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- Big, bright screen
- Comfortable to use
- Great controls
- Struggles to run demanding AAA titles
- Windows is not optimised for handhelds
- Comparatively bulky
It’s been a huge year for gaming handhelds, with the long-awaited Nintendo Switch 2 finally hitting shelves and selling millions of units within days of its release. The Lenovo Legion Go S I’m reviewing here, which runs Windows and is powered by a Ryzen 2 Go APU, has no chance of achieving anything like those numbers. It is, however, a testament to how popular portable consoles seeking to deliver a PC gaming experience have become.
We’ve reviewed several such products this year, with the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X and MSI Claw 8 AI+ leading the charge on the premium front, and the Asus ROG Xbox Ally offering a cheaper, but underpowered alternative. The Lenovo Legion Go S is a direct competitor to that entry-level Xbox-flavoured handheld; does it fare any better in terms of performance? Read on to find out.
What you need to know
The Legion Go S is the second gaming handheld from Lenovo, serving as a stepping stone between the original Legion Go and the Legion Go 2, which was revealed at IFA 2025. It’s a portable games console designed for PC gamers and is available in configurations that offer a choice of processor and operating system.
Regardless of which iteration you choose, the Legion Go S’s design is the same. Unlike the other Lenovo handhelds mentioned above, the handgrips can’t be detached and used as controllers; the Go S is a self-contained unit. Its 8in LCD touchscreen panel has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, and supports Variable Refresh Rate (VRR).
There’s a 2 x 2W speaker system integrated into the front of the console, a reasonable selection of physical and wireless connection options, and a three-cell 55Whr battery with enough power to deliver a few hours of gaming on the go, depending on your settings.
Price and competition
I was sent a Windows 11 version of the Legion Go S housing an AMD Ryzen Z2 Go processor with four cores and eight threads, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. That model has an RRP of £549 but isn’t widely available to purchase, with Lenovo having seemingly turned its attention to the Steam OS versions, of which there are three.
Two of them use the Ryzen Z2 Go processor – one with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for £499; the other with 1TB of storage for £549 – while a third sees the internals upgraded to include AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU, 32GB RAM and 1TB of storage. The latter costs £699.
The most obvious competitor to the model I tested is the new Asus ROG Xbox Ally. It’s a Windows handheld in Xbox clothing powered by the Ryzen Z2A chip, comes with 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage, and can be yours for £499.
On the SteamOS front, you’ve got Valve’s Steam Deck OLED. For £479, this delivers a console with a custom AMD APU, a 7.4in 1,280 x 800 OLED display that refreshes at up to 90Hz, 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage. If you need more storage, the 1TB model is £569.
Despite attracting a very different audience, it would be remiss not to mention the Switch 2. Nintendo’s two-in-one console can be used in handheld or docked modes and provides access to first-party titles you can’t play anywhere else. The console and Mario Kart World bundle has a list price of £430, but was available for £409 at the time of writing.
Design and connectivity
The Legion Go S takes a similar form to the original Asus ROG Ally, but is larger, measuring 299 x 23 x 128mm (WDH), and heavier at 740g. Like the Ally, this particular model is clad all in white, a colour scheme I’m a big fan of. The SteamOS models come in black.
Despite its size, which is necessary to accommodate the large 8in screen, the Go S isn’t too cumbersome to hold. More often than not, I found myself gaming with it resting on my lap, so its size and weight were never an issue, even during longer play sessions when I was testing the console’s battery life. The handgrips are textured on both sides, which adds a level of tactility, and sculpted to fit in your hands. Still, they’re definitely not as comfortable as the Xbox controller-styled grips found on the newer Asus Xbox Ally handhelds.
Along the top edge of the Legion Go S, you’ll find two USB4 ports that support data transfer speeds of up to 40Gbits/sec, DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery 3.0. There’s a 3.5mm headphone/microphone port to the right of those USB-C ports, and just above the top-right-hand corner of the screen are volume adjustment and power buttons.
Wireless connection options are up to snuff, with Wi-Fi 6E for connecting the console to the internet and downloading games, and Bluetooth 5.3 to pair it with your favourite headphones so you don’t disturb those around you. Unless you’re unleashing a series of expletives as you die to a Silksong boss for the umpteenth time, like I was, that is.
You can expand the storage of the Legion Go S via a microSD card slot hidden on the bottom edge of the console, which is a smart location. Although I didn’t personally experience it, the original ROG Ally was plagued by reports of fried microSD cards due to the storage slot’s proximity to the console’s thermal system.
Controls
The Legion Go S plays it safe with its controls, which isn’t a bad thing, as it means that anyone familiar with modern console controllers should feel at home when they pick it up. So, you have offset Hall-effect joysticks on either side of the screen, a D–pad under the left stick and ABXY buttons above the right, plus shoulder buttons and analogue triggers in the top corners.
