We might be less than two weeks into 2025, but there’s no shortage of winners to pick from after this year’s CES showcase.
We’ve seen new laptops announced from brands like Acer, MSI and Dell, with the latter announcing that it would be dropping its XPS, Latitude and Inspiron branding altogether. Meanwhile, Hisense unveiled its first MicroLED TV and Samsung presented its new Samsung Vision AI smart TV system.
Of course, we can’t forget Nvidia’s personal AI supercomputer, Project Digits, or the new Geforce RTX 50 Series GPUs. Intel, meanwhile, showcased its latest range of Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) mobile CPUs, bringing Arrow Lake to laptops for the first time.
Keep reading to learn who we named our winner and loser this week.
Winner: Lenovo
Lenovo is this week’s winner as the brand unveiled its first SteamOS handheld gaming PC, the Legion Go S Powered By SteamOS.
Not only is this Lenovo’s first SteamOS handheld, but it’s also the only third-party handheld device to run the OS thus far. This makes the Legion Go S the sole alternative for those wanting a SteamOS device outside of Valve’s own Steam Deck line.
Trusted Reviews Editor Max Parker got the chance to see the Legion Go S himself in the Las Vegas showroom and noted that the handheld has a larger, grippier body than the Steam Deck. We can see this making the device more comfortable during longer gaming sessions, though its larger and heavier build isn’t quite as travel-friendly.
The screen is larger, brighter and smoother too, though it isn’t an OLED panel like the one you’ll find on the Steam Deck OLED. The performance should be swifter too, thanks to the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme configuration, while the larger battery could potentially extend gameplay times.
It’s important to distinguish that Lenovo actually announced two versions of the Legion Go S at CES: one Windows-powered version and another running on SteamOS. The latter caught our attention for its operating system, but both models take advantage of the same specs and features, OS aside.
Our loser this week is Meta, as the company shared a blog post stating that it would be abandoning its third-party fact-checking programme on Facebook, Instagram and Threads in favour of a ‘Community Notes model’. It’ll start in the US, before rolling out worldwide.
Meta has previously relied on independent fact-checking organisations to label content posted on its platforms that might be sharing false information or part of a viral hoax. However, after nine years of employing this method of fact-checking, Meta has announced that it will be transitioning to an X-style, user-moderated system.
“In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far”, said Meta’s new Chief Global Affairs Officer and Republican politician Joel Kaplan.
“As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do. We want to fix that and return to that fundamental commitment to free expression”.
Kaplan says that, because experts have their own biases and perspectives, the fact-checking system often became a tool for censorship rather than to spread information. This is a claim that has been refuted by fact-checking organisation Full Fact, whose chief executive stated that the change was “disappointing and a backwards step that risks a chilling effect around the world” (via BBC).
The new system will invite users to decide when posts are misleading or require context and rate them to boost the most agreed upon Community Notes and avoid biases.
It’s interesting to note that US President-elect Donald Trump has already shown approval for the change, agreeing that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was “probably” responding to past threats Trump had made regarding the former fact-checking system (via BBC).
