Companies that let customer feedback drive their innovation tend to create products that are more closely aligned with market desires. And within the gaming industry, there’s no shortage of customers willing to provide feedback.

So, when Lenovo set out to build a PC gaming brand, it made a very firm commitment up front. It would invest heavily in innovation — but it would make sure that those investments were driven by what gamers truly want.

The results of that approach have come quickly. In just eight years, Lenovo Legion has become a major player in the PC gaming space, offering an extensive line of desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and handhelds developed for gaming experts and novices alike. “Lenovo ships the largest volume of PCs across the globe, with a dominant share in the gaming space,” says Volker Düring, VP & GM of PC Gaming at Lenovo. In total, the company sent off nearly 17 million PCs in the fourth quarter of 2024, making it the market share leader at 24.5 percent, according to IDC.

“This impressive growth is due to our unrelenting pursuit of delivering the best gaming devices on the planet while focusing on true innovation and differentiation,” Düring says.

Putting customers in the driver’s seat

A dialogue with customers starts two years before a Lenovo Legion device is scheduled to ship, Düring says. The team begins research and development efforts by calling on its user and customer experience groups for feedback. Lenovo gains a more holistic understanding of user behavior, price tolerances, and contributors to overall satisfaction. The data that’s collected during group sessions are put into actionable buckets — the top areas where Lenovo Legion products are winning, for instance, or key areas to direct future research.

Next comes the process of ideating and pressure-testing a wide range of innovative features and performance improvements. The winning features get implemented, and new products ship off to customers. That leads to more feedback. “We conduct exhaustive listening exercises, tracking metrics such as users’ sentiment towards their Legion device, their overall satisfaction with the brand, and how excited people are to tell their friends about Legion,” Düring says. “That last one is my personal favorite to track.”

The data is fed to product teams who iterate and improve devices, addressing new user behaviors, needs, wants, and nice-to-haves. It’s through these customer insights that Lenovo has been able to create and continuously update a range of innovative, gamer-friendly features, such as:

The gamer-driven relationship has also helped Lenovo establish itself as a leader in AI. At a time when everyone seems to be selling the same hardware, Lenovo is differentiating by integrating AI into devices at a system level. Legion devices use Lenovo LA AI chips, the first dedicated AI chips on a gaming laptop. They also utilize AI Engine+ hardware and software, which are powered by LA AI chips to use machine learning to tune system performance. The dynamic tuning is based on the user’s scenario, meaning gamers can expect optimum performance at every turn.

Catering to novices and pros alike

Gamers come in all ages, genders, backgrounds, and levels of experience. Lenovo Legion has committed to catering to a diverse range — from the most committed aspiring esports player to the beginner. It has leveraged key partnerships to bring this commitment to bear, including collaborating with AMD for the silicon used in many of the most popular devices in the Lenovo Legion lineup.

On the esports side of the spectrum, the company has the Legion Pro series, which elevates performance for the most competitive gamers with maximum frames per second. The Legion Pro 5 offers high refresh rates, low-latency graphics with NVIDIA Reflex, and AMD processors that have been optimized for speed and endurance. It comes with an AI-powered performance boost, an enhanced cooling solution, a high-refresh OLED gaming display, and hardware that empowers high-speed gaming.

The Legion 5 — also referred to in some regions as the Legion Slim 5 — is built for the gamer who wants a single laptop to handle games and whatever else life throws at them. Powered by AMD processors, it provides AI-assisted performance that’s a step above non-gaming PCs, while offering a cool, quiet, improved performance through next-gen thermal technology. “For…STEM students who moonlight as gamers and need one laptop that can handle both those high-performance STEM apps and games, we have our Legion Series laptops,” Düring says. It’s equipped with an OLED gaming display in a compact, 15.3-inch chassis that fits comfortably into a backpack without compromising on processing power and endurance.

Increasingly, though, gamers don’t want to be confined to their laptop or desktop. According to Lenovo, its partners at Valve and Microsoft have noted that players spend more time gaming on Steam and Xbox Game Pass when they’re on handhelds versus traditional desktops. Lenovo turned to AMD as it actioned that insight, calling on the company’s Ryzen Z-series processors for the ideal mix of power and efficiency to bring Lenovo Legion’s series of handhelds to life.

Hence: the Legion Go, Lenovo’s entry to that growing market, offering AAA gaming from anywhere. The Legion Go has been integral in handhelds making the transition from niche to truly mainstream, capable of bridging the divide between casual and competitive play on the go. And Lenovo is jostling for position as the market grows.

Handhelds and the future of gaming

Lenovo’s belief in the future of handhelds stems from the increased accessibility they offer. Because they’re still in relative infancy, the technology represents “perhaps the most exciting area of growth and innovation,” Düring says.

“If you are a gamer, you know what it is like to purchase a game or two on a Steam sale, only for it to collect dust in your library because your life is quite dynamic,” he says. “Handhelds provide a solution to hectic lifestyles by letting you attack those games from the couch, plane, train — anywhere you have a place to get comfortable and get a game going.”

Of course, handhelds aren’t just about reaching new, time-strapped audiences. They’re also about providing more options for the most passionate gamers, which is why Lenovo is innovating to create a more seamless and consistent experience from desktop to handheld.

Legion Go’s first-person shooter mode, empowered by detachable Legion TrueStrike controllers, enables competitive gaming even on games that haven’t been optimized for handhelds — users simply pop off and dock one of the detachable controllers for use as a vertical mouse. That’s further proof of Lenovo’s commitment to letting customers pick their own path: While some will want to quickly load a game, play, pause, and come back later, others want the flexibility of Windows in a portable format. “It is our job to explore both and deliver compelling offerings for customers to pick their own path,” Düring says. Gaming, foundationally, will always be about having fun, he says. Lenovo’s role is simply to understand how people will have fun in the future and cater its products accordingly.

Above all, Düring’s number one message to customers is this: Lenovo Legion isn’t one-dimensional. It has broken through as a dominant player in the PC gaming space, but it’s more than its core hardware. Rather, it’s focused on bringing gaming innovation to market across its entire portfolio, from laptops to desktops, handhelds, tablets, accessories, monitors, services, and software. “Legion is not just a PC brand,” Düring says, “we are a gaming brand focused on delivering the best gaming experiences to gamers.”

Learn more about how Lenovo is changing the game with smarter technology.