I really like how the sticks handle. They feel tight and precise, and although I’ve only been testing the Legion Go S for a month or two, they feel built to stand the test of time. The same goes for the D-pad; it responded quickly and accurately, offering a viable control option for games requiring more complex directional inputs.
On either side of the 8in display, there are two handy quick-access buttons. The left pair comprises the Legion Space button and the View button, letting you quickly launch Lenovo’s proprietary control hub and switch between open windows and applications. Meanwhile, the two on the right let you bring up the Legion settings menu and a more general menu. I didn’t find much use for the latter, but the former proved an effective way to tweak my experience during a session. I did, however, experience a couple of occasions where the menu didn’t launch successfully mid-game, which was odd.
I found the right and left triggers and shoulder buttons easy to reach, but I could see some people struggling with the Legion Go S’s size; those with small hands may find it hard to tackle games that demand a high level of manual dexterity.
One thing I really like about the Legion Go S is the ability to adjust the triggers’ travel using switches on the back of the console. This worked well and allowed me to swap between shallower, more clicky inputs for games with lots of actions like sword swipes and jumps, and deeper presses for titles heavy on actions such as rapid-firing guns or accelerating. There’s a pleasing amount of spring to the triggers themselves, and the shoulder buttons aren’t egregiously loud, though they’ll still get annoying for others if you’re button-mashing.
Gamers who like to customise their control layout can map bespoke templates in the Legion Space hub, which includes the ability to assign actions to the Y1 and Y2 buttons located on the backside of the handgrips.
You can also use the touchscreen and Steam Deck-style touchpad below the right joystick to navigate the Legion Go S. However, I wasn’t particularly fond of either; the touchpad is small, so not as easy to use as it could be, while the touchscreen is frustratingly finicky when selecting and moving files and opening apps.
Software
As evidenced by every Windows handheld games console we’ve tested to date, Microsoft’s operating system is not optimised or optimal for this type of device. Navigating the UI on the Legion Go S isn’t smooth, and I found basic actions such as entering passwords mildly infuriating. There’s no way that I would consider using the Go S for work or productivity tasks without connecting an external mouse, keyboard and monitor.
I’m slightly warmer on the Lenovo Legion Space software that serves as your main hub for accessing game platforms and games. There’s support for all the big platforms, including Xbox, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, Steam and GOG. Once you’ve downloaded your selection, they’re easily accessible via the Library tab in the hub.
The Settings and Controllers dashboard menus are also easily accessible and sensibly arranged. The former presents you with graphics illustrating fan speed, CPU and GPU clock speeds and temperatures, and menus titled Performance, Display, Audio, Disk and Drivers, and General, where you can make manual adjustments. This aspect of the Legion Go S experience worked well during my testing, except for a couple of occasions when the launcher buttons stopped working, forcing me to navigate with the tiny touchpad instead.
I touched on the control customisation above, but this is another aspect of the Legion Space software that I appreciate. Being able to map your own button controls, adjust the joystick dead zones, and trigger travel was a doddle, as was turning off the vibration and lighting around the joysticks.
Display
Despite not being an OLED, the Lenovo Legion Go’s 8in IPS display is one of its high points. It’s larger than the panel on the ROG Xbox Ally (7in) and is also bigger than the Steam Deck OLED’s 7.4in display, which is limited to a resolution of 1,280 x 800 and a refresh rate of 90Hz. Unfortunately, as we’ll discover in the Performance section, the Legion Go S lacks the power to take full advantage of its 1080p, 120Hz panel.
When it’s dealing with content that it can easily handle, it delivers a visually engaging experience. I measured peak brightness at 497cd/m2, which is good enough for most environments, and sRGB colour gamut coverage was recorded at 99.3%. The screen also covers over 70% of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 gamuts, but doesn’t support HDR, unlike the Steam Deck OLED.
That OLED handheld also benefits from pixel-level lighting, enabling perfect black and near-infinite contrast. By comparison, the Legion Go S’s contrast of 1,536:1, which is actually better than the ROG Xbox Ally X, looks a little uninspiring. However, it accurately reproduces darker greys, with its greyscale rendering only losing its way and producing obvious Delta E errors in very light grey shades.
Colours are handled well, too, with my measurements reporting an average Delta E error score across the full spectrum of greyscale, primaries and hues of 2.8. That’s not bad by any means, but it is behind that of both the original ROG Ally (1.1) and the new ROG Xbox Ally (0.6).
