The Legion Go S is the first authorized third-party handheld
Lenovo Legion Go S: A Galaxy-Embedded, Battery-Efficient, High-Performance 8-Inch Handheld Based on the Z1 Experiment
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. Legion Go S can fit full lengths of solid state drives.
BTW, Valve isn’t keeping key Steam Deck features like precompiled shaders to itself, or anything else, for that matter. The Legion Go S and futureSteamOS devices will receive the same updates as the Deck, minus hardware-specific changes.
In general, we want to make sure that we have a pathway to work together on things like firmware updates and boot manager, and things like that in a semi-standardized fashion, right?
But the Windows version shipping in January will cost $729.99, with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. It will be May where the true experiment will begin when users can pick between either a SteamOS version with 16GB or a Windows version with 1 terabytes of storage.
There aren’t going to be all in on SteamOS. Not only will it hedge its bets by shipping a Windows version of the Legion Go S as well but it’ll also ship with Windows this month — four months ahead of the SteamOS models. White is what the Windows model is.
That handheld will be the 1.6-pound Lenovo Legion Go S, a new and improved version of the company’s eight-inch handheld that ditches the Nintendo Switch-like detachable gamepads and kickstand for a lighter and more traditional design, with a sculpted grip that felt supremely comfortable in my hands.
One of the desirable features of the device will be a 120hertz screen, which will allow low-power handhelds to feel smooth even if it isn’t generating lots of frames. That screen will be lower in resolution at 1920 x 1200, too, and feature a hopefully power-sipping new AMD Ryzen Z2 Go chip. (It’s a Lenovo-exclusive chip, by the way.)
In other words, it might address every major complaint I had in my Legion Go review, while additionally adding fun configurable RGB lighting around the joysticks, a slightly larger 55Wh battery, a pair of levers to reduce the throw of the triggers, and a less obtrusive touchpad, too, while retaining the dual USB 4 ports.
Griffais and his co-designer Lawrence Yang would not confirm which handhelds might just start working, though there are some obvious candidates: the company confirmed to us in August that it had been adding support for the Asus ROG Ally’s controls.
Valve is flattered by Bazzite, meanwhile Yang discusses the possibility of a partnership and a living room box on SteamOS
Speaking of Bazzite, Valve seems to be flattered! “We have nothing against it,” says Yang. “It’s a great community project that delivers a lot of value to people that want a similarly experience on devices right now”, commented Griffais.
If you try the possible steamOS living room boxes, Valve says you might have a good experience. And partnerships are a possibility there too: “if someone wants 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.”
