Lenovo Q&A confirms no official Legion Go 2 SteamOS, Ryzen Z2E performance bumps — shipping delay questions dodged
Lenovo recently officially revealed the full details and pricing for the much awaited Legion Go 2 gaming handheld to somewhat mixed reactions from fans, who were excited for the hardware but largely shocked at the high price, especially compared to the likes of the Asus ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go S(curr. $649.99 on Amazon). Now, it seems as though Lenovo has once again come into the community, perhaps looking to earn back some of the goodwill it potentially burned with the pricing announcement, with a question and answer session on r/LegionGo on Reddit. We had a chance to test out the Legion Go 2 at IFA when it was officially unveiled and the price was announced, and we found it to be a substantial improvement over the original Legion Go — see our early hands-on video below.
However, it seems as though Lenovo's Reddit AMA session did not quite go as planned, with some Legion Go 2 buyers and potential buyers left frustrated by Lenovo's lack of answers regarding certain aspects of the launch. The most pressing questions seem to surround the shipping and retail availability dates, with some fans already having paid in full for their devices, expecting them to be shipped within a few days, only for Lenovo to delay delivery until the end of October — a six-week delay in some cases.
Delayed shipments with no answer, no SteamOS support, and interesting performance and cooling updates
The Reddit thread sits at 436 comments at the time of writing, but just 241 upvotes, and it doesn't seem as though Lenovo has addressed a single question regarding the release date and delivery delay. Other questions that went unanswered were about software support — with many critical of the pace of software updates for the original Legion Go.
I purchased a Legion Go at launch, coming from a ROG Ally, and I feel that the product was abandoned due to the lack of consistent updates" -u/ZKCNo
Why shipments are delayed in Europe?" -u/DavidBuzzed
As one Redditor pointed out, it seems likely that the team answering the questions was a development, PR, or engineering team, so they might not have permission to answer questions about logistics, availability, and what essentially amounts to customer service. Nevertheless, the result is that some were left questioning their choice to preorder.
Ignoring the criticisms and unanswered questions, there were some interesting tidbits shared by the Lenovo team during the Q&A session, specifically those surrounding performance, internal hardware updates, and potential future performance uplifts. When asked about internal hardware updates with regards to how the Legion Go 2 would handle APU cooling and SSD temperatures, the Lenovo team explained:
Hello, Larger dual heat pipes for better cooling, Larger repositioned fan, it's now in the center of the unit. Exhaust vents are bigger and are placed directly at the top center for improved ventilation. NVME drive temp throughout my day has been an average of 45° C."
When addressing another question about the potential for future performance improvements on the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU, the Lenovo team explained that there is some performance on the table, and that buyers can expect better performance than has been shown in early reviews. This performance increase is attributed to better drivers.
Yes the Z2 Extreme will get better as it's out. The drivers will get better but out of the box the Z2E is a solid performer."
When addressing questions about a factory-issued version of the Legion Go 2 with SteamOS, Lenovo's initial answer was almost a flat-out no: "As of now no steam OS support. this may change in the future," with the team going so far as to say that Lenovo has validated that the SteamOS ISO for the original Legion Go does not work. However, all of the comments addressing SteamOS have since been edited — perhaps as a response to the flood of questions about SteamOS support — to read as follows:
While the Legion Go Gen 2 is optimized for Windows to deliver broad compatibility and a full gaming experience out of the box, its open hardware platform allows for users to explore alternative configurations if they choose. We are exploring official support for SteamOS on the Legion Go Gen 2."
Effectively, at the time of writing, Lenovo seemingly has no plans to support SteamOS, but given that the Legion Go 2 is basically just a laptop motherboard in a really small form factor, there's nothing preventing users from installing SteamOS or some other similar Linux-based distribution, like CachyOS.
Source(s)
