Prices of Lenovo Legion Go 2 see a massive jump | Launched at $1350, the 32GB variant now costs $2000; 16GB variant goes from $1100 to $1500

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vankamme@reddit

And just like that, the golden age of handhelds was over

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Meanwhile, I got an used Go S, z2go not extreme, for 300 - and I'm pretty happy with it. It can do indies, emulation, steam backlog stuff just fine. Maybe emulation could be a tad smoother but not over 2x the price, let alone 5x where you could get a much better desktop PC and stream games to a handheld.

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Darkknight1939@reddit

It was relatively reasonable as a high end luxury handheld. The VRR OLED panel is pricey, Z2E and 32GB of memory. It's not really justifiable now to the average person but the launch price didn't seem exorbitant for the market at the time. You get what you pay for.

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ishsreddit@reddit

It is a super specialized screen but i dont see how anything else was worth it at the time tbh. Its just a mid spec laptop with 32gb of ram. No dgpu. Was worth $900 at most imo at least. Basically a premium over the launch lego 1 because of the screen and ram.

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ZubZubZubZubZubZub@reddit

It felt like the strix halo handhelds made a lot more sense since they weren't that much more at $1500 until the prices got all crazy around the beginning of this year

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ishsreddit@reddit

Strix halo in the lego 2 feels like the natural progression. Really sucks we just got what is basically a refreshed 780m....

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JonWood007@reddit

Hard disagree. This market for premium handhelds never made sense. WAAAY too expensive for your average consumer, even before the price increases. Even the steam deck (base model) and switch 2 are borderline too expensive.

If we wanna go by what things used to cost historically, $200-300 is a decent price for a handheld. Anything more than that is just....no....

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Haunting-Public-23@reddit

At those price points it makes iPad Pro and Macboo Pro seem, reasonable.

Sure, it will never have the largest newest release of AAA game titles... so there's that.

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Jetcat11@reddit

I owned one but just felt like it was a bit too overpriced.

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shroudedwolf51@reddit

I mean, if you bought it, you couldn't have considered it as that overpriced...no?

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Jetcat11@reddit

I sold it after a few hours with it. I couldn’t justify the price for what I was getting.

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Word_Underscore@reddit

FAFO

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deefop@reddit

But this argument presumes that the mobility factor is worth a LOT. And in certain niche cases it can be, but at launch $1350 would also have bought you a fairly high end gaming desktop, and even without the mobility I'd argue the value is way in favor of a desktop.

Now the markets fucked for everybody so who cares lol

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EitherRecognition242@reddit

What if i already own a high end pc?

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shroudedwolf51@reddit

Unless you do excessive levels of travel, then the product is not for you.

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EitherRecognition242@reddit

Eh i rather play smaller games laying on my couch

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shroudedwolf51@reddit

So... Once if prices ever come back to sanity, buy a cheaper handheld? Or, an acceptable quality laptop and do remote play with your big girl PC running the games in your flat or house.

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EitherRecognition242@reddit

Man you sound awful to be around. Just awful points. You know all of these are luxuries items. I'm not a bang for buck shopper. I have money to buy what i want that fits my needs. Sheesh.

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shroudedwolf51@reddit

So... Let me get this straight. You have needs that can be more than excessively fulfilled by my suggestions. And your solution is to get upset and insist on buying a handheld overpriced by over 2x at current pricing to do "smaller" games?

Suit yourself, I suppose. Although, I don't understand the purpose of the original question. Why even go through the effort of asking that and not just buy your overpriced toy so you can already be having fun with it?

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EitherRecognition242@reddit

You sound so unhappy in life. How about you gain control of your life before you start giving advice.

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Nenotriple@reddit

What??

Are you stupid?

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deefop@reddit

You chimed in asking for opinions and then got weird when someone gave you an opinion, kind of a self own on your part tbh lol

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TwoCylToilet@reddit

With a gaming PC, I find steaming emulated/simpler games with a device like an Odin is quite nice on the couch as long as your WiFi situation at home is good.

