Lenovo Legion Go S will be the first gaming handheld outside Steam Deck to use SteamOS

While Steam Deck is popular with many people when it comes to portable PC gaming, companies like Lenovo have made their mark on the industry. Legion of Go offered a worthy alternative to Valve’s portable system, but we’re about to try it for the first time.

Lenovo is all set to launch the Legion Go S. The upcoming device, announced at CES 2025, will be more ergonomic and will have a smaller screen compared to the current model. According to a post on Micro Centerthe Windows 11 version will be released sometime in January and will have a suggested retail price of $729.

However, if you’re willing to wait a little longer, there’s an alternative model that will ship with SteamOS, the same software used in Steam Deck UX. This version is expected to be released sometime in May.

Will others follow suit?

This is quite a significant event. As stated in the post above, the Lenovo Legion Go S becomes “the first gaming laptop built on SteamOS by someone other than Valve itself.” Whether this will open the door for other third-party handheld device manufacturers to do the same remains to be seen at this stage.

According to Micro Center, whether you choose the Windows or Steam version, both of these new models are different from the current version of Legion Go. In addition to the aforementioned ergonomic design, the Go S now has built-in controllers rather than Nintendo Switch-style controllers that could be removed from the device.

In terms of hardware specs, you can expect an AMD Ryzen Z2 Go or Z1 Extreme processor with Radeon 700M GPU, along with 32GB of RAM. Given that the Steam Deck OLED has 16GB of RAM, we can already see Valve’s system starting to look less impressive as we move forward. I think Newell and his team need to come up with something quickly, especially if third-party devices start using SteamOS.