Hello I'm Sunny and today I m going to be checking out the Logitech G CloudsTechspur a handheld game and console that came out in the state's ready months ago and has finally managed to stumble its way across the Atlantic to Blighty with a price tag of 329 quids unlike the steam deck the Asus Rog Ally the other two dozen handheld gaming consoles that I've reviewed recently the Logitech cloud does not pack ridiculous portable power to play the latest AAA titles instead it's an Android device powered by a basic Qualcomm chipset and it relies instead on cloud game and smarts to run the likes of Forza 5. it's gonna whip the Logitech cloud out of the box and give it a bloody good testing
What's in the box?
So first up what do you get in the Box well first up of course you get one thing in here is a dinky box and inside of there you've got one power adapter a USB type-c cable and a setup guide which basically says plug it in even figure that out you probably shouldn't be using technology that's everything you get bundled in the box straightforward so let us begin with the
Design
design and there's no denying the Logitech gcloud is considerably more Compact and lightweight than many of its Rivals like the steam deck the Rogue Ally the ironyo II for comparison purposes here is the steam deck are supposedly portable games console just so bloody massive you could actually use at a club a grizzly bear to death not that I'm saying you should do that before I get canceled and yeah this thing's got a good couple of inches at least on the Logitech G Cloud we're certainly talking more sort of switch OLED style levels here though it's a bit girthier than the old switch and the1 g-clad wears just under half a kilo as well so very comfortable to clutch and to game on for hours at a time I'm not dropping it into my lap after just 20 minutes like the free steam deck because my biceps are burning I gotta admit I really like logitech's design here it's nice and clean and simple and smart no particularly ugly seams or visible screws or anything you got some nice Wii touches like the little splashy color for this button here and of course just underneath the thumb sticks there there is no RGB LED action unfortunately unlike the Rog Ally and the yanios quite a few other handheld Gamers you know what that's fine that'll probably extend the battery life a wee bit if nothing else as far as the ports go well pretty straightforward stuff down below you've got your USBC charging port also a headphone jack and then up top on the gcloud we've got the slider power button we've also got a volume rocker and we've also got ourselves a slot for micro SD memory cards to expand the storage and if you do tend to get a bit moist during your gaming sessions you'll probably appreciate the grippy handheld bits keep the Logitech gcloud from sliding around too much now unfortunately when you do
Android & UI
turn on the Logitech G5 there is no fingerprint sensor and there's no camera for Face Unlock so you will have to enter a pin every Ruddy time and then boom you're on your desktop and this is the first handheld gaming device I've reviewed in ages that are actually running Android rather than Windows or Linux or some other OS and you're probably wondering is it the latest freshest Android 13 to which I see no no the Logitech cloud is actually running Android version 11. thankfully the security updates are a bit more recent than the Android version March 2023 so not too far behind although I'm not sure for how many years this bad boy will be supported with security updates it's not your traditional Android UI either this is what is known as the handheld mode you do have full touchscreen controls as you would expect but you can also use the thumbsticks to jump about the place navigate through all the various menus and select an app or a game to play the interface is really intuitive no real complaints here your most recently used apps pop up here on the main desktop you've also got an apps tree of sorts where you can grab anything else you got a folder with all your googly goodness down here at the bottom you could also create more folders and move stuff around a bit up at the top here you've got a messages section which is where your notifications will pop up and also any announcements or tips that Logitech might eventually get around to doing you have also got a gallery for all of your screenshots and then if we dive into settings lots of stuff you can piddle about with in here including changing up the themes and the wallpapers small selection of Logitech official efforts here but as you can see in handheld mode it's all kind of blurred out anyway and as always of course I've got to swap that out for a geeky anime effort not that you can really see it you can also remap the controls if you want so any button can be replaced with another button if you want to mix things up a bit you can also tweak the joystick sensitivity and you do have dead zone settings as well and then if you scroll down to the very bottom of the settings menu you do have a more traditional Android settings just like you would on an Android smartphone now as the Logitech cloud is a cloud gaming device first and foremost and don't exactly expect buckets of storage on this thing just 64 gigs in total to be exact of which I've used about 80 already although a good chunk of that is just from downloading gentian impact although yeah at least you do have that micro SD memory card supports you can give it a boost if you need to however the Logitech gcloud has no sim support so there's no 5G game and fun times for you it's Wi-Fi only and this thing maxes out at Wi-Fi 5 as well there's no 6 or 6E support because of the choice of chipset we'll see another 5G no Wi-fi 6 supportwhich already puts it on the back foot compared with more smartphones as far as cloud gaming goes okay so first off
Android gaming (Genshin Impact)