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ThankGodImBipolar@reddit

Z2E

The Z2E has never justified being significantly more expensive than the Z1E IMO. You don't even notice the difference until you're past 15W of power usage, and the user experience of using any handheld PC starts noticeably degrading at that point anyway (battery life, heat, noise). That upgrade only feels like it's worth 50-100 bucks, and I don't think the display is really worth 500 bucks as an upgrade. I don't think the price ever made any sense.

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JonWood007@reddit

Honestly, the whole PC handheld craze never made sense to me. Handhelds are historically relatively small, relatively cheap, and generally not very powerful.

Back in the 1990s we had the game boy and the game gear. The game gear was more expensive, more powerful, but it was massive, not very portable, had horrible battery life, etc.

Basically, the game gear sold at $150 new. That's around $364 now. It failed because it was too expensive and had those drawbacks. The steam deck, the cheapest of the portables, often started at $400 for most of its lifespan, with that model being discontinued and the new minimum being $550. And then the other handhelds are more expensive than that.

I feel like the modern era of handhelds is missing the plot. The strongest most expensive console never won. Cheap and affordable ones did. The game boy only cost like $90 by comparison and that's more like $242 today. And I find THAT reasonable. That's like a retroid pocket 6 type device price wise. I can swallow that. $400+ is just insane to me. And yes, that goes for the switch 2 as well. Jumped on that dumb trend of super expensive PC handheld tier tech and ugh...just...no.

Again, this stuff is supposed to be cheap and affordable. $200-300 isn't a hard sell for a handheld gaming machine these days. $1000-2000 is just so beyond the pale it's like...lol.

I really think most of these machines are gonna be considered commercial failures in the long term. Basically you're trying to pack entry level gaming laptop specs into a handheld and it just doesn't work. It doesnt make economic sense for most customers. It really doesnt.

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cjax2@reddit

I kind of feel like you're missing the plot.. you are talking about handheld consoles and believe they are the same as a whole ass PCs wanting it to be $200 lol. Hard to even find laptops with a Ryzen 9 HX 370 for under $1500. I just dont think things like mini PCs and PC handhelds are going to fail at anytime in the future because you want a $50 gameboy.

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JonWood007@reddit

You can make it happen its just about the hardware. Look at the gpd win 1. I thought the premise was interesting but then everyone and their mother started making unaffordable monstrosities instead. What you want is an entire fricking gaming laptop in a handheld form factor. I want an actual viable gaming handheld. Huge difference. Also the entire pc handheld market to date has sold less than half of the game year's lifetime units. If you think pc handhelds are actually a commercial success in the grand scheme of things, they're not. Because they're unaffordable to most.

Again, $200 handhelds. Not like they dont exist either. Look at the razer edfe more recently or a retroid pocket 6. Do that for pc plz.

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jondrey@reddit

If you don't understand their purpose, you're not the target audience.

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JonWood007@reddit

That's the problem. The target audience are a bunch of rich people. Normies dont have the money for this crap. You telling me "I'm not the target audience" is a pointless, vapid virtue signal of your own wealth and status.

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kingwhocares@reddit

They definitely didn't sell enough to break-even and decided the only way to do so is simply increase margin, therefore price increase.

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nemuro87@reddit

yes, too cheap

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Dish_Melodic@reddit

I thought RAM is dropping?

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nosurprisespls@reddit

RAM prices was 400% more compare to 6 months ago; it dropped to 395% more ... I mean it's dropping 🥲

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shroudedwolf51@reddit

Just because it's available to buy cheaper now for you, it'll take a while for the cost changes to reverberate through the market. If they already had a cheap product and it sells for more, they have every incentive to raise the price and massively inflate the margin.

If the prices are coming down, though. They want to drag their feet in case people hear about prices coming down and buy without doing any research. And, if they paid more up front because they panic stocked at inflated prices (which...knowing manufacturing times, they probably did), they will particularly not want to reduce their prices until they absolutely have to.

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smackythefrog@reddit

So building your own PC is a relatively more affordable option than going for the "cheap handhelds?"

