STACK #230 December 2023

GAMING FEATURE

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Drift, away! You may have heard, or even experienced, the term “joystick drift”, where a thumbstick can basically move things onscreen without your controlling it. The Legion Go Z1 Extreme makes this a thing of the past with its super-responsive hall eject joystick tech. This uses magnets to detect stick movement, so there’s no internal wear and tear that can lead to control dramas.

PC experts Lenovo have entered the portable Windows 11 gaming market in style.We take a look at what to expect from their slick new Legion Go Z1 Extreme when you get one in your hands. Words Amy Flower IT’S GO TIME!

It’s a looker! The first thing that strikes you about the Legion Go Z1 Extreme is how good it looks. A sleek, ergonomically designed “Shadow Black” case with rounded edges houses a large 8.8-inch QHD – that’s 2560 x 1400 pixels – 16:10 ratio IPS ten-point touchscreen display, with an impressive 500 nits of brightness and up to 144Hz refresh rate. They’re some serious specs, and that’s just for starters! Get in control The Legion Go Z1 Extreme features a classic controller layout, with asymmetrical, RGB-lit thumbsticks, a D-pad, A, B, X, and Y buttons, top bumpers and triggers, a small trackpad, a scroll wheel, and additional buttons for various functions such as accessing settings. Then there’s the big ace up its sleeve, just like Nintendo’s Switch, the Bluetooth-supporting Legion TrueStrike controllers can be removed, opening up the option of desktop gaming – which is aided and abetted by the solid kickstand on the rear of the monitor unit. This is also handy for when you may want to get

your unit will keep its cool. On the inside, ultra-thin heatsink fins dissipate heat for optimal performance in tandem with a 79-blade fan, and keep things quiet as well! Sonic boom! You don’t want your games to be quiet though, and to this end the Legion Go Z1 Extreme delivers via an integrated 2x2W speaker system. Game time! As it’s a fully-fledged Windows 11 powerhouse, the Legion Go Z1 Extreme is ready for all of your PC gaming needs. If you have several

into a bit of productivity – just add a mouse and keyboard. Or, there’s even the option of using the included controller base to convert the righthand controller into a handy vertical mouse, ideal for everything from creating to getting busy with FPS games. What’s on the inside? It’s one thing to look good, it’s another to have the performance to match. The Legion Go Z1 Extreme packs some serious power under its bonnet, with an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor. This features built-in RDNA 3 graphics that give the powerful dedicated consoles a good run for

libraries – Xbox Game Pass, Steam, etc. – then they all come together neatly in the highly customisable Legion Space app. It allows you to game from the cloud, stream from a PC, and even immerse yourself in Android emulation. Getting connected There’s a lot of versatility packed into the Legion Go Z1 Extreme, with two USB-C connections – one bottom, one top – allowing, for example, power and output to a monitor via DisplayPort 1.4 simultaneously. Meanwhile, the battery is rated as delivering 49.2Whr and features a fast charging capability.

their money. Coupled with 16GB of speedy RAM, plus a 512GB SSD, there’s plenty of memory power, plus you can add extra storage up to 2TB via a micro-SD card. Keeping cool Lenovo have injected the Legion Go Z1 Extreme with advanced Legion Coldfront thermal design, so that you can play away knowing that

DECEMBER 2023

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