Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld, Portable Gaming Console with Long-Battery Life, 1080P 7-Inch Touchscreen, Lightweight Design, Xbox Cloud Gaming, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Play

I received a G Cloud for Christmas in 2023, so I have had a concentrated week of seeing what the device can and cannot do. Side-note (not factored into the score), the BRAND NEW unit sold by Amazon (not a 3rd party) turned out to be used. The box seal had been opened, and even the screen protector was gone. So I returned it and got another. Second side-note, the first unit came with the wall charger, but the replacement did not (even though it is pictured in the manual). I thought this was a mistake, but then found a slapped-on statement from Logitech saying they stopped including wall adapters for the good of the environment (yeah that gets a huge LOL, congrats on your cost-savings Logitech). On to the real review ... I wanted the unit mostly to be able to stream games from my PS4 (in my living room) and Xbox Series X (upstairs in a racing / flying cab). And long story short - this unit FINALLY delivers what I have been striving for since I tried using the PSP to connect to my PS3 many years ago (and then Vita, which was equally bad at streaming). The Xbox streaming works great with the Xbox app. The controllers work amazingly well. The PS4 at first worked good enough to play, but the resolution varied and sometimes would get a little blocky. I connected it to my router using a network cable, and that made the streaming become crystal clear. Works great anywhere in my house. To stream anywhere in the world requires port forwarding to be setup on the router, and so I am not going to pursue that. Note that I am using a 3rd party app for the PS4 streaming so the Logitech controls are fully supported. I will say I can detect a slight lag in the controls (probably less than a tenth of a second), which for a high-speed game (think racing) the experience is still playable but is slightly impacted. But for my usage (Fallout 4 on PS4, Flight Simulator on Xbox) gameplay feels just fine and a very slight delay does not impact gaming. I am also using the unit as a retro-gaming handheld. Gaming is fantastic for all consoles that are GameCube and earlier. PS2 works great for some titles, but has some slowdown for others (but settings can be tweaked to be playable for just about anything). For me, having a giant library of Advance titles, SNES, Genesis, and yeah even Atari is awesome. The ergonomics of the G Cloud is fantastic. I have fairly large hands, and it is comfortable to play. The screen at 7 inches doesn't sound big, but compared to my Switch Lite and older PS handhelds, the screen is a magical giant gift from the gods. Resolution is a very sharp 1080P. Touch works great, and so the hardware is quite impressive. Battery life is outstanding. So the memory at 64GB is one weak point of the system. There IS a microSD expansion, and I had to spend a couple of days to get everything working well. Bottom line, I first tried a 512GB Sandisk card, and it did not work correctly, despite trying every formatting method out there. Folks, 256GB is the max, trust me. So a Sandisk 256GB works like a charm. It will NOT work correctly if you extend the storage as part of the Android device. It has to be formatted as external storage, and then it works great. The beauty of this device is that it is truly just an Android device with Google Play. So the gaming options are almost unlimited. And you can use it to watch movies, or control your thermostats, or whatever you use a normal Android device for. In summary, this is an amazing device and I could not be happier with it!

