Following weeks of rumors, today at CES in Las Vegas as part of debuting other new wares, Lenovo introduced the Legion Go S handheld gaming console option that is officially licensed by Valve for SteamOS.
The Lenovo Legion Go handheld to date has shipped with Microsoft Windows 11 while now Lenovo is introducing the “Lenovo Legion Go S (8”, 1) – Powered by SteamOS” that is pre-loaded with Valve’s Arch Linux based SteamOS operating system.
Lenovo explains of their new SteamOS-powered handheld in this morning’s press release:
“The world’s first officially licensed handheld powered by SteamOS—the Lenovo Legion Go S (8”, 1) – Powered by SteamOS. This new handheld combines the powerhouse features of the Lenovo Legion Go S (8”, 1) with the flexibility and console-like experience of SteamOS, Valve’s operating system that is optimized for gaming. Featuring cloud saves that mean a seamless transition between PC gaming and handheld, Remote Play that streams games to the device from a PC, full Steam Store and Steam Library access, the Lenovo Legion Go S (8”, 1) Powered by SteamOS is a big step forward in freedom of choice for gamers who are looking for an OS that is optimized for handheld gaming.”
This first officially licensed SteamOS handheld is making use of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC with Radeon 700M graphics, an 8-inch 1200p LCD touchscreen with VRR support, up to 32GB of LPDDR5x-6400 memory, up to 1TB of PCIe Gen4 SSD storage, and a 55 Whr battery. Pricing starts at $500 USD with availability beginning in May.
Sadly this Lenovo Legion Go handheld running SteamOS is making use of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme and not the Ryzen Z2 announced by AMD yesterday with the Zen 5 cores. But at CES Lenovo is showing off the Lenovo Legion Go (8.8”, 2) prototype that uses the AMD Ryzen Z2 Go SoC along with an OLED display albeit a Windows gaming device.
This SteamOS-loaded Lenovo Legion Go also makes sense given the recent Linux WMI driver improvements for their gaming hardware. So expect to see more Linux kernel improvements to benefit the Lenovo Legion gaming hardware moving forward.
