Lenovo Legion Go S - Powered By Steam OS The Lenovo Legion Go S with Steam OS is light years ahead of its Windows-powered counterpart. Not only does Steam OS fix a lot of Windows' problems, but it also drops the price by $130. This makes the Legion Go S with Steam OS a viable competitor to the Steam Deck. It's well worth a look if you prioritize a large display, variable refresh rates, and offset sticks.
When I reviewed the Lenovo Legion Go S — the one powered by Windows 11 — I did something I rarely ever do: I told readers not to buy it. No matter how I approached the product, I couldn’t recommend it to anyone due to the ubiquitous availability of better, cheaper gaming handhelds. In that review, I mentioned that I was excited to try the second version of the product, the one powered by the Linux-based Steam OS — the same operating system that powers Valve’s Steam Deck. Well, Lenovo was kind enough to send me a test unit of the Lenovo Legion Go S with Steam OS, and I’m excited to tell you all about it.
Given that this product’s hardware is exactly the same as the Windows variant (other than the change in button names and case color), I won’t spend time re-explaining everything. If you need to catch up on what this product offers from a hardware perspective, read my Legion Go S review first. My colleague Hadlee Simons’ hands-on with the Steam OS version at CES 2025 is also worth a read (anything he writes is).
With that in mind, I will split this review into two sections: the first covering what Steam OS fixes, and the second explaining what Steam OS couldn’t change.
What Steam OS fixes for the Legion Go S
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The most significant and positive thing Steam OS does for the Legion Go S is simplify the experience. When you power up the Steam OS version of the Legion Go S, you’re not greeted with any familiar Windows tropes. You don’t need to log in with your Microsoft account or tell it your preferred keyboard layout. You never see a desktop interface. You do need to go through an initial setup procedure, obviously, but you can navigate through every step with the controller and a smartphone for scanning QR codes — something that can’t be done with Windows.
From the time you first boot up the Legion Go S with Steam OS, you immediately understand how this is better than Windows.
Essentially, Steam OS is an operating system built for this particular form factor, whereas Windows is decidedly not (or at least until we know if the Xbox experience on the ROG Xbox Ally finally fixes things). That alone makes the experience using the Legion Go S with Steam OS much, much better than its Windows counterpart.
Even when a wrench is thrown into the works, Steam OS handles it with grace. For example, if you want to play Red Dead Redemption on the Legion Go S, you must use Rockstar Games’ stupid (and useless!) launcher. This launcher lacks controller support, which Valve cannot change. So, what Steam OS does in response is warn you that the Rockstar Games launcher lacks controller support and instructs you to use the touch screen instead. It’s not perfect, but it’s a simple, elegant way of informing the user how best to navigate through this process, since their intuitive reaction — to use the sticks and buttons — will prove ineffective.
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