Device Review: Logitech GCloud

It is a question that many great minds have pondered. A question scholars at the highest level have debated. A question greater than how the universe came to be... What handheld should I get? I myself was pondering this very question 2 months ago.

Now we all know the Steamdeck is probably the premium Cadillac of handhelds at the moment, but with prestige comes price. What are the affordable options out there to game on? How I approached it was what I wanted to be able to do with it. I want the OS to be customizable, but familiar and easy to use. So I decided Android would best fit my use case. Apps available on the Play Store, but with the ability to side load APKs works for me. Next was cloud gaming. I have an extensive Steam Library so to be able to access it is a must.  I even leverage Steam Link to stream non-Steam games so it is a core piece of my PC gaming. Lastly, emulation. I want to be able to emulate at least to the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era.

So after doing some online research and determining what price point I was comfortable at, I decided on the Logitech G Cloud. The unit is ultimately designed for using with Steamlink, Xbox Gamepass, and Nvidea Geforce Now. It sports a moderate Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G octa core CPU on Android 11. It's built in display is 7" 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD touch screen with a 60hz refresh rate. It comes with 64GB of on board memory with SD expansion and it supports 3.5mm headphones and USBC. It looks a lot like a bigger Nintendo Switch lite. I believe the unit comes in black and white but Logitech Canada only had the white model. Again the OS is Android 11 but it runs a custom UI called handheld mode which makes it look more like a gaming device than a phone or tablet.

So how does it run? My initial first impressions where good. It ran pretty smooth and came preinstalled with several of the necessary streaming apps. Where the device gets annoying is its UI. The handheld UI feels really bloated. It has icons for Fortnite and Starfield that I have no idea how to remove. The uninitiated might think "oh cool it comes with free games!!" Nope, just launches you to the respective streaming app where you need to subscribe and pay. There are multiple screens that again show you games you can stream via subscription. Its not great. Luckily I already have Nova Launcher Prime on my phone so I was able to use it to make a custom UI that is less stressful. Another issue I have with it is its designed to not allow apps to run in the background to get max performance. I can appreciate that but if I am connecting to public wi-fi on a device that is using my google account I want to be able to run Nord VPN. It kills the connection the minute you leave the device. This is supposed to be managed by leaving handheld mode and going into tablet mode, which I run in with nova launcher, but I still get the issue. The solution I found online is in your network settings have NordVPN as your default VPN and always have it running. So on start up it launches it in the background. Not sure if it is my device or not but it feels like when my default is Nova launcher I am in the in betweeny world of handheld and tablet mode. Another beef I have with it is the SD card expansion. I bought a card to expand the memory, but it was giving me trouble. Even though I set it up multiple times it still says not setup. I originally had it as a separate storage device. However, when I had it like that anything greater than 4GB would fail transferring. So some PS2 roms could not be brought over. Now I think that has to do with the format of the card but when I changed the format the card wasn't recognized by my computer and it forced me to change the format back. It was a whole confusing debacle. I ended up using it as a combined memory with on boarding. I am not sure if its actually working as when its plugged into the PC it only shows the onboard memory, but in the device I see the full amount. 

My last negative before I get to the praise. I couldn't get Winlator to run on it. I was able to side load it (that is another whole episode where you again need to be in tablet mode only for that to work) the app launches, but when I try to launch a container it just hangs. I tried different options in the container settings with no success. Checked online and Reddit and it appears its like 50/50. Some are like yup works great on Logitech; others write they tried multiple versions and nada. I got Winlator to work on my phone with very little troubleshooting. I wonder if there is a specific version I need to try. Kind of bummed because lots of great old windows games I wanted to emulate on the go. Haven't tried DOSbox yet. I think there is a native Play Store app for that so hopefully not much struggle.

OK so now the good stuff. Streaming is great. I can just laying in bed grab my G Cloud and have my entire Steam library at my figure tips. Controls are really good and are comfortable. I bought a month of gamepass to test out streaming. No complaints, works great using the built in xbox app. Works well with Amazon Luna. Tried out the new Fortnite Star Wars content and it ran really great. For streaming as long as you have strong internet you should be able to play most games without much trouble. Emulation is where you are really testing out the devices capabilities. It handles 8 and 16 bit stuff without a sweat. Using Retroarch with all my roms from that era is blast. I have also tried PS2 and Gamecube emulation with relative success. Some games work well while others chug a bit. It could just be my emulation settings but everything runs for the most part.

Overall if you understand its limitations the G Cloud is a great handheld for streaming and light emulation. It is not a Steamdeck or those other high powered windows devices. If that is what your looking for then skip the G Cloud. If you just looking to sit on the back deck and stream some games over your wi-fi, this might be the device for you.

Well hope you liked my take on the G Cloud. Drop me a line on social or the site. 

Stay Safe out there gamers.

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Logitech G Cloud is the intellectual property of the Logitech International S.A.

This article is subject to Fair Use (US Law) and Fair Dealing (Canadian Law) as it is informational in purpose and is a critique of the product. All rights and credits go directly to the owners. No copyright infringement is intended.