The success of the Nintendo Switch has opened up a new market and fueled competition. After Valve’s Steam Deck, Lenovo seems to have come up with a similar product called Lenovo Legion Play† The opening footage was found by members of the GBA Temp forums on the company’s website in the section dedicated to MWC 2021.
Nintendo Switch is a full-fledged console with its own games and operating system, Steam Deck works with a certain GNU/Linux distribution and runs Windows games while providing powerful hardware. Lenovo, for its part, has opted for the third solution: an Android based product.
The interface looks like a copy of Nintendo’s with a central line of shortcuts. It is clear that the product does not seem ready for commercialization yet, the examples of games are only “Game 1”† “Game 2”, etc. However, we note the presence of GeForce Now, Nvidia’s cloud gaming service. This is undoubtedly one of the strengths of this project and Google’s applications seem to be part of it too.
The status bar at the top of the screen suggests compatibility with the 4G mobile network, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. We can indeed see a mobile antenna signal between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
No features have been leaked regarding the potency of the product. Liliputing only tells us that Legion Play offers an HDR10-certified 7-inch display, which doesn’t mean much. The battery appears to be from 7000 mAh and the controllers don’t seem to be removable.
It’s hard to know what happened to the project and why Lenovo didn’t launch it at the last MWC2021. We remember that Nintendo Switch owes its success mainly to the quality of the games on offer and the ability of the brand to create a unique machine on the market. A simple copy on Android would not be enough, especially since it would be a simple smartphone with a controller. The matches will be the same and the performances are very close.