Valve’s Steam Deck is a dominating force in the handheld gaming PC market, due in part to the user-friendly SteamOS. Now others want in — and Valve seems happy to help.
At CES 2025, Lenovo announced a brand new handheld PC, the Legion Go S, and it runs Valve’s premiere operating system. The Go S has SteamOS pre-installed, and features an 8-inch screen with variable refresh rate (VRR), Hall effect joysticks, adjustable trigger switches, and other alluring traits not found in any model of the Steam Deck.
The Legion Go S with SteamOS will launch in May for $499.99, bringing hardware specs that put it on par — and, in some cases, well above — the Asus ROG Ally and other powerful handhelds. At its base price, you’ll get the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU, and a 1,920 x 1,200 LCD display that can go up to a 120 Hz refresh rate with VRR support, meaning the screen’s refresh rate will sync with the frame rate, so it won’t exhibit screen tearing. It’ll come with a microSD card slot, two USB4 Type-C ports (up to 65 W charging speed), and a headphone jack, and in terms of additional storage, it supports either M.2 PCIe 2242 or 2280-size SSDs.
There will be a $599.99 version of the Legion Go S (also running SteamOS) that’ll contain the new AMD Ryzen Z2 Go processor (a new CPU that’s exclusive to Lenovo, according to a press release), 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD.
Instead of trying to build something wildly different than the Steam Deck, Lenovo clearly borrowed a couple of ideas from Valve for Legion Go S, then iterated with hardware features many players will adore. For instance, there’s only one set of programmable back paddles around the grips, but you can adjust the throw of the triggers to travel their full distance, or to be shorter, like a mouse click. There are no touchpads, as Lenovo opted for the Xbox-style arrangement of sticks, D-pad, and face buttons. Nothing wrong with that; it’s got a fingerprint sensor just below the right analog stick, in case you want to lock your system down.
For those who’d rather have Windows 11, Lenovo’s got you covered with a version of the Legion Go S that’s coming out this month. The $729.99 version featuring the faster AMD Ryzen Z2 Go, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD will ship first, followed by a $599.99 configuration in May that has the Z2 Go, 16 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage.
The post Lenovo unveils the Legion Go S, a new handheld PC running on SteamOS appeared first on Polygon.
