Lenovo Legion Y70 quietly returns: a gaming flagship that beats POCO X8 Pro for $340

POCO X8 Pro is the best-selling smartphone in Russia on AliExpress, but Lenovo has quietly re-entered the market with the Legion Y70 — its first gaming phone in three years. Almost nobody is talking about it, yet the device looks like a genuine bargain for the money.

The Legion Y70 in the 12/256 GB configuration costs 31,199 rubles on AliExpress — about 6,000 rubles more than the POCO X8 Pro. That price gap is fully justified by the hardware inside.

The POCO X8 Pro runs on the Dimensity 8500-Ultra, a solid mid-range chip with an All-Big-Core architecture. The Legion Y70, by contrast, is built around the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 — a true flagship processor (almost). The same chip powers the vivo X300 FE, which costs up to 70,000 rubles.

The difference is not abstract. In heavy games like Genshin Impact, PUBG Mobile, and Call of Duty, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 consistently holds frame rates where the Dimensity 8500-Ultra starts throttling due to heat. Lenovo also fitted a vapor chamber with a 5,500 mm² surface area, so frequencies do not drop even during multi-hour gaming sessions while charging.

The display is another major advantage. The Legion Y70 has a 2K AMOLED panel (3168×1440) with a 144 Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision support, and a peak brightness of 7,000 nits. The POCO X8 Pro offers a 1.5K screen — good for its price, but nowhere near flagship territory.

So the extra 6,000 rubles buys you a processor a generation ahead, a significantly better display, and a serious cooling system. For anyone who games on their phone, the Legion Y70 looks like a far more sensible purchase than the heavily marketed POCO.