Lenovo Legion Go S unveiled at CES 2025, runs Steam OS with a big win

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

At CES 2025, Lenovo announced an all-new laptop, the Legion Go S, that runs Valve’s premier operating system. The Go S has SteamOS preinstalled and features an 8-inch display with variable refresh rate (VRR), Hall effect joysticks, adjustable trigger switches, and other enticing features not found in any model from Steam Deck.

The Legion Go S with SteamOS launches in May for $499.99, bringing hardware specs that put it on par with – and, in some cases, well above – the Asus ROG Ally and other computers powerful pockets. At its base price, you’ll get the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and a 1920 x 1200 LCD display that goes up to 120Hz refresh rate with VRR support, meaning the refresh rate of the screen will be synchronized with the frame rate, so it will not exhibit screen tearing. It will come with a microSD card slot, two USB4 Type-C ports (up to 65W charging speed), and a headphone jack, and in terms of additional storage, it supports M.2 PCIe 2242 SSD or 2280. .

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

Instead of trying to build something very different from the Steam Deck, Lenovo clearly borrowed some ideas from Valve for Legion Go S, then iterated with hardware features that many gamers will love. For example, there’s only one set of programmable rear paddles around the grips, but you can adjust the travel of the triggers to go the full distance or to be shorter, like a mouse click. There’s no touchpad, as Lenovo opted for the Xbox-style layout of the sticks, 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 offers a version of the Legion Go S which will be released this month. The $729.99 version including the faster AMD Ryzen Z2 GB, 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD will ship first, followed by a $599.99 configuration in May that includes the Z2 GB, 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.