Review: Lenovo Legion Go S Handheld

Like any proper nerd, I'm a big fan of underrated products with devout followings. The Lenovo Go Legion—the community, not the product—is small but strong, and it won't take long to find folks showing off impressive battle stations with multiple monitors, peripherals, and extended GPUs, all powered by the Legion Go—the handheld gaming device, not the community.

I've been impressed with the hype, but I didn't find myself as convinced by the Legion Go S, the newest addition to the family. I like the hardware and see the potential, but actually using the device has proved inconsistent and slightly frustrating. That’s mostly not Lenovo’s fault.

The brand has produced a fine piece of hardware with some compromises, but the major issue is the lack of proper touchscreen support in the Windows 11 operating system. If you're looking for a gaming handheld for PC games, I'd probably look toward the Steam Deck.

Woe Is Windows

Windows isn’t meant for touch devices, and that really shows on the Legion Go S. I frequently find myself fighting with the interface, particularly while entering passwords or navigating multiple pages of menus. Some programs respond weirdly when trying to make sense of the combination of inputs and screen resolution. Lenovo recommends setting the screen magnification to 150 percent at full resolution, which helps get more programs to display properly but also makes text quite small.

For example, if you get logged out of the Epic Games Store, you’ll need to type in your password using the finicky onscreen keyboard, which covers part of the password field. With Steam, even on the Windows handheld, you just scan a QR code with your phone to log in. When you use the Steam Deck (7/10, WIRED Review) and Legion Go S next to each other, you start to realize how much extra lifting Valve had to do to bridge that gap.

Lenovo, to its credit, has done some of that work. One of the dedicated face buttons brings up a very useful sidebar that gives you access to system settings and important keyboard shortcuts, which I found invaluable for navigating some of the weirder edge cases. There are also an array of shortcut keys you can activate by pressing the extra buttons along with other face buttons. These include bringing up the keyboard, firing off a Ctrl+Alt+Del, or taking a screenshot. Perhaps most oddly, there are hot keys to increase or decrease system power by 1 watt, but I’d recommend just using the preset power profiles instead.

How much benefit you get out of the operating system choice will depend a lot on your choice of games and plans for the system. Anything designed for Windows works just like you’d expect, including external GPUs, drivers for weird peripherals, and any speciality software you might need for work. I expect this is what will draw most people to the system. If you have some extremely specific thing you need your handheld to do, or you want to take the system and plug it in multiple places, this might work great. Unfortunately for portability, unlike the Steam Deck, Lenovo doesn’t include a case, and the only one I could find info on was Dbrand’s upcoming Killswitch case.

The biggest draw for me is Game Pass for PC, a subscription service from Microsoft that lets you play a ton of Xbox games on launch day for a monthly fee. I love being able to just hop in and check out the latest games without having to spend $60-plus each time, but it only works on Steam Deck through cloud streaming, and only with the more expensive plan. With the Legion Go, it works as intended, letting me fire up Sea of Thieves just by clicking Install, but the performance, which I’m about to get into, leaves a lot to be desired.

Performance

The Legion Go S has a 1,920 x 1,200 panel, a noticeable upgrade from the Steam Deck, and it’s also 120 Hz, which feels really nice in games that can handle it. Unfortunately, that’s more likely to be Stardew Valley than Marvel Rivals.

Since the graphical settings here are basically turned all the way down already, if you want to play the latest games you’ll have to compromise by dropping the resolution. I didn’t find the medium option of 1,600 x 1,000 that compelling, and a few games didn’t support it at all. At 1,280 x 800, I was hanging out more comfortably in the 45-plus range, which felt playable, but none of the modern 3D games I tested were able to break 60 frames per second to really take advantage of the high-refresh panel.

One other callout I want to make, which I believe is related to CPU performance, is that the Shaders Compiling process that runs when you launch some new games takes an extremely long time on the Go S. I noticed it when I first launched Marvel Rivals and used a well-timed update to time it. It took over 14 minutes to complete, long enough that my friends would already be playing without me by the time I got to the main menu.

The fans on the Legion Go S are also surprisingly loud, particularly in performance mode, enough that the person sitting next to you on the bus will probably keep looking over to wonder whether you’re cooking something. They’re a bit quieter on the balanced setting, but that causes the GPU and CPU temps to quickly hit 80 degrees Celsius under load.

Battery life isn’t too bad compared to similar systems. I got two hours and change of run time playing Marvel Rivals at full resolution and refresh, on Balanced power, with the screen brightness at 35 percent. I got well over three hours just jamming games of Balatro with the same settings. That’s about the same as I get playing similar games on my Steam Deck but with a higher resolution and refresh screen, so I’d call that a solid victory for the Legion Go S.

A Real Windows Handheld?

I can see some of you licking your chops about a proper Windows handheld, and I don’t blame you. If you’re willing to put in some effort, the Legion Go S could be the centerpiece of a very slick portable desktop setup. I can totally imagine having a setup for home with an external GPU and high-end monitor, playing some games on the way to the office, then plugging in at my desk with more productivity-focused peripherals.

The biggest barrier here is definitely Windows and the distinct lack of support for this kind of device, which may make the SteamOS version more appealing to casual gamers. Lenovo put some effort into making tools that help the experience work better, but even those need some polish for usability and responsiveness. Still, the screen is a distinct upgrade from the Steam Deck, even if you won’t get to really use it except while playing Terraria.