I noted slight muddiness in some shades, including vibrant yellows and reds, but you’re unlikely to spot this unless you’re really looking for it. Ultimately, the Lenovo Legion Go S’s display is one I enjoyed looking at. The additional screen real estate is very welcome, and the solid brightness and colour palette did a good job of articulating images across my test titles, which included Hollow Knight: Silksong, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Ninja Gaiden 4 and The Outer Worlds 2.
Performance
Sadly, the Legion Go S doesn’t have the power under its hood to do most of those titles justice. Nor does it have the chops to function as a productivity machine, though no one was ever going to buy it for that purpose.
Its Geekbench 6 CPU single- and multi-core scores of 1,749 and 5,756 are marginally better than those of the ROG Xbox Ally, but a way off modern laptops. Simple, everyday tasks were generally processed without much fuss, although the Go S occasionally felt a little sluggish.
The sequential read and write speeds I measured of 2,722MB/sec and 2,698MB/sec aren’t actually too shabby, and scores of 103fps and 115fps in the GFX Bench Car Chase and 1080p Car Chase Offscreen benchmarks are far from the worst we’ve seen.
But in real-world use, the Legion Go S was only able to deliver what I’d consider a truly satisfying gaming experience in one of the games I mentioned above: Silksong. Difficulty-wise, this 2D Metroidvania is absolutely brutal, but it’s not graphically demanding.
The Legion Go S was consistently able to hit 120fps in 1,920 x 1,200 in both its Performance and Balanced thermal modes, as I died hundreds of times before finally unlocking the true ending of Team Cherry’s exercise in masochism. It even managed to maintain a 120fps frame rate in most areas while in its least powerful Quiet mode, although it dipped as low as 65fps at times.
In Performance mode with brightness set to 100%, I was able to play Silksong for 1hr 49mins 51secs before the console died, a figure that rose to 2hrs 16mins 27secs in Balanced mode and 3hrs 17mins 24secs in Quiet mode. If you’re willing to drop the brightness down, you can eke out some pretty lengthy sessions of relatively basic games on the Legion Go S.
The 55Wh battery came up short of the 60Wh cell in the ROG Ally Xbox in our video run-down test, however, lasting 7hrs 52mins while looping a film clip in 1080p with brightness set to 170cd/m2.
In Performance mode with High in-game graphics settings on Ninja Gaiden 4, things started optimistically. The indoor section of the prologue ran smoothly enough to be playable at between 40 and 48fps, with the fan noisily whirring to keep the system cool. Distracting and loud though it is, the cooling system is undeniably effective; at no point did I find the console heating up too much in my hands, despite how hard it was working.
And gosh, did Ninja Gaiden 4 work it hard. Heading out into a rainy, more detailed and rendering-heavy urban environment saw the frame rate in Performance mode drop into the low 30s and often below. In a fast-paced game that demands quick reactions, this resulted in a disappointing gameplay experience, coupled with a battery life of less than 90 minutes.
You can forget about the lowered-power modes, too: even with graphics settings at Very Low, with Quiet mode enabled, the game was an unplayable slideshow at times, falling as low as 15fps and not climbing any higher than 21fps at any point.
Unless, that is, you bump the resolution down to 1,280 x 800. By doing so, I was able to hit 30fps with Medium graphics settings in Quiet mode. In Performance mode with the in-game graphical settings at Very Low, the Go S was consistently within the 55 to 60fps range.
However, it always felt like I was making too many compromises for something just approaching a smooth handheld experience. Clair Obscur ran poorly in 1,920 x 1,200; to the point my character’s head literally disappeared, so I dropped the in-game settings to the lowest available and reduced the resolution via the Legion Space settings. I managed to get the game running between 32 and 40 fps, but the lack of detail and textures had a really detrimental effect on my enjoyment of the gorgeous game world.
Verdict
That last paragraph sums up the rub with the Windows/Ryzen Z2 Go version of the Lenovo Legion Go S. It’s not without its plus points: the display is big, bright and reasonably colour-accurate, it controls very well and is comfortable to use, despite its size.
If games that require a similar amount of processing power to Silksong are your bread and butter, this console will handle them with aplomb. But in that case, you probably already own a Switch or a Steam Deck, and have little need for a handheld hamstrung by Windows costing the best part of £600.
Those who enjoy graphically intense titles with sprawling three-dimensional worlds and frantic on-screen action like myself will likely find the sacrifices required to get AAA games into a playable state are too great. If you’re a keen enough gamer to want a handheld to play games wherever you go, I’d recommend biting the bullet and paying the extra £250 for a premium powerhouse like the ROG Xbox Ally X or the MSI Claw 8 AI+.
But remember, there’s nothing wrong with picking up a book and saving your gaming time for when you’ve got access to a current-gen console, comfy sofa and 4K TV. It’s still the best way to enjoy modern games by some margin.