Ok, so, I hear you Mr. or Ms. Potential Buyer: "Why would I want this when I can stream or emulate games on my phone?" or maybe you're saying "How is this better than another handheld like the Steam Deck or Android-based emulator consoles?" So here's what it comes down to, in a nutshell: The Logitech G-Cloud is a lightweight device that specializes in cloud gaming and game streaming from your home console or PC, has a very nice 1080p screen, pre-mapped controls for most services, a comfortable grip, and incredible battery life. It also happens to be able to emulate anything up to PS1 pretty well, and can manage DC, Wii, GC, and DS pretty darn well, too. Make no mistake, though: This thing is designed for cloud gaming, and it excels at it. Of course, your mileage may vary based on your WiFi connection and location in the world/US relative to the servers you're connecting to. If you're in Hawaii or Alaska, don't expect miracles. If you're in Gluberfrankenborg, Middle-of-Nowhere, again... You'll probably be disappointed. However, if you live near a major city in the continental United States, you'll be very happy with the performance. What I will say is don't get this as an emulation device. Yes, it's fine. It works as well as some of the emulation consoles from 2019. But the dedicated emulation consoles have gotten better since then, and can handle up to PS2, Switch, and other more challenging consoles. If emulation is your primary interest, you'll just be happier with something else with a newer chipset. However, if you're looking to play your Xbox Cloud games on the go, or stream games from your home console, this is the best choice. Yes, better than the Steam Deck. I have both, and while the Steam Deck can be finagled into working with Xbox Game Pass / Xbox Cloud, it's still a much-heavier device, it's still a roundabout path to get to those functions, and the battery life is still MUCH worse than the G-Cloud for the same features. The battery life and lightweight feel of the G-Cloud is just a better experience for Cloud gaming. The Steam Deck is great for playing games ON the device, from its own storage, but you don't need any of that with cloud gaming, so you're really just lugging around extra weight you're not using. And don't get me wrong: I love my Steam Deck, but when it comes to continuing a game on Xbox Game Pass, or streaming from my console, the G-Cloud is a much better experience and will last a lot longer on the road. The screen is gorgeous. No, it's not OLED, but it's still vibrant and has well-balanced colors, blacks, and brightness. The controls are excellent. If you're used to the Xbox controller, you'll be used to this. Sound is very good, suitable for gaming or movies. So really, the big boondoggle here is the price. Logitech was nuts to release at the price they did. So I'm going to put this delicately but honestly: If you can get this device for under 300 buckaroonies, it's worth it. Honestly, it should be priced closer to 250 dollarinos. If ALL you want and need is a really nice device to stream Game Pass games, I'd say 250 is a good price point where you won't feel ripped off, but you'll probably be feeling a bit sore about spending the original MSRP of 350. Shop around. Consider refurb or renewed. Oh, and I promised to compare to a mobile phone with a game controller. So here it is: I have several nice game controllers for my phone, both the Bluetooth type, and the direct USB-C connections (Backbone, X-2 Pro, Razer, etc.) and while that does work in a pinch, the fact is that any time you use your phone to stream cloud gaming, you're draining battery and your phone's battery isn't as robust as the G-Cloud's. And I don't know about you, but I need my phone for other things, and don't like running the battery down on a gaming session. And if you're emulating, the phone battery is taxed even more. On top of all that, you're still carrying around something about the same size and weight as the G-Cloud, and then tying up your phone when for the same size and weight you could have a dedicated device that has the controller built-in and pre-mapped, not to mention having a big 1080p screen. All in all, I consider it a good purchase if you're a Game Pass member. An OK purchase for streaming Steam games. I can't speak to PlayStation as I don't own one, but if you're into emulation it's no slouch, either. It does what they advertise it to do, and anyone dinging it for not doing things they don't advertise (i.e. everything except Cloud Gaming) is being unfair. Logitech sells this as a game streaming device (thus the name, G-CLOUD) and so I'm judging it primarily as that, and in that, it does a great job. Five Stars.

