They now have Hall Effect sticks to help with drift. There are three user-programmable buttons, a larger D-pad and a better overall button layout. And there’s still an FPS mode that lets you use the right controller like a vertical mouse. 

The handheld is still built around an 8.8-inch touchscreen, but this time it’s a great-looking OLED panel with a 30-144Hz variable refresh rate. Disappointingly, the resolution dropped from 2,560×1,600 pixels to 1,920×1,200. Perhaps that’s for the best, though: Even with its new AMD processor and graphics chip, you might not be able to take advantage of a 2.5K resolution, but 1080p should be just fine, especially if your tastes lean more toward less-demanding indie and retro titles. 

Lenovo also bumped up the battery size to a 74-watt-hour capacity — more than 50% higher than the Legion Go’s battery. It also has rapid charging with Power Delivery 3.0 support through its top or bottom USB-C ports. A 65-watt power adapter is included. 

Both USB-C ports support DisplayPort 2.0, so you can easily connect to an external display, with or without Lenovo’s optional dock, or to a nice pair of display glasses. (Lenovo updated its Legion Glasses, too, making them «slimmer, lighter and brighter.») Lenovo even made it easier to securely unlock the device by putting a fingerprint reader in the power button on top. 

Will all the updates pay off? Maybe. But at $1,049 — and that’s just the starting price — the Legion Go 2 is in budget gaming laptop territory. Since it is running Windows 11, you can always use it like a desktop PC that also just happens to play games pretty well on the go, too.