It’s becoming clear how spoiled I’ve been with handheld gaming PCs. I’ve handled most of them, from the original Steam Deck up to the ROG Ally X, and I’ve learned to love, hate, but mostly tolerate the different pain points of each device. The new Lenovo Legion Go S immediately felt like an upgrade with its rapid-fire triggers, large 8-inch display, and cozy design that nestled into my hands perfectly. There’s just one problem — Windows is awful.
There, I said it. Windows on a handheld is a horrible experience and the Lenovo Legion Go S made that abundantly clear after just a couple of days. I’m still knee-deep in benchmarking the device and the Ryzen Z2 Go chip inside of it — don’t worry, I have a few early comparisons for you here — but I need to say my piece on Windows.
Update: My Lenovo Legion Go S review is live now.
From riches to rags
Let me back up for a moment. I’ve been a die-hard Steam Deck user since day one. Even with so many competing devices, I never felt the need to switch. Windows offered broader game support, sure, but I much preferred the experience of using SteamOS, even if that meant sacrificing game support and, in some cases, performance. That was until I discovered Bazzite, which I promptly flashed onto the ROG Ally X.
Bazzite is becoming increasingly popular, but if you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically SteamOS. It’s a fork of Valve’s open-source operating system, and it behaves almost identically to a Steam Deck. There are a few minor quirks — the menu for changing power modes is bound to a rear button, for example — but they really aren’t worth complaining about. They’re small and very easy to adapt to.
It’s been a winning combo for me. I get the best performance available in a handheld right now via the Z1 Extreme, and I get a seamless software experience with Bazzite. I knew that I wouldn’t enjoy Windows as much on the Lenovo Legion Go S; I’ve used plenty of Windows handhelds in the past. I wasn’t prepared for just how much worse it would be in 2025, though, and how little Microsoft has done to improve the experience across devices.
Before getting to the truly gory details, I want to describe the experience of unboxing the Lenovo Legion Go S to set the stage. I ripped it out of the packaging, plugged it into the wall, and went to boot the system. It took me an hour to get through the Windows setup process, and a decent chunk of that was spent tapping through offers for Office 365, OneDrive, and tailored app recommendations that aren’t at all relevant to a handheld gaming PC.
After all of the Windows updates were installed, I was finally on the desktop. But then there were more problems. Updates from the Microsoft Store wouldn’t work until I manually ran another Windows update. The Xbox app wouldn’t work because it needed an update, which I couldn’t do because the default scaling in Windows pushed the Update button off the edge of the screen. And while setting everything up, the device went from 100% capacity down to just 60%.
Windows doesn’t work
You need to spend some time setting up and updating any new device, but the process on the Lenovo Legion Go S — and all Windows handhelds — is long, cumbersome, and frankly, annoying. It makes the device feel like it’s not working properly; like you’ve hacked some OS on a system that wasn’t built to support it. And maybe that’s because Windows wasn’t built to support this form factor, and it might never be.
The OS itself is conflicted about what it wants to do, and in that process, it completely sacrifices the handheld experience. Let me give you some examples. Microsoft offers a default taskbar in Windows 11 filled with its own apps, and it’s centered on the screen. Not a problem on the desktop, but on the Lenovo Legion Go S, the default icons take up the entire taskbar. If you open even a single additional app like, for example, Steam or the Xbox app, it’s pushed off to a separate menu that you have to tap to expand before selecting the app you want to focus on.
Another example: power settings. Out of the box, the Lenovo Legion Go S is set to sleep after a few minutes regardless of whether you have the device plugged in or not. That was a rude awakening when I plugged the handheld in overnight to download a bunch of games, only to find all of those downloads failed in the morning because the device put itself to sleep. The Steam Deck can’t continue downloads while the screen is off, but it at the very least keeps the screen on and the device active while downloads are running.
Those are just two examples, and that’s not to mention the performance overhead of Windows and the issues with sleeping while a game is running. Performance advantages and game support don’t matter. At every turn, it feels like Windows is trying to fight you for using a handheld gaming device.
These are all solvable issues, but it’s completely unreasonable that a USB-C hub, monitor, keyboard, and mouse feel all but required to set Windows up properly before you can install a single game. And even when it is set up properly, you’ll still run into issues, from greedy notifications demanding precious screen space to crashed games and lost progress when you accidentally tap the power button during gameplay.
It’d be one thing if this was the experience all handhelds had to settle for, but it isn’t. Lenovo is actually releasing a version of the Legion Go S with SteamOS installed, and it’s worth waiting for.
The Z2 Go is a touch slower
I know there are a lot of questions about how the Ryzen Z2 Go stacks up to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme in the Lenovo Legion Go S. I ran a few preliminary tests, but I’ll have a full run-down of performance in my review of the Legion Go S once I’m finished with it. But, to give you an idea, the Ryzen Z2 Go is a bit slower than the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, at least in my early tests. That’s not too surprising considering both chips are packing 12 RDNA 3 Compute Units (CUs)
You can see my results below for Dying Light 2, Horizon Zero Dawn (not the remastered version), and 3DMark Fire Strike. The Ryzen Z2 Go in the Lenovo Legion Go S is a stone’s throw away from the suite of other Ryzen Z1 Extreme handhelds, landing just below the base ROG Ally and original Lenovo Legion Go.
| Horizon Zero Dawn | Dying Light 2 | 3DMark Fire Strike | |
| Lenovo Legion Go S (Ryzen Z2 Go) | 34 fps | 21 fps | 3,736 |
| Lenovo Legion Go (Ryzen Z1 Extreme) | 35 fps | 25 fps | 5,652 |
| Asus ROG Ally X (Ryzen Z1 Extreme) | 50 fps | 26 fps | 6,652 |
But there’s that pesky Fire Strike result. There’s a problem with the Ryzen Z2 Go, and that’s the fact that it only comes with four CPU cores. Worse, they’re based on the older Zen 3 architecture, not the newer Zen 4 architecture available in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. There are plenty of games where four cores is enough, and it looks like Horizon Zero Dawn and Dying Light 2 are among them. For other games that scale before four, you’ll run into issues.
This is just an early look at the Lenovo Legion Go S. I plan on running it through all of my normal benchmarks and battery tests, as well as give a verdict on the screen and software. For now, I’ll leave you with this.
The Lenovo Legion Go S is a fantastic device. But Windows on any handheld right now is lacking. With SteamOS getting broader support for games each day, I’m finding it difficult to put up with the hassle. I’ll probably recommend the Legion Go S once I’m finished with my review process, but with the caveat that you should wait for the SteamOS version.
