The Lenovo Legion Go 2 preorder situation goes from bad to worse — preorders start getting cancelled. "We know this is frustrating."

Lenovo's ambitious Legion Go 2 is caught in a storm of preorder chaos, as overwhelming demand pushes shipping dates to 2025. With canceled orders and rising frustrations, gamers eagerly await clarity from the tech giant on this elusive handheld.

I wrote last week about how my Lenovo Legion Go 2 preorder went from a September 16 shipping date to October 24, 2025, without explanation, and without any communication from Lenovo. Somehow, things just got worse for many users in the same situation.

The Lenovo Legion Go 2 is a PC gaming handheld sporting AMD's Z2 platform, similarly to the upcoming Xbox Ally. The Legion Go 2 at the high end costs $1350 ($1500 in the UK), which came as a bit of a surprise. Despite not having the same NPU that the Xbox Ally X has, it does have a lot of moving parts and unique features, which likely pushed up the price.

A larger OLED display, detachable joysticks, a trackpad, a kickstand, and a new addition of a fingerprint reader make it far more luxurious overall than its predecessor and some of its rivals — a fact Lenovo was forced to explain away in a recent interview. Lenovo said that the Legion Go 2 is for gamers who want to invest heavily in the hobby, and that people upset with the price should look at its Legion Go S.

Well, that would be nice if people could even buy the thing.

Following the unprompted delays of thousands of orders on Lenovo.com, Lenovo has finally communicated on the matter, shared on a post via Reddit.

"As many of you have noticed, we've been missing in action," the explanation starts. "We know that many of you have been asking about product delays so we owe you an explanation. The truth is, pre-orders for the Lenovo Legion Gen 2 has substantially exceeded our projections, leading to unforeseen delivery range extensions. We are working diligently with our teams worldwide to fill these orders as quickly as possible. We truly appreciate the overwhelming support of Legion fans, and ask you for your patience while we work to get the Legion Go Gen 2 into your waiting hands."

Another update reads as follows: "The good news is that more units are already on their way to major retailers globally, so you can expect to see availability in retail outlets and websites improving in the coming weeks."

But there's bad news too. "That said, we will need to cancel some pre-orders placed directly on Lenovo.com. We don't believe in holding onto customer payments for products we can't ship in a timely manner. As soon as our online inventory is replenished, Lenovo.com will show updated availability, and ordering will reopen."

Lenovo closed the thread with an apology, "We know this is frustrating, and we're truly sorry for the inconvenience it caused, especially for our most passionate fans. The Legion Go Gen 2 was built with you in mind, and this experience has been an important lesson for us. We'll use this to improve and ensure a better process moving forward."

Lenovo was founded in 1984, how is it only now "learning lessons" about shipping?

Given Lenovo's lengthy history, it's odd that they managed to fumble the ball so hard on what should've been a major product launch for them. To me, it smells a bit like they rushed the process without being fully ready, potentially to head off the upcoming Xbox Ally set to launch on October 16, 2025.

The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X naturally represent the Lenovo Legion Go 2's biggest competition. The Legion Go 2 beats the Xbox Ally X on the high end in a variety of ways, in my view. The versatility of detachable sticks, trackpad, kickstand, and larger OLED VRR display — it's hard to deny that it has a broader feature set, at least on paper. Where the Xbox Ally X ends up more compelling can be found in its secret weapon, its NPU. Microsoft and AMD will use the AI Z2E to test and develop new types of AI-powered upscaling and frame generation tech, offloading tasks from the CPU and GPU cores to boost performance. As a result, you should eventually see better gameplay from the Xbox Ally X, potentially for a lower cost.

The Xbox Ally and Ally X are expected to come in cheaper than the Legion Go 2 as well, although Microsoft's raised prices of the Xbox Series X|S in the United States doesn't bode well for the Xbox Ally's sticker price potentially. Whether or not the Xbox Ally avoids U.S. tariffs will hinge on its product designation. If it's deemed to be a "computer" (which it should, running full Windows 11), it should avoid the bulk of duties. Video game consoles, however, do not enjoy the same exemptions.

It'll be interesting to see how the Xbox Ally rollout compares to the Lenovo Legion Go 2's, considering we're less than a month away from launch and ASUS and Microsoft still haven't given us the price over fear of further tariffs. It's an interesting time for consumer tech companies, that's for sure.