Lenovo confirms Legion Go bricking issue after BIOS update, offers limited fix

Lenovo has publicly acknowledged problems affecting some Legion Go handheld gaming devices after they received the BIOS V42 update, three weeks after a Reddit user shared a nearly $300 repair bill and other owners reported bricked units and costly fixes.

In a statement given to The Verge by communications director Jeff Witt, Lenovo said BIOS V42 was never distributed through Windows Update or Legion Space and has already been pulled from its support site while validation work continues. Devices that completed the update successfully require no further action, the company said.

For devices stuck on a blank screen during installation, Lenovo recommends holding the power button for about 10 seconds, waiting roughly a minute, then powering on again. If that fails, users are told to contact Lenovo Support.

Warranty questions remain

A forum user identifying as a Lenovo employee, "Daniel_Legion," wrote that the issue should be repaired free of charge both for devices under warranty and, depending on local laws, for those out of warranty as well. However, this account has no other visible posts on Lenovo's forums, prompting The Verge to seek official confirmation from the company of these claims.

The issue only affects the original Legion Go 8APU1 model — not the Legion Go S or Legion Go 2 — and only units where BIOS V42 (N3CN42WW) was manually downloaded from Lenovo's website during the roughly two months it was available before being removed. Even among those, not every device was affected; The Verge's own reviewer installed the update on a review unit without any resulting problems.

According to Daniel_Legion, a European team reproduced the failure on three out of three test devices, while other teams could not replicate it at all, suggesting the fault may be tied to specific motherboard batches or particular conditions rather than affecting all units uniformly.