The ridged plastic helps you get a firm grip.
Its heavy, but the 8-inch screen makes up for it with its bright display with relatively small bezels.
It has clicky, adaptive triggers and quality sticks.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
But thats not the end of the story.
If comfort was all you were looking for, you still need to deal with Windows.
Lenovo Legion Go S
It’s a great-feeling handheld that won’t match up on performance.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
I was consistently struggling with the console changing system tweaks on me for no reason.
My TDP would adapt randomly.
The system brightness would change as I sat in a dark room without rhyme or reason.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
The battery life wasnt doing me any favors, either.
The Legion Go S is Lenovos attempt at designing a handheld for laymen.
See Legion Go S at Best Buy
So, is it good for its price?
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
My review unit with 32 GB of RAM cost $730 from Best Buy.
The Lenovo Legion Go S excites me more for systems slated to come out later this year.
First on the list is the Go S running SteamOS.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
If the next Legion Go is as comfortable as this one, Ill be a happy camper.
As soon as I picked it up, the unit slipped into the contours of my fists.
Im still not used to Legion Gos flat-face buttons, but they are clicky without feeling shallow.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
I also appreciate the trigger redesign.
Both the bumpers and triggers angle to the natural curve of the fingers.
Those triggers deserve extra kudos, especially adding two switches behind the system to reduce the button travel.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
The one off spot is the infinitesimally small trackpad.
By default, pressing this sends the haptics motor fluttering.
My palm sometimes pressed it and gave me a jolt to my hand.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
The rumble in this machine seems only to have one speed: hummingbird.
The thumbsticks also received a fair bit of love.
The 8-inch screen on the Go S is no less pretty despite the difference in overall design.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
Its a 48-120 HZ VRR display that supports up to 1920 by 1200 resolution.
The screen can get very bright, much more so than the competition from Asus and Valve.
The brightness and small bezels add to the sense that the display is doing more than its specs imply.
Of course, I prefer OLED on the latest Steam Deck.
The Go S speakers held back the experience.
The APU includes RDNA 2 AMD Radeon graphics, but by design, its not blow-the-lid-off-your-handheld powerful.
It seems particularly paltry compared to the 8-core,16-thread Ryzen Z2 Extreme.
The Windows-based Legion Go S also includes 32 GB of LPDDR5x-6400 RAM and a 1 TB SSD.
Its not to say the extra memory isnt appreciated.
It seems especially poor compared to the Z1 Extreme-based handhelds.
The MSI Claw 8 AI+ with its Intel Core Ultra 7 258V chip managed 4,437 in our tests.
In Geekbench 6, the measly 4-cores hurt the CPUs chances of competing with the big dogs.
That means for CPU-centric games, the Legion Go S will be at a serious disadvantage.
The story doesnt end there.
Any game that has more CPU requirements will suffer in comparative performance.
Changing the options to low doesnt help much, either.
At 30W TDP, the Legion Go S did nearly 50 average FPS under the same game controls.
Of course, this gadget is great for any less-intensive 2D games.
At this price, however, that should be expected.
The devices benefit is its support for rapid charging.
Legion Space was surprisingly slow at times.
Loading the setting tabs caused occasions of lag that I dont see much on the 2023 Legion Go.
Its worse when you have a go at enter the quick parameters.
I would also prefer if Legion Space didnt open directly to the store page whenever you load in.
You cant easily turn the unit to sleep and then load it back into your game.
You cant change system parameters without slapping your massive forefinger into the screen.
Sometimes, the keyboard refuses to appear no matter how many desperate times you press on a text box.
Without Microsofts input, these issues will continue to plague these kinds of handheld PCs.
Theres a reason many players prefer this key in of console to a Steam Deck.
Its not Lenovos fault, but its a major reason the eventual SteamOS version seems so much more appealing.
Performance-wise, it reminds me of how the MSI Claw A1M struggled to match up.
However, at $500, the Legion Go S seems like a far, far more tempting gadget.
The bones are good, save for a pointless trackpad.
That still leaves me excited.
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