I will admit, I did not expect to see the ol' Lenovo Legion Go S appearing on sale for a non-ridiculous price. I thought those days were over; I thought the memory crisis had done for these old gaming handheld PCs with their Sam Altman-baiting levels of system RAM. But no, here we are with the SteamOS version of the excellent Lenovo Legion Go S on sale at Amazon for $950.
Yes, I'm aware that