Lenovo is making an attempt an experiment. In May, it should formally grow to be the very first firm exterior of Valve to ship a handheld gaming PC with the Steam Deck’s splendidly pick-up-and-play SteamOS as a substitute of Microsoft Windows. And at $499, it’ll be a real Steam Deck rival, becoming a member of it as one of many lower-priced PC handhelds you should buy.
That handheld would be the 1.6-pound Lenovo Legion Go S, a brand new and improved model of the corporate’s eight-inch handheld that ditches the Nintendo Switch-like removable gamepads and kickstand for a lighter and extra conventional design, with a sculpted grip that felt supremely comfy in my arms.
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It’ll even be one of many few handhelds in the marketplace to supply a 120Hz variable refresh fee display — a extremely fascinating characteristic that lets low-power handheld gameplay really feel easy, even when it’s not producing plenty of frames. That display will likely be decrease in decision at 1920 x 1200, too, and have a hopefully power-sipping new AMD Ryzen Z2 Go chip. (It’s a Lenovo-exclusive chip, by the best way.)
In different phrases, it would tackle each main grievance I had in my Legion Go assessment, whereas moreover including enjoyable configurable RGB lighting across the joysticks, a barely bigger 55Wh battery, a pair of levers to scale back the throw of the triggers, and a much less obtrusive touchpad, too, whereas retaining the twin USB 4 ports.
But Lenovo isn’t going all in on SteamOS. Not solely will it hedge its bets by transport a Windows model of the Legion Go S as nicely however it’ll additionally ship with Windows this month — 4 months forward of the SteamOS fashions. The Windows mannequin is white:
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It’s not just like the SteamOS mannequin is prepared now anyhow. Valve codesigners Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais inform me they’ve solely been working with Lenovo for a few months, and the mixing isn’t fairly finished. The new touchpad, gyroscope, and each RGB lighting and TDP configuration choices are among the many issues on their to-do checklist.
But the Windows model transport in January will value $729.99, with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. In May, the true experiment will start when avid gamers can decide between a $499.99 SteamOS model with 16GB / 512GB, a $599.99 Windows model with 16GB / 1TB, or the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED at $399 and $549, respectively.
And it does sound like there will likely be one essential cause to choose the Steam Deck over the Legion Go S and vice versa, as a result of AMD’s Z2 Go is a special chip. While the Z2 Go introduced yesterday sheds cores and GPU generations to be barely extra akin to the Steam Deck’s semi-custom Aerith and / or Sephiroth elements, we famous that it targets greater energy ranges, and Legion Go product supervisor Alex Zhu confirms to me that the Legion Go S is geared toward 20-watt efficiency, 30-watt, possibly even 40-watt configurable efficiency, which is able to seemingly provide greater efficiency (and decrease battery life) than the 15-watt-and-below Steam Deck’s chip.
Zhu says Lenovo is concentrating on between two and a pair of.5 hours of battery life in demanding heavy video games — which strains up with the essential math of dividing a 55 watt-hour battery by 20 watts, assuming the remainder of the system doesn’t eat up much more. Versions with AMD’s current Z1 Extreme chip may even be accessible in some markets. All Legion Go S can match full-length M.2 2280 stable state drives.
BTW, Valve isn’t preserving key Steam Deck options like precompiled shaders to itself, or the rest, for that matter. Yang and Griffais say will probably be one SteamOS, and the Legion Go S and any future SteamOS units will get the identical updates because the Deck, minus hardware-specific tweaks.
Valve tells me Lenovo is at the moment its solely associate for a SteamOS machine — there aren’t any different third-party SteamOS units at the moment within the works. But Griffais hints that Valve is near publicly releasing a brand new beta of its SteamOS that simply would possibly presumably begin engaged on different handhelds as nicely. (Valve beforehand confirmed to us that it was constructing towards some stage of help for the Asus ROG Ally in SteamOS as nicely.)
And it’s vaguely attainable that SteamOS beta may arrive earlier than the SteamOS Legion Go S — Valve says it’s slated to ship someday after March.
But the true dream is to tug a PC handheld out of a field and have it simply work, the best way a Nintendo Switch works, to not shoehorn an working system on it afterward, irrespective of how good the consequence. That’s why Lenovo is working with Valve: Zhu agrees that SteamOS has one of the best out-of-box expertise. But, he says, Windows provides a complete ecosystem of gaming and productiveness that the corporate believes its clients nonetheless need.
Zhu agrees that SteamOS is an experiment for Lenovo and says it’ll have a look at the suggestions and momentum earlier than making its subsequent transfer. Speaking of what’s subsequent, Lenovo can also be constructing a bigger Legion Go 2 with removable controllers and an 8.8-inch OLED display, and it introduced prototypes of that unit to CES:
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
Zhu tells me Lenovo doesn’t have “any particular plans” to place SteamOS on the bigger Legion Go, simply Windows — however maybe it is determined by what clients purchase in May.
Meanwhile, Valve remains to be waiting for a future model of its personal Steam Deck, saying that partnering with firms like Lenovo hasn’t lowered the will to construct its personal. But AMD’s Z2 isn’t the “leap” that Valve’s been ready for, Griffais tells The Verge. There received’t be a Z2 Steam Deck.