before we dive into the cloud game and let's get a wee bit of Android gaming on the go and as you can see forget about multitasking it's all about one app at a time now when you jump into a game you can bring up the gaming menu by long pressing the home button here on the right Edge this is nowhere near as in depth as what you'll find likes the Rog Ally the ayanayor2 ETC just allows you to tweak the brightness the volume the sound effects the only true dedicated gaming features are down here at the bottom screen recording and the key mapping will be very handy for these of genshin with touchscreen controls on this thing would frankly be ridiculous just drag these little on-screen icons to whatever you want the various buttons and thumb sticks to control so for instance we can have a b attack B can be a secondary attack X can be the power up you can also bring the left and right triggers into play by default all these buttons are disabled so you'll have to enable the ones you actually want to use and then with that done as you can see we can now control gentian using all of the on-screen buttons unfortunately there is a reason that this key mapping feature is still in beta and that's because it doesn't really bloody work quite often the physical controls would simply just stop responding for no reason for a couple of seconds this especially was true if I had to use the touchscreen controls for anything so even though yes I do suck pretty bad against impact this is actually making me look even worse than usual Now power in the Logitech G cloud is Qualcomm Snapdragon 720g chipset which is a couple of years old now so positively geriatric as far as mobile processes go the last device I remember seeing that and that was back in 2021 when we wer 7:22still balls deep in covid territory so perhaps unsurprisingly the likes of gentian impact more intensive Android titles don't exactly run super smoothly I kept gention on the law graphic settings and even then it was a bit of a judgery mess especially when things got a handheld device to play Android titles on you're gonna have to restrict yourself to some pretty basic stuff here but of course the Logitech gcloud wasCloud gaming (Xbox Cloud) primarily designed for cloud gaming now the Xbox cloud gaming app now the way this operates is very similar to the Xbox box Game Pass service so the difference is that all of the games are played on a remote server rather than on you've got an absolutely fantastic selection here including lots of day one games that you won't be able to find on other platforms and what I really love of titles you've got everything from bizarre Indie adventure games to the most popular action smashy shooty crashy titles and yes even the likes of God simulator it's even a proper Nostalgia Fest Alexa blinks the time Sweeper for goodness sakes so whatever your particular desires are they will be seated by this service and I've got to say it is rather lovely being able to just select a game and then play it rather than select a game and then sit around for about five hours while the pissing thing downloads and updates and while I was testing out the Logitech gcloud I sampled quite an Eclectic selection of games I found the streaming performance was absolutely fine didn't notice any drops in the frame rate or graphical quality while I was gaming just over my home Wi-Fi and while there is undeniably some very very very slight input lag it certainly didn't trouble me when I was just playing simple single played fare even quite fast-paced High reaction stuff like Forza obviously this thing is not designed to play competitive online shooters or anything like that but otherwise no issues and as you'd expect from Logitech the controls themselves are comfortable to use they're responsive and absolutely no issues there at all the thumbsticks are suitably springy the buttons don't stick or anything I mean yeah Logitech knows how to make a controller as for whatDisplay & audio you'll spend all your time staring at where you've got a seven inch IPS display on this thing similar to the steam deck although unlike the steam deck it is a full HD resolution panel same as the Rog Ally the iron eo2 Etc and I thought it was perfectly good even though it's not all their Tech you get reasonably poppy colors and pretty sharp contrast and sure you don't get those Inky gorgeous blacks of the switch all lead but here the viewing angles are nice and wide as well and and the good news is the brightness levels top off at around 450 nits you can actually do somegaming outdoors with this thing as long as you're not playing anything too murky the likes for Atomic hot I frankly could not see what the was going on once you went underground whereas with something like tmnd for instance no issues at all so certainly the Logitech gcloud is just as good as the Rog Ally for outdoor gearman unfortunately that panel does top off at 60 hertz refresh though not 120 hertz like here Zeus's handheld console so you can't really take full advantage of that 120 hertz Xbox gaming and the Logitech gcloud Sports a stereo speaker setup but these are bottom Fierce and just like a lot of Rivals so the audio isn't blasted right at your face and while they're not quite as beefy as the Rog allies speakers for instance they're certainly more than loud enough to annoy the piss out of everyone else on your bus if you can't be bothered to wear headphones I had no issues here and what was going on and enjoying the background music and everything even in quite a noisy environment but yeah it's very easy to slip in a pair of headphones if you want to thanks to that headphone jack you've also got Bluetooth 5.1 support as well as you can stream wirelessly to a gaming headset headphones whatever you fancy now if you want to do some online gaming with your mates well you technically don't have to wear a headset because you've got dual mics built into the gcloud either side of the screen there although they don't exactly do much in the way of noise cancellation or anything I would highly recommend using a headset all the same but the trueBattery life highlight of the Logitech gcloud the way that it absolutely excels compared with all of the other handheld consoles is the battery life because one of the likes of the steam deck and the Yanni your 2 will give you about an hour and a half ish of gaming on a full charge this thing will keep on going for around 10 hours straight and that's regardless of whether you're playing against impact or Call of Duty Mobile on Android or whether you're streaming titles on the likes of Xbox and also a combination of factors like that low powered chipset not running the likes of Windows on this thing and of course when you are gaming on AAA titles on Xbox it's not actually running on the devices running remotely and all that also means that the Logitech gcloud stays nice and cool even when you're gaming on this thing for hours there's no heat being blasted out of any part of it unlike the likes of the steam deck the a Yanni or two so again it's whisper quiet and nice andVerdict cool and anyway that in a nutshell I love these is the Logitech G Cloud so there's lots of things to like about it it's more portable than quite a lot of other gaming handhelds fantastic battery life stays nice and cool unfortunately however you can't just take an entire game's catalog with you you are highly dependent on a Wi-Fi connection to actually make use of this thing son frankly there's no massive advantages in having the Logitech gcloud compared with simply slapping a really good Razer controller onto your Android smartphone1 anyway what do you guys reckon of the Logitech gcloud would be gritty your thoughts down in the comments below please do Puck subscribe and ding that notifications Bell for more on the latest and greatest Tech and have yourselves a really wonderful rest of the week cheers everyone love you thank you