All these reviews about this device being underpowered for emulating are really missing the point of this device. This is really a switch like controller that runs android so it can run remote play apps or cloud gaming apps (though much more comfortable to hold then a switch with better battery life.) if you want a device that can do emulation and full console gaming but portable you will definitely want to look elsewhere for something like a price subsidized steam deck, or Retroid device or any of the other smaller emulation designed devices would better suite you. I however was looking for a high quality, portable sturdy second screen with good controls and good battery life which 12 hours is hard to beat. (Yes you can do with with an iphone / ipad or android phone / tablet but if you have tried that like i have you will find the screen size to be too small with thick black bars to make a 16:9 aspect ratio that is standard with TVs or for the case of tablets too large and now sitting on a table bluetoothed to a controller.) This device out of the box (at least for xbox, playstation requires a 3rd party app called PSPlay as the Sony official app doesn’t support the g clouds controllers yet (maybe with an update to Sony's app)) will take your console and make it portable just be sure to have wifi 5 (which is the wifi spec on the g cloud) or greater as this all requires a lot of local bandwidth on your personal wifi network. I found for the best results i had to hard wire my consoles over LAN and then to use my eero wifi 6 system as the final wireless step to the g cloud, i have had almost no artifacting, latency issues, or ghosting since switching to this setup notice i didnt say none.. just 99% perfect streaming. Even with other traffic on my network like my partner streaming movies over apple tv etc. this setup performs almost perfectly enough to think its happening on device. I did initially try to use the PS4 pro and Xbox S on wifi, and while the xbox s’ modern wifi worked great, the ps4 pro’s was not good, downloading or updating software while trying to remote control the console would resort in artifacts and issues. I mostly blame Sony’s` wifi in the ps4 pro as even when it was connected to the tv i had issues with it. The minute i put it on LAN all those issues went away and it was as if the G cloud was directly connected to the PS4 Pro i was able to crank up PSPlay’s streaming settings to max and the gaming became buttery smooth. Microsofts Xbox App does a lot of the work for you when it comes to remote play and is frankly superior to sony’s app and even the 3rd party PSPlay (which is an improvement on the official Sony one.) The xbox app will automatically scale the graphics quality based on current wifi and other factors to smooth out the experience so, while not unusable as the ps4 pro was over wifi, it was just not a perfect experience but still playable! But, again for best results hardwire LAN to the xbox s and then wifi 6 to the g cloud for buttery smooth, full hd, no artifacting or noticeable lag while gaming. I did try some Xbox Cloud Gaming but found that to be sorta redundant as I have a console in my home but i guess the option is nice if you don't.. however the streaming was only ok in my opinion. I have fios fiberoptic gigabit internet with wifi 6 and i still had artifacting and some lag, while playable for non timing critical games definitely not a perfect or optimized experience. It just seems at this time that game streaming from servers outside the home is just not ready for prime time in my opinion. I think playing my consoles on g cloud is going to replace playing my consoles on my tv as I prefer the handheld form-factor and casualness of just picking up and playing like the switch but the graphics of the better consoles really pop on the 7” screen which is really the star of the show. The screen really is good for a LCD, the black levels are good, colors pop and it gets very bright! Hard to find something like this with this battery life. The android version on the device is basic but the addition of tablet mode means you can multitask (something you cant do in the “console ui”) The device software in its current revision lacks screen mapping of the controls so android games will run but wont take advantage of the extra hardware buttons and sticks (this is something that can be added with 3rd party software but as I only use this as a console portable screen I have not tried this, as all the software I use is designed for the controls or has control mapping) this is apparently not good if you want to run games natively on the device but with its specs it wont really do a good job at that. This device really has been narrowly designed for streaming games and its processor does an amazing job at that for 12 hours but your milage playing game software locally will vary (not that i have tried just seen other reviewers attempts.)

I really enjoy streaming on my GamePass subscription but my hands were getting cramped using my phone with the Razer attachment for long periods of time. This thing is honestly the most comfortable handheld I own. It sits nicely between the Switch and the Steamdeck as far as size goes. The screen is absolutely gorgeous and the OS is nice and snappy. Here's the problem though: it's mostly built around cloud gaming. It's honestly great when I want to play PS5 or Xbox Series X in bed or stream GamePass when I'm away from home, but it's useless on a plane when I travel until... I loaded it up with emulators and found out that this little thing is one of the best handheld retro emulators I've toyed around with. It can surprisingly handle Dolphin and PS2 decently (not amazing, but pretty good) and anything less, I can run with no issues with a decent amount of battery life. My daughter plays all my old favorite games on it now when we go on trips. Best of all, the controller just works. All of the emulators I've used so far just work with the controller. It's actually easier to get up and running with emulators than it is a Steamdeck. My biggest gripe is that it's a little too expensive for what it is: an android tablet with a controller body. If this were in the $200-250 price range, I'd be yelling at people to buy it. At $300 it's a little harder of a sell. If you've got the money and like cloud gaming, retro emulation and some decent media consumption, it's worth a serious look. Outside of that, it becomes a little bit harder to recommend. Still love it though.

Logitech GCloud review My two weeks with the Logitech GCloud has been wonderful. 1. Short and Sweet Review: The Logitech GCloud is a great portable gaming handheld if you use services like Xbox Game Pass, Steam Link, GeForce Now, PSPlay, or some google play Android apps (emulators or basic games). The Logitech GCloud is meant for cloud gaming or remote play gaming and should be treated that way. If you want a console that has the games locally, I would recommend a switch or steam deck. The performance on this device for cloud activities is amazing. Xbox Remote Play and Xbox Cloud play are buttery smooth and it’s jarring to me how I can play games this well. Highly recommended. 2. Longer, More In Depth Review: Continuing off my shorter review, the GCloud is a great device. Logitech is known for creating mice, keyboards, and other great computer accessories, so when it comes to user experience - they definitely know how to provide a device that just FEELS GOOD. A. The Device Itself: The grips feel like I’m holding an Xbox controller. The triggers feel like Xbox triggers. The analog sticks are rubber and fit on my larger hands nicely. The touch screen is responsive and smooth. The buttons remind me a lot of Nintendo DS/3DS buttons. They aren’t “clicky” like say, a BackBone device, but moreso a smooth button push that feels hollow. The USB-C and headphone jacks are welcome additions at the bottom of the device, and it’s also nice to get a micro sd card slot for expandable memory. The device is also not heavy at all. The GCloud is very light, and feels lighter than my Nintendo switch. The device is also thin. It’s thin in the center, and then bulks up on both sides for the controller aspect. Imagine taking a tablet and putting two halves of an Xbox controller on both sides - but somehow making it feel great and weigh nothing. B. The Operating System The GCloud’s operating system reminds me of the Nintendo Switch. Which is actually a good thing. Using a Nintendo inspired UI makes the Logitech’s OS feel familiar while still feeling independent. When setting up the device, you actually get the choice between the OS being an Android look and feel OR the Logitech Gaming Menu. That was a nice surprise to me because it’s nice that Logitech isn’t blocking out Google or the Google Play Store. You can download google play apps to this thing and sign into google play all out of the box. The operating system is very user friendly and easy to work with. I do recommend updating the device as soon as possible, however. Out of the box, there are some OS quirks that get resolved in an update. Just make sure to update asap. The GCloud’s OS doesn’t seem to allow multitasking. Only one app can be open at a time. Which isn’t a bad thing. The Nintendo Switch is very similar. Overall, the operating system of the GCloud is user friendly and easy to use. C. Performance of Games and Services: The GCloud shines here. Microsoft worked closely with the GCloud in making sure that Xbox Cloud Gaming and Xbox Remote Play work smoothly and efficiently. If you have Xbox Game Pass with Xbox Cloud Gaming, cloud games work very, VERY well. Just make sure you’re on a decent WiFi or similar connection and you’re good to go. I’ve played games like The Sims 4, Hello Neighbor 2, Fortnite, etc and they all work great with little to no issues. Xbox Remote Play is a true star as well. My Xbox is set up in my office, and sometimes I just want to play games on the couch. The GCloud lets me remotely play my Xbox in any room of the house comfortably. This is super convenient. Remote play is amazing. Steam Link works similarly to Xbox remote play and I’m able to play my entire steam library on the go as well. Steam Link on the GCloud lets you enable a mouse cursor mode, and it’s super cool being able to play mouse oriented games on the GCloud. NVidia’s GeForce Now is similar to Xbox cloud gaming but it feels more like a launcher if you have pre-existing connections like epic games, Steam, etc. I haven’t touched it too much. Google Play Store is convenient on this device. I’m able to download and install most mobile games and they run fine for the most part. I love emulators and it is very cool being able to install GBA, SNES, NES emulators with some of my favorite childhood games. The GCloud does a great job functioning as a full fledged Android tablet and gaming device. D. Critiques and Limitations: The GCloud is a cloud device. Any local content is limited unless you have a WiFi connection or some kind of connection to work with. That is also dependent on your interment speed. If you are for whatever reason unable to connect or have a limited speed, then you’re stuck with local apps - and that’s where this device has limitations. Emulators work great. But some apps that are more graphically intense will chug a bit. The graphics card inside isn’t necessarily meant for local intense gaming - so keep that in mind. While I personally haven’t had issues with the hardware, the device does have a limited manufacturer warranty that covers some parts and services. I would definitely read it over just in case you have screen pixel issues or drifting analog sticks. Again