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Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit

SteamDeck is still £349.00 where I live, went on sale recently to £275 or something.

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persiyan@reddit

You can go even cheaper with a used old Samsung android phone with a good processor and a controller. Can do pc emulation now on android and play your steam games(milages varies per game obviously but the steamdeck isn't exactly powerful either) plus any other emulation. And with samsung dex can even connect it to a tv or a monitor and use it as a pc.

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aresthwg@reddit

How? Valve doesn't sell them anymore so naturally everybody jacked up the price. Do you have access to a black market or something?

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Marv18GOAT@reddit

You can maybe get a 5080 Pc for this price if you skimp on the other components lol

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secretqwerty10@reddit

the legion go was never the "cheap handheld"

steam deck remains king at that (if you can find it in stock)

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ThatActuallyGuy@reddit

It also wasn't some super high end luxury handheld though, the Legion Go 1 was only $750 and was on deep sales constantly [I got mine new from Amazon for under $550].

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Nem3sis2k17@reddit

Brother no one called these handhelds cheap lol.

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996forever@reddit

Mind you it’s just a laptop APU that launched originally in July 2024 with cut down cpu cores

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nexodnb@reddit

at that point you can buy strix halo handheld like gpd win 5 win 100% more performance

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Such-Control-6659@reddit

just buy a decent laptop that point

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T1beriu@reddit

How can I use a laptop to game on during a commute on a train/bus/car? How can I game in the bed before sleep on a laptop?

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Such-Control-6659@reddit

at that price you can buy a laptop and a steam deck oled, both fine on their own, you can also stream games in higher quality via Steam client/Parsecfrom your laptop at home or GFN.

Z2 Extreme for close to $2000-3000 range is mental

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TheNiebuhr@reddit

It made almost no sense compared to laptops before, imagine now

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BigBangBoomerang@reddit

Yeah, might as well buy a pre-built laptop at this point.

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aabeba@reddit

Oh yes, as opposed to those DIY laptops that have become so popular these days.

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airtraq@reddit

what are the options for non-prebuilt laptop these days? aren't all laptop pre-built?

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BigBangBoomerang@reddit

Frameworks don't necessarily come pre-built or full assembled.

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man0315@reddit

At the point I am just glad I updated my laptop last spring to a 32gb ram new model .

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INITMalcanis@reddit

I got my nephew a 256GB/LCD Steamdeck in the Black Friday sale, for all of £270.

I'm sure the Go 2 is better hardware, but not that much better.

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FitCress7497@reddit

Your experience is limited by the form and screen size anyway. More performance here won't make you feel as good as a PC. That is why Steam deck and Switch make sense and sold a lot. Those don't

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GTRagnarok@reddit

Sucks that Panther Lake handhelds are already DOA before they're even announced.

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teen-a-rama@reddit

Don’t worry, they will become a thing in 5 yrs time!

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QuietSoup337@reddit

The last batches of prebuilts and hardware is getting sold and the new manufactured goods are coming in, made at today's ridiculous prices. It's about to get much worse for so many products at once.

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skripatcher@reddit

Exactly. So many people say "well at that price I will assembly a desktop or buy a gaming laptop!" while failing to understand that soon all their building blocks and laptops will rise in price accordingly...

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JamesMackenzie1234@reddit

Its kinda funny, they were way too expensive to begin with now their will literally never sell.

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cabbeer@reddit

I feel like a big part of price inflation that's going undiscussed is how the middle class is shringing in NA and only the "rich" will be able to afford what was once considered "prosumer" or "enthusiest" consumer technology... everyone else will make due with cheap crap (kinda like how it is in Asia and South america..)

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INITMalcanis@reddit

*"Make do"

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wickedplayer494@reddit

It made little sense against the Portable Cleveland Steamer, now it just makes no sense at all.

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AVahne@reddit

I guess get an ROG Ally X now before the price jumps to $1799 or something. Unless Microsoft decides they want to take their Asus partnership seriously and finally subsidize the damn thing to keep the MSRP the same, but AHAHAHAHAHAHAH that ain't gonna happen.

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