Lenovo Plans to Upgrade the Legion Go S: Power Levels vs. Steam Decks for Low-Power High-Performance Games

Zhu says Lenovo is targeting between two and 2.5 hours of battery life in demanding heavy games — which lines up with the basic math of dividing a 55 watt-hour battery by 20 watts, assuming the rest of the system doesn’t eat up a lot more. Versions with AMD’s existing Z1 Extreme chip will also be available in some markets. All Legion Go S can fit M.2 2270 solid state drives.

It does sound like there will be at least one important reason to pick the Legion Go S over the Steam Deck, because of the differences between the two chips. While the Z2 Go announced yesterday sheds cores and GPU generations to be slightly more akin to the Steam Deck’s semi-custom Aerith and / or Sephiroth parts, we noted that it targets higher power levels, and Legion Go product manager Alex Zhu confirms to me that the Legion Go S is aimed at 20-watt performance, 30-watt, maybe even 40-watt configurable performance, which will likely offer higher performance (and lower battery life) than the 15-watt-and-below Steam Deck’s chip.

One of the lead designers on the steam deck and steam OS tells me a new version of the operating system will ship after March, and if you find the OS working properly after that, you might be able to buy it!

But the Windows version shipping in January will cost $729.99, with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. In May, there will be a choice between a $599.99 Windows version with 16GB or 512Glacier, a $499.99steamOS version with 512Glacier and a $349 steam deck with 1 tb.

But Lenovo isn’t going all in on SteamOS. The Legion Go S will be shipped with Windows this month, four months ahead of the SteamOS models. The Windows model is white.

The new Legion Go S handheld is a lighter and traditional design that ditches the Nintendo Switch-like detached game pads and kickstand for a more traditional design with a sculpted grip.

It will be one of the few handhelds on the market to offer a 120Hz variable refresh rate screen and it will allow low-power handheld games to feel smooth even if they aren’t generating lots of frames. The screen will be less vivid at 1920 x 1200 and feature a hopefully power-sipping new chip. There is a chip by the way, by the way.

In my Legion Go review, I had a lot of complaints and it might be able to address all of them with the additions of fun dimmable lighting, a 55Wh battery, and a pair of levers.

Griffais and his co-designer LawrenceYang would not confirm which handhelds would work, though there are obvious candidates: the company told us in August that it had added support for the Ally controls.

But he says Bazzite isn’t yet in a state where a hardware manufacturer could preload it on a handheld, nor would Valve allow that. While users can freely download and install the SteamOS image onto their own devices, companies aren’t allowed to sell it or modify it, and must partner with Valve first.

You might have a good experience trying the possible SteamOS living room boxes, according to Valve. If someone wanted to bring that to the market and preload SteamOS on it, we’d be happy to talk to them.

Valve wouldn’t tell me anything about the rumors that it’s developing its own Steam Controller 2, VR headset with wands, and possibly its own living room box, but did tell me that we “might expect more Steam Input compatible controllers in the future.”