The price jump nobody asked for

Remember when the Legion Go 2 seemed pricey at $1,099 and up? That version of reality did not last long. Best Buy is now listing Lenovo’s handheld at $1,499 with a Ryzen Z2, or $1,999 with a Z2 Extreme. The Z2 Extreme model originally sold for $1,349, which means the price has climbed by $650 in only six months.

That also puts Lenovo’s flagship in some awkward company. At this point, it could cost nearly twice as much as the $999 Microsoft/Asus Xbox Ally X using the same AMD chip. It is also in the neighborhood of the much more powerful GPD Win 5 with AMD Strix Halo, which is not exactly the comparison Lenovo probably wanted hanging around its neck.

And yes, the broader trend suggests this may not be the last unpleasant surprise. If prices keep moving like this, Microsoft may end up adjusting its handheld Xbox pricing too. For now, Asus rep Anthony Spence says there is “no price increase on the horizon, so far as I can tell,” at least in the US. For the moment, that counts as reassuring in the same way a weather forecast counts as comforting before the storm arrives.

The Legion Go 2 does have some real selling points beyond the chip, including detachable controllers and a very good screen. Still, $2,000 is a hard number to admire from any angle.

Gaming hardware is getting hit from every side

This is not happening in a vacuum. The current wave of higher prices, which apparently deserved its own apocalyptic nickname, is hitting gaming hardware especially hard.

  • Sony recently raised the price of the PS5 by $100 to $150.
  • Ayaneo canceled its $1,999-and-up Next 2 after storage pricing made the project “unsustainable.”
  • GPD has also raised some of its Strix Halo handheld prices, although it still sells the Win 5 with 32GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and an AI Max Plus 395 chip for $2,500, at least for now.

There was a time when handheld PCs merely got a $100 bump and everyone sighed, then moved on. That was last year. More recently, PCWorld’s Michael Crider noted that other Lenovo handhelds have crept up in price too, which is exactly the sort of detail that makes this whole situation feel less like a one-off and more like a pattern.

The lingering question is whether the SteamOS version of the Lenovo Legion Go 2 will even manage to land at its suggested $1,199 price. At this point, that seems doubtful. Lenovo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.