The Only Real Alternative to Steam Deck

The Legion Go S is a side-grade from the Lenovo Legion Go from 2023. It still has an 8-inch display, but it’s a single-body design that doesn’t sport the Legion Go’s two detachable controllers ala the Nintendo Switch 2. As comfortable as it was, Windows combined with poor performance drastically hampered what it could be. I could tell from the jump that, at $730, it was relatively overpriced and underpowered—a real “just get a Steam Deck” device. The new version is cheaper and comes with SteamOS, the same small screen-friendly Linux-based operating system made by Valve. I tested the $600 Legion Go S with SteamOS in a beautiful deep “nebula nocturne” purple color that reminds me of the goth kid I wish I was in high school. It comes with a Ryzen Z2 Go processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. That’s $50 more than a Steam Deck OLED with the same 512 GB storage capacity. Valve’s $400 Steam Deck LCD is the cheapest of its kind, though it comes with only 256GB of storage.

The more powerful Legion Go S with SteamOS, powered by an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and 32GB of LPDDR5X-6400 RAM, is close to what you might pay for an Asus ROG Ally X, which boasts a better battery life though slightly worse ergonomics. I have not tested this model, though.

For shits and giggles, I grabbed the $730 white Windows-powered Legion Go S sent to me earlier this year and installed SteamOS on it to see what happens when you add more RAM to the mix, but I didn’t experience a significant jump in performance between games. The Ryzen Z2 Go is the lower-power APU, or “accelerated processing unit,” designed specifically for the cheaper-end Legion Go S models. Both the Ryzen Z1 Extreme and Z2 Go are a type of processor that combines the capabilities of a CPU and a GPU, or graphics processor. The Z2 Go is running on AMD’s older Zen 3+ microarchitecture and has half the number of cores as the Z1 Extreme running on Zen 4.

Either way, all Legion Go S models share the same IPS LCD display with a max resolution of 1,920×1,200. It doesn’t support the deep blacks and contrast of the OLED panel on a Steam Deck, but it’s still bright enough for playing indoors or outside. The larger display resolution can eat into performance with fewer GPU cores and less RAM. Few gamers want to drop their resolution specs lower than their display’s max for the sake of performance, so the juggling act of in-game performance settings becomes that much more finicky. The important thing is whether the device can achieve a happy medium between playable frame rates and pretty graphics. In my experience, the Z2 Go with SteamOS can achieve a good equilibrium to play some intensive games, and it’s so much better thanks to the Valve-made operating system.

I conducted multiple rounds of tests with each Legion Go S plugged in and running at 30W. I set games to the max resolution they could. Both devices can hit 40W of TDP, aka thermal design power, which provides more power to the chip to help them eke out more frames from each game. Still, you likely won’t play with higher power unless you plan to keep close to an electrical outlet. Overall, the Legion Go S with a Z2 Go outperformed the same hardware with Windows. Across games like Control and Baldur’s Gate III, I saw a performance increase of close to 10 fps after I installed SteamOS. Cyberpunk 2077 at 1200p went from hitting 27 fps in benchmarks to netting nearly 40 fps. Windows introduces a host of background tasks that slow down performance, whereas svelte SteamOS doesn’t have that problem.

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Comparing the Legion Go S to the Steam Deck’s custom AMD APU, Lenovo’s SteamOS-powered device has an easy edge thanks to its wider range of TDP beyond the max 15W on Valve’s device. With the higher degree of versatility, I could hit the same frame rates at 1200p versus 800p on the Steam Deck across several games, whether they were older, less intensive titles like Weird West or Hades II. In Monster Hunter Wilds benchmarks, the Legion Go S with Z2 Go at 1200p and 30 TDP managed to top the Steam Deck at 800p by a few frames. Of course, doubling the wattage will also affect battery life. If you want to play your games at their best, at the max resolution and graphics setting the system can handle, you’ll get less than two hours of playtime. That’s not much less than a Steam Deck at half the TDP, but the end result is that you’ll need to have a charger handy or else limit your play sessions.

SteamOS offers better frame rates than Windows, and if that wasn’t enough, it’s so much easier to use. Games are easier to download and faster to load, especially when they’re built for Steam Deck and limit the number of extra launchers you need to click through. Unfortunately, the experience between playing on Steam Deck and SteamOS on third-party devices is not one-to-one. The big difference is how Valve calculates whether a game is “SteamOS Compatible” versus “Steam Deck Verified.” While Valve will determine whether a game can run at playable frame rates on a Steam Deck, it will only label whether a game is technically compatible on the Legion Go S. That means you may install a game expecting it to run well but find you can’t even control it with thumbsticks.

I managed to install my go-to apps on Steam Deck to the Legion Go S. This included Decky Loader for plugins like Junk Store, which offers easier access to my Epic Games library than going through the trouble of installing Heroic Launcher. I also managed to get EmuDeck operational, which means I could port all my retro games to the new system without any fuss. Did I miss access to apps like Razer Cortex as my preferred way to do PC-to-handheld streaming? Yes, but I would trade access to every Windows app for a clean UI without a second thought. When I’m not worried about popups asking me to sign in to OneDrive or dreading what will happen when I dare put the device to sleep while in-game, I can instead focus on playing my games at their best.

In every way, the Legion Go S can become a Steam Deck, but there are still some major considerations if you’re trying to decide between the two. For one, the Steam Deck OLED is lighter at 640g, or 1.41 pounds, versus Lenovo’s 740g, or 1.6 pounds. That doesn’t sound like much until you’re feeling the strain in your arms after an extended play session sprawled out on your bed. The Legion Go S has slightly better ergonomics, but either device conforms to the hands better than most other similar devices on the market. What is missing from Lenovo’s design are the Steam Deck’s two trackpads. Those haptic trackpads add a surprising amount of versatility in some games, especially in CRPGs or strategy games like Tactical Breach Wizards. The minuscule trackpad on the Legion Go S didn’t even seem to work out of the box. I had such a bad experience with it on the Windows version—with it vibrating like a rabbit dipped into a freezing-cold lake—I wasn’t keen to fix it.

I would also give the edge in audio quality to the Steam Deck for clear sound, but the Legion Go S’ twin 2W speakers offer enough clarity that I didn’t immediately feel the need to reach for a pair of headphones. I did experience odd audio bugs with my review unit that led to crackling when in-game, though it was inconsistent, and it wasn’t present on the older model even after I installed SteamOS. The real distinction between Lenovo’s and Valve’s handhelds is the screen. You get close to 8 inches of real estate on the Legion Go S and a higher max resolution, but it’s still LCD. If I have both screens sitting side-by-side, I can’t help but gravitate toward the device with better contrast and those ever-touted “inky” blacks.

So the Legion Go S is currently your only out-of-the-box Steam Deck alternative, and that alone makes it worth your time, especially if you don’t feel like loading an OS other than Windows. That being said, this year’s future slate of handhelds is getting more interesting. We’ve yet to see any devices launch with AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, but we know they’re coming from companies like MSI, Asus, and Lenovo themselves. The other big consideration is how Microsoft can finally make its OS workable on a 7-inch display with the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally. That upcoming handheld will potentially mark a turning point with Windows gaming, not just in performance but overall usability. If you want a handheld now, go with either the Legion Go S or Steam Deck. Either would serve you well. If you’re still on the fence, you should wait to see what the future holds.

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