Lenovo Legion Go S unveiled at CES 2025 runs Steam OS and scores a big win

Valve’s Steam Deck is a dominant force in the portable gaming PC market, thanks in part to its user-friendly SteamOS. Now others want to join in – and Valve seems happy to help.

At CES 2025, Lenovo announced a new laptop, the Legion Go S, running Valve’s best operating system. The Go S comes pre-installed with SteamOS and features an 8-inch Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) screen, Hall effect joysticks, adjustable trigger switches, and other attractive features not found on any Steam Deck model.

The Legion Go S with SteamOS will go on sale in May for $499.99, and its hardware specs will put it on par, and in some cases far above, with the Asus ROG Ally and other powerful portable devices. For the base price, you’ll get an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and a 1920 x 1200 resolution LCD display that can support a refresh rate of up to 120Hz with VRR support, which means the screen’s refresh rate will be synchronized with the frame rate, so there’s no screen tearing. It will feature a microSD card slot, two USB4 Type-C ports (charging speeds up to 65W) and a headphone jack, and in terms of additional storage, it supports M.2 PCIe 2242 or 2280 SSDs.

There will be a $599.99 Legion Go S version (also running SteamOS), which will feature AMD’s new Ryzen Z2 Go processor (a new processor exclusive to Lenovo, according to the press release), 16GB of RAM, and an SSD storage capacity of 1 TB.

Instead of trying to create something completely different from the Steam Deck, Lenovo clearly borrowed a couple of ideas from Valve for the Legion Go S and then replicated hardware features that would appeal to many gamers. For example, there’s only one set of programmable rear paddles around the grips, but you can adjust the travel of the triggers so they travel the full distance or a shorter distance, like a mouse click. There are no touchpads, as Lenovo has opted for an Xbox-style layout of the joysticks, D-pad and face buttons. There’s nothing wrong with that; it has a fingerprint sensor just below the right analog stick in case you want to lock your system.

For those who prefer Windows 11, Lenovo is offering the Legion Go S version, which will be released this month. The $729.99 version with the faster AMD Ryzen Z2 Go, 32GB RAM, and 1TB SSD will ship first, followed in May by the $599.99 configuration with the Z2 Go, 16GB RAM, and 1TB storage. memory.