I’ve had no issues personally. Logitech does have a good customer support from what I’ve read. The operating system is constantly getting updated which is great. But keep in mind that there are some issues out of the box like volume controls being on max level and remote play not allowing input at all. Again, this gets fixed with software updates and I highly recommend updating before playing anything at all. The asking price of $349/$299 (when on sale) is a bit much for a device like this. For $50 more ($400) you can get a 64gb steam deck or even a Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset. Hell, even a Nintendo Switch! In my personal opinion, a price of about $199 to $249 more suitable for a device like this. I know that Amazon sells their tablets at a loss but makes up for it with software sales and purchases. Logitech doesn’t exactly have that luxury. I think Microsoft should consider partnering up with Logitech and make this a flagship portable Xbox console, maybe then Logitech might be able to price this more competitively. E. Overall Thoughts: The Logitech GCloud has changed the way I see gaming. I love that the device lets me remote into my PC and consoles and lets me play anywhere. I love cloud gaming. I love the Android google play availability. I find myself grabbing my GCloud more than my Nintendo Switch. I’ve used Game Pass way more than I’ve ever used it because of my GCloud. I do recommend this device because it really is an experience. BUT keep the limitations in mind before purchasing. Amazing device and I hope That Logitech continues to support and update it. This could totally be Microsoft’s Flagship “Switch” if they play their cards right. Thanks for reading!

This device falls a bit short in terms of performance and design. The first thing I will say about this is that this has NO video output capability. It is solely a hand held gaming device. Even if you were to plug in a type c to hdmi it will not detect. There is no real way to really display it out to the television if you wanted to. The port will only allow you to charge the device or transfer data unfortunately. In terms of screen quality, I think the screen quality is not bad. It does have a bit of a glare but it is good enough to play on. It is clear, fluid, and can be set pretty bright. The case is a simple white to it. It is nice but I am worried about yellowing and it getting dirty overtime from constant use. Definitely do not leave this in direct sunlight as that will just make it yellow much quicker. The operating system it uses it pretty much android. It has a different home interface but it has all the settings of android. You are able to download from the google play store so you can play your mobile game and such. That being said, the initial setup is pretty much the same as setting up an android device. The device itself the parts do not feel the best. The joystick is pretty small. The buttons feel a bit sunk in which means you most likely will press more than one button when you are playing which is a tad annoying. Regardless, the buttons are responsive for the most part. It has home button and such as well like any hand held. The trigger buttons are okay. The L1 and R1 buttons are bit thin so it makes it harder to press. The touch screen is nice but honestly I do not really use it too much. It is nice if you were to say play a touchscreen based game but I prefer to have the joystick over that. It is responsive and on point which is nice. It does run a bit warm but not by much even on higher load. Because this is cloud based, it is not something you can really take on the go so much unless you are able to say tether off your phone. It requires something to connect to short of using emulation or google play store. If you want to play from the game pass, you will need a pretty strong connection to the internet in order to achieve the best game play. If you want to use other platforms like steam, you will need to have your pc on in order to play those games. There is no real way around that unfortunately. You cannot download the game into the device in order to play it. In terms of performance, it does have a bit of a lag when trying to play cloud based game. Sometimes it has a bit of a buffering time which causes the game to look all pixelated. It can handle the graphics but without a strong internet connection you are pretty much buffering from time to time. It does have its own built in memory of 64 gb which is enough for some games. If you are going to emulate, it will definitely fill up fast. It does have a micro SD card slot you can use to expand your memory as needed. Overall the device is not the best. It falls short on performance for being a handheld device. Yes it can handle games but requires a bunch of other things like fast internet connection, mirroring, and cloud accounts. It does not have a video out and the joystick and buttons are not the best. The parts do not work the best for someone with big hands and the buttons are a bit too close together where you could end up pressing more than one button. You pretty much need to get other things to make this device playable in my opinion.

