An Alternate Upgrade Path for Steam Deck Gamers

If you want a handheld gaming PC that doesn’t require a ton of tinkering or troubleshooting, Lenovo’s Legion Go S with SteamOS is the only Steam Deck alternative worth considering. It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest you can get to a “Steam Deck 2” today, at least in terms of horsepower, pricing, and ease of use.

I should clarify that there are two versions of the Legion Go S. The model I’m reviewing comes preloaded with SteamOS, while the other version, which has a white chassis, ships with Windows 11. There’s also a choice of two different processors—the high-end AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which I’m testing, or the standard AMD Ryzen Z2 Go.

Dimensions

0.89×5.02×11.77in (22.6 x 127.55 x 299mm)

Playing Time

1-5 hours

Weight

1.62lbs (25.92oz)

Chipset

AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme

Lenovo’s Legion Go S truly feels like it’s part of the Steam Deck family. With a powerful processor, big screen, and compelling price, it’s clearly one of the best handheld gaming PCs available today. 

Pros & Cons

• Ships with SteamOS instead of Windows
• More powerful than the Steam Deck
• Compelling pricing, particularly for the Z2 Go model
• 8-inch screen is larger than the Steam Deck’s

• Useless tiny trackpad
• Short battery life
• Software experience feels somewhat incomplete
• LCD screen lacks the richness of OLED

Price and Availability

The Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS is sold in two configurations—there’s a Ryzen Z2 Go model that costs $600 and a more powerful Ryzen Z1 Extreme version that sells for $830. Both versions of the handheld are sold exclusively at Best Buy, at least for now. They’ll probably arrive at other storefronts some time after this review is published.

Dimensions

0.89×5.02×11.77in (22.6 x 127.55 x 299mm)

Playing Time

1-5 hours

Weight

1.62lbs (25.92oz)

Chipset

AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme

RAM

32GB LPDDR5X

Storage

1TB SSD

Wireless Connectivity

WiFi 6E 802.11AX, Bluetooth 5.3

Display

8-inch LCD

Output resolution

1200p

Graphics

AMD rDNA 3 Graphics

Ports

2x USB4, 3.5mm, microSD

Battery

55.5Wh, 3-cell

Speakers

Stereo

An Alternative Upgrade Path for the Steam Deck

Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek

Despite the flood of handheld PCs that have come out over the last two or three years, the Steam Deck is still the most popular option. This is partially a matter of cost—there’s nothing on the market that offers the price-to-performance ratio of the Steam Deck. But it also stems from convenience. All handheld PCs require a bit of tinkering and know-how, but SteamOS is more accessible, streamlined, and power-efficient than Windows.

Yes, you can install SteamOS on any handheld PC, and it’s not a particularly challenging process. But some people just want to play games without any tinkering. That’s why the Legion Go S is a landmark product. It’s the first non-Steam Deck console to ship with the super-convenient SteamOS; it’s part of the family.

Lenovo also managed to do a pretty bang-up job with the console’s pricing. The Z2 Go model, which is slightly more powerful than a Steam Deck, costs $600. Yeah, the supercharged Z1 Extreme model I’m testing costs $830, which kinda sucks. But I’ve already seen it on sale for about $780 and fully expect it hit a more reasonable price whenever Lenovo decides to churn out another handheld.

All in all, the Legion Go S feels like an alternative upgrade path for Steam Deck customers. It’s not a “Steam Deck 2” by any means, but it’s about halfway or a quarter way there, at least in terms of pricing, horsepower, and SteamOS convenience. You could spend $550-$650 on a Steam Deck OLED, which has a gorgeous display, or you could put that money toward the Legion Go S, which has a more powerful Ryzen Z2 Go processor, a larger (but slightly less attractive) 8-inch LCD, and a more Xbox-like controller layout.

Semi-Great Hardware, Decent Ergonomics

Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek

Lenovo’s hardware is, for the most part, very good. The Legion Go S feels nice and solid, without any creaking or wobbling components. It has an all-plastic construction, so it isn’t as fancy-schmancy as the standard Legion Go, but I don’t feel that this detracts from the handheld at all. In fact, I actually appreciate the plastic chassis, as it keeps the weight down to a reasonable 1.61 pounds.

I don’t have any complaints about the Legion Go S’ buttons, which are reasonably stiff and clicky, and the Hall-effect joysticks are a greatly appreciated upgrade from the Steam Deck. The D-Pad actually exceeded my expectations—I’m usually not a fan of the circular D-pad design, but it feels tight and responsive here—and I like the little slider things on the back of the handheld that adjust the shoulder buttons’ travel. Lenovo did alright with the built-in speakers, which have a fair amount of stereo separation and can get quite loud, and the Legion Go S is pretty handsome, too, especially in this purpleish-black colorway. Although I could do without the RGB joystick lighting, which is blue by default for some reason (it should be purple, like in Lenovo’s official product photography).

From an ergonomics standpoint, the Legion G S is about as good as you can get with an 8-inch handheld gaming PC. It has a slightly contoured grip to reduce fatigue, and it’s relatively lightweight. But the contoured grip is too shallow to provide any real comfort—this is a beefy slab of plastic, after all. And because the Legion Go S has a rear air intake, I have to tilt it at an angle or hover it over my lap when gaming, which gets kind of tiring after a couple of hours. To be fair, the thermals are surprisingly good, so I really only have this problem when playing graphically intense games.

Speaking of thermals, the fan noise is completely tolerable. It can get pretty loud, but it’s more of a “woosh” than a whine, so I hardly notice it most of the time. And the fans don’t kick into high gear as often as you’d expect, presumably because of SteamOS optimizations.

Unfortunately, the touchpad under the right joystick sucks. It’s tiny, and it sends my cursor flying every time I press in for a click. You might be able to program a virtual radial menu or other cool stuff with the touchpad, and I sometimes use it to quickly spin my character around in shooter games, but it’s useless otherwise. I like to play games that involve a lot of mouse action, like Civilization, so the teensy-weensy trackpad is the biggest downside of this product, at least for me. This also feels like an unrealized branding opportunity—if you’re going to give me a useless pointing device, it should be the classic red ThinkPad nub. Just saying.

I also hate the Legion Go S’ haptics. The vibration motor feels cheap and makes a loud, obnoxious whirring noise. After checking to see whether my review unit was defective (it’s not, everybody complains about the haptic motor), I turned vibration off.

There are other things that I dislike about the console’s button layout and ergonomics, such as the awkwardly-placed, practically unlabeled option buttons, but I don’t want to get super nit-picky about it. Lenovo got most of the important stuff right, and the tiny touchpad is the only thing that’s really make-or-break for me.

This Much Power Deserves a Bigger Battery

Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek

Lenovo sells two different versions of the Legion Go S. Most people will end up with the standard model, which runs a Z2 Go processor with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of solid-state storage; priced at $600, it’s slightly more powerful than the Steam Deck. But I’m testing the $830 Ryzen Z1 Extreme variant that comes with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage—it’s significantly more powerful than the Steam Deck, and it actually has more memory than the original Lenovo Legion Go (which also uses a Z1 Extreme processor).

Notably, both versions of the Legion Go S max out at 33W TDP in handheld mode (or 40W when charging). That’s more than double the 15W TDP of the Steam Deck. Running the handheld at full tilt is a great way to blow through battery life, so it’s not something you’ll do all the time, but the high TDP gives you far more headroom when dealing with graphically-demanding titles that don’t work amazingly well on the Steam Deck, such as Monster Hunter Wilds.

I didn’t bump into any problems when playing AAA games on the Z1 Extreme version of the Legion Go S. Rise of the Tomb Raider and DOOM (2016) maintained a semi-stable 60FPS at 1200p resolution, or 80-90FPS at 800p (up from the roughly 60FPS I’ve experienced on Steam Deck at 800p). The aforementioned Monster Hunter Wilds is still somewhat problematic on the Legion Go S—it’s a very poorly optimized game, the frame rate is all over the place—but it’s perfectly playable with a Z1 Extreme.

Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek

Battery life is kind of a footnote when talking about handheld PCs because, of course, none of them really have an outstanding battery life. We tested the Windows version of the Legion Go S a few months ago, and its 55.5 WHr battery rarely exceeded one and a half hours of playtime in most modern games. Pretty sad.

Thankfully, SteamOS isn’t as power hungry as Windows. I managed to get a little over two hours of playtime in DOOM with high performance settings. And the battery went for about four hours in lightweight games like Stardew Valley with power-saving settings enabled. Although I should clarify that I usually play this handheld in the dark, so I’m probably saving a fair amount of power by keeping the backlight dim. I’ll also note that the Steam Deck will regularly give you up to 8 hours in lightweight games because it has a more efficient processor than either version of the Legion Go S, so if you’re more of an indie or retro gamer, the Deck is a better option purely in terms of battery life.

It Ain’t OLED, but It’s a Fantastic LCD

Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek

Like I said earlier, the Legion Go S’ screen is slightly less attractive than that of the Steam Deck OLED. It’s an inch larger, which makes small text a lot more legible, but LCDs just don’t have the rich contrast of OLED. It’s something I regularly noticed when testing the Legion Go S, particularly when I fired up games with a lot of dark scenes, like DOOM or Baldur’s Gate 3.

Still, the Legion Go S’ LCD screen is genuinely great. It’s a very high-quality panel. On-screen elements look sharp, color-accurate, and relatively contrast-rich. The 1920×1200 panel provides a 31% greater pixel density than the Steam Deck’s 1280×800 screen, and the 120Hz refresh rate with VRR is naturally an upgrade from the Deck’s 60Hz non-VRR display.

The only thing that’s missing here, aside from OLED, is HDR. I’ve seen a few people complaining about it, but this screen doesn’t have local dimming zones, so it’s not like HDR would look that good anyway. For reference, the Legion Go S can output HDR-encoded video to external monitors.

As for which screen is better—Legion Go S or Steam Deck OLED—it’s subjective. Both have their perks and pitfalls. If you’re the kind of person who obsesses over refresh rate, or if you just want a bigger screen, the Legion Go S is the winner. The Steam Deck OLED is better for someone who values basic image quality over technical specs.

Great SteamOS Integration With Some Growing Pains

Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek

To Lenovo’s credit, the Legion Go S really feels like an official SteamOS device. I went into this thinking that the handheld would be hacked-together and wonky. But when I open a game that supports Xbox control layouts, SteamOS shows me an illustration of the Legion Go S. And when I read the release notes for incoming firmware updates, they often address Legion Go S bugs that I’ve encountered. These small details made me more confident in the product and eased my concern that the Legion Go S would be treated like the redheaded stepchild of the SteamOS family.

That said, some corners of the software give off a redheaded stepchild vibe. Games that have an official Steam Controller profile, such as Team Fortress 2, automatically load with a touchpad-based control scheme that just doesn’t work on the Legion Go S. These games should use the Xbox gamepad profile by default on Legion Go S, as most other games do. Plus, SteamOS likes to set the right joystick as a “flick stick” in games that require a cursor—this would be fine if the Legion Go S had a halfway-decent touchpad, but it doesn’t, so the joystick should be set to normal mouse control in these games by default.

I’ve also run into a handful of minor bugs that really should’ve been caught before launch. SteamOS wouldn’t let me install firmware updates or games after setup, so I restarted it a few times to try and get it working, and then it crashed. Though I guess I can’t complain about the crashing, because the OS worked fine after that (and it never crashed again). The trackpad stopped working every time I woke the console from sleep, too, but this particular bug was addressed about two weeks after I reported it to Lenovo.

And some popular desktop apps require extra configuration on Legion Go S. If you install Dolphin through EmuDeck, for example, it’ll try to use a non-existent “Steam Deck” virtual gamepad. You have to add the Dolphin app to your Steam library from the Linux desktop, go back to Steam mode, open Dolphin, and switch the 1P controller from “Steam Deck” to “Legion Go S,” otherwise the emulator won’t register any input. This isn’t the fault of Lenovo or SteamOS (it’s a third-party software issue), but it’s something to keep in mind.

Joystick RGB Annoyances

Unfortunately, the Legion Go S’ biggest software flaw has nothing to do with Valve or SteamOS. Lenovo simply failed to offer Legion Space customization features in SteamOS at launch. As of August 6th, 2025, you can’t customize the console’s joystick LEDs or rumble intensity without booting into Windows from an external drive or switching to the SteamOS beta update channel (joystick LED control has been in beta since like, July 1st, or something like that).

Here’s the problem: I ran into a bug that permanently disabled the joystick LEDs on my second day of testing the handheld. That’s why most of the photos in this review don’t feature any RGB lighting! Restarting the console didn’t help, and when I asked Lenovo about it, I wasn’t given a solution. Early adopters who reported this issue on Lenovo’s support forum were simply told to “use the Legion Space app,” which is a hilarious but unfortunate response. And although the bug was supposedly patched on June 30th, my review unit still had blacked-out LEDs after updating. I trust that the patch will prevent new customers from encountering this issue, but it doesn’t reverse the effects of the bug for people who’ve already lost RGB lighting.

I mentioned earlier that I don’t care for the Legion Go S’ joystick LEDs. So, when I encountered the joystick RGB bug, I was actually pretty happy—it saved me the effort of booting into Windows! Sadly, I had to confirm that this bug could be fixed in Windows before publishing my review. It works, you just have to download Legion Space from Lenovo’s website (after putting in your serial number, installing Lenovo’s update manager, and watching the Legion Space installer crash a few times). Changes to joystick lighting are saved at a hardware level, by the way. I didn’t need to parition my drive and install Windows directly on the console, I just made a quick visit to the wild world of Windows and ripped out my boot drive when I was done.

There are also some odd workarounds that let you adjust LED settings without leaving SteamOS, but I haven’t tried them. And joystick lighting controls are available in the handheld’s customization settings after you switch to the SteamOS beta update channel, though I don’t know when this feature will arrive in a standard update. With my luck, joystick LED control will roll out the day I publish my review, rendering this section obsolete.

Oh, and just as a quick heads-up, the Legion Go S can’t boot into Windows from the microSD slot. I flashed a microSD card before realizing this, and I didn’t feel like setting up another boot drive, so I plugged the microSD card into a USB hub and booted into Windows that way.

Should You Buy the Lenovo Legion Go S (SteamOS Edition)?

Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek

If you want to buy a handheld PC and play games without much tinkering, the Legion Go S is the only Steam Deck alternative worth considering (at least for now). It’s more convenient and efficient than a Windows handheld, and its $600 starting price places it squarely in the territory of Valve’s Steam Deck OLED. The Xbox-like control layout may also appeal to gamers in this price range, as it’s far more familiar than the Steam Deck’s touchpad-focused control scheme.

That said, the original Legion Go regularly goes on sale for anywhere between $600 and $670. It has a wonky inorganic form factor, but it’s more powerful than the Z2 Go version of the Legion Go S and has a larger screen, too. It may be a better bang-for-your-buck option than either configuration of the Legion Go S, although it ships with Windows, so you’ll need to dual-boot if you want SteamOS. I also expect to see new third-party SteamOS handhelds in the coming year, and Microsoft is trying to improve the Windows 11 experience on gaming handhelds—if you’re not in love with anything that’s available today, wait a few months and see if something better comes along.

I should clarify that I prefer the Steam Deck over the Legion Go S. And it mainly comes down to the itsy-bitsy flea-sized trackpad. If Lenovo had opted for a larger trackpad, I’d probably buy the Legion Go S with the Z2 Go chip after returning this Z1 Extreme review unit. I think I’ve whined about the touchpad more than any other Legion Go S reviewer, and a lot of my friends say they hardly use their Steam Deck’s touchpads, so this is very much a matter of personal preference.

Dimensions

0.89×5.02×11.77in (22.6 x 127.55 x 299mm)

Playing Time

1-5 hours

Weight

1.62lbs (25.92oz)

Chipset

AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme

Lenovo’s Legion Go S truly feels like it’s part of the Steam Deck family. With a powerful processor, big screen, and compelling price, it’s clearly one of the best handheld gaming PCs available today.