If you’ve been after a SteamOS portable gaming handheld, but the Steam Deck just wasn’t doing it for you then Lenovo might have the perfect device.
In typical fashion, Lenovo has been very busy at CES 2025 – kicking off its year with a whole bunch of product reveals. While many of the new laptops will catch the eye, it’s the Lenovo Legion Go S that stood out for us.
The Go S is available in a standard Windows option, but it’s also the first device – Steam Deck aside, of course – to run Valve’s SteamOS software. This gives you a simpler, speedier UI that feels far more at home on a portable machine like this.
Lenovo thankfully hasn’t just taken the Steam Deck and slapped its logo on it, instead it’s taken a notably different handheld that should appeal to those who weren’t enamoured with some of the decisions made by Valve.
The most obvious difference is a larger, grippier body. After just a few minutes of use, I immediately could tell the Legion Go S was going to be the more comfortable for extended gaming sessions, thanks to its chunkier, more rounded build. It’s larger (and slightly heavier) too, making it a good choice for someone who is going to be primarily playing at home.
The screen is a point of difference, too. The Legion Go S has an 8-inch panel, up from the 7-inch Steam Deck and 7.4-inch Steam Deck OLED. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate – up from 90Hz on the Steam Deck OLED – along with 500 nits of brightness. It’s not an OLED panel, although I was quite impressed with the vibrancy of the screen during my short time with the device ahead of its grand unveiling in Vegas.
inside, the top-end model will be powered by the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme (3.3GHz, 8 cores, 16 threads), with up to 32GB LPDDR5x-6400 RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.
There will be a standard Windows 11 version sold alongside the Steam model, for those who want the versatility of Microsoft’s operating system too. Pricing and release date information remains under wraps for the Steam mode, but we’ll update this story when we know more. The Windows version is expected to go on sale in January for €629.
The start of something big?
Now that we’ve seen the first Steam OS-powered handheld that isn’t the Steam Deck, it feels like the floodgates are open, and there will be all sorts of form factors, price points, and internal choices available in the coming months and years. Personally, I’d love to see a smaller version, with a body a little more like the slimmer and more portable Asus ROG Ally X.