Initial impressions of the Logitech G CLOUD: * Really comfortable, great screen. * Good sound for such a small device. * Great performance streaming Xbox Cloud. * Steam Link appears to work fine, but I was having audio issues with my PC. * Most Android apps just work, and run in landscape mode just as they do on your phone. For instance, the PlayStation app and Twitch both run fine. Now, bad things: * Hit and miss as to whether native Android games work. Genshin Impact, for instance, runs fine (at low settings) but doesn't see the controller. * Amazon Luna doesn't work at all. Nada. Won't launch anything. Note that this is supposed to work via Chrome. * SD Card storage expansion is completely broken. If you expand internal storage (e.g., so Genshin Impact can move it's 18GB of data), it will mangle the internal storage, reporting incorrect sizes and disable the Play Store's ability to do anything at all. * The UI/input can be inconsistent. If the UI is Android 11, the buttons may or may not work and require you to use the touchscreen to navigate. Not tried: * GeForce Now * Tablet Mode (native Android UI all the time) Update 10/22/2022: My device updated to the .0052 software version (from .0040). Luna still requires a PWA to be installed which Chrome doesn't offer, and SD Card storage expansion still doesn't work properly. So two _advertised features_ of the device remain broken following the first update.

I had been wanting to play a few Xbox games without buying the whole Xbox system. Many of the people I game with have the Backbone. I however am to fancy to have a normie IPhone and have a Fold4 which doesn't work with the Backbone. I then naturally started to look for other alternatives. I didn't want to buy the more expensive and bulky Steam Deck because I am not a snob. Also the price tag was beyond what I was willing to pay to play some outdated games. I then saw this beauty. It's been a blast, though it is not the greatest console in the world it's perfect for what I am wanting it to do. Play games in a handheld setting. So here are some major pros and petty cons. Pros *It's design is great and fits perfectly in my large hands. *It's Android a OS I am already familiar with and it can be used in tablet mode. Big plus for traveling. * It doesn't overheat, if I played these games on my phone Samsung would be branded into my hands. * The XBOX cloud gaming beta is surprisingly good. Easy to use and has a wide variety of games. *It allows for emulators and they run surprisingly good for the hardware * storage is upgradeable with mirco SD card which are now fairly inexpensive *it plays all your favorite Google play store games and allows for the use of the controllers instead of touchscreen. *finally it makes for a lightweight travel companion and I don't have to worry about breaking my SE Switch and not being able to replace it. *the battery life is stellar Cons * the interface can be a bit clunky at times especially in the settings. It will not instantly recognize BT devices and you will have to go in there and connect them *the XBOX cloud App does require a strong internet connection. If it is overloaded it will have serious lag * the home button can be finicky and the game will continue to run in the background which can be annoying. *there is no dark mode (if there is I haven't found it) * some apps like Netflix run in portrait mode and then switch to landscape when watching shows. It's an odd format I can't seem to change. Overall I can say for me this does what I set out to do. With the amount of traveling I do, I wanted something I can throw in a bag that didn't require much. Kudos to logitech for this machine. It's a great travel companion for all forms of entertainment.