The original Lenovo Legion Go is still one of my favourite handhelds in existence because did things so differently in a saturated handheld market. The newly-released Legion Go S dials things back a little bit design-wise, but it’s doing a lot of interesting things on the software side again putting Lenovo at the forefront of the PC handheld space.
When it comes to differences between the two devices, the Legion Go S sports a smaller 8-inch PureSight touch-screen display that is plenty bright and it also has a 120hz refresh rate with 100% RGB colour accuracy and 500 nits of peak brightness. Unlike the standard Legion Go, the Go S doesn’t have removable controls, but it does have some other advantages up its sleeves. The core design results in one of the most ergonomic handhelds that I’ve ever put my hands around. It’s super comfortable both in shape and the texture used and it feels great in the hands.
It has hall effect RGB joystocks, a fantastic d-pad, customisable back buttons, a touchpad which is great for navigating menus and certain games as well as adjustable triggers on the back of the device as well. You also get dual USB4 Type C ports on the top of the device as well as a MicroSD slot on the bottom.
GET IT FROM: $899 FROM THE LENOVO STORE
In addition to a 55.5whr battery as well as fast charging through the 65w charger, the Legion Go S is the first handheld to use the new AMD Ryzen™ Z2 Go processor which utlises Zen 4 architecture with four CPU cores and eight threads. It combine with AMD RDNA 3 technology to be able to utilise Radeon Super Resolution and FidelityFX Super Resolution. The Z2 Go chip is the new entry-level chip from AMD, so it sits a little below the Z1 extreme in performance, but is still more than capable when playing the latest games at 60 FPS and for games such as Hades 2 it pushes into 120FPS territory with ease.
The Lenovo Legion Go S is the first handheld to be officially certified to run SteamOS outside of the Steam Deck. I’ll talk more about this later but what this essentially means is that you can choose whether to run Windows or SteamOS on the handheld. Both have their pros and cons and it’s important to note that you can’t run both at the same time, but installing each is super simple.
The advantage of Windows is that in addition to playing games from Steam, which can obviously done using both operating systems, you can also play games from all of the other launchers including Xbox Game Pass, which is the one that is sorely missed when using Steam in my opinion. You obviously can access a huge amount of games through the Xbox app and there’s so many great games on Game Pass both from Xbox Game Studios and Third-party developers.
The other benefit to using Windows 11 on the Lenovo Legion Go S is being able to use it as a traditional PC when connecting it to an external monitor. Once you’ve connected a mouse and keyboard, it literally acts as a normal PC that you can then take with you on the go.
Another benefit to running Windows is Legion Space software which is fantastic. It not only pulls in all of your games from all of the launchers, but it allows you to really control every single detail of the Legion Go S, letting you control lighting, customise buttons, power usage and more.
If you do decide that you want to run SteamOS, it’s super easy to make the jump, with you needing to download the SteamOS image from the official website, and load it onto a USB-C drive with at least 16GB of free storage. Within minutes you’ll be able to reformat your Legion Go S with SteamOS and from that point onwards, it feels like the authentic Steam experience.
The disadvantage of this out of the gate is that you no longer have access to Windows or your other launchers, but you do get a much more simplistic handheld experience in the best possible way. The experience is much more console-like and with a lot less fiddling around to get playing. Logging into your Steam account takes seconds if you’ve got the app on your phone, and then every time you boot your device, you’ll be met with your Steam library instantly.
Whilst you don’t have the huge customisation of Legion Space, you have the fantastic SteamOS menus and overlays which recognise your Legion Go S controls down to the on-screen displays and let you customise everything. Obviously SteamOS is being continually updated with new features and as far as game compatibility goes, it’s pretty much a one-for-one experience in-line with the Steam experience on PC
The other benefit of using SteamOS is that you will get that little bit more performance out of the Z2 Go processor because you’re not running Windows in the background and you can expect quite a bit more from the battery life as well. I’d really recommend starting with Windows and seeing how that goes for you, and if it does feel like you’re using Steam more than the other launchers, or want something a little more dialed in, making the switch over to SteamOS which is super easy to do.
The Legion Go S is a fantastic starting point for anyone looking to make the jump to a high-end handheld, and really the added benefit of being able to choose between Windows 11 or SteamOS only makes that decision a lot easier. If you’ve got a big Steam library or want that simplicity then SteamOS is the obvious option, but if you want the flexibility of Windows and other launchers like Xbox Game Pass, then Windows makes sense, but either way you really cannot go wrong.
Whether you’re wanting to play the latest AAA games, indie games or a mix of everything, it’s going to serve you well throughout the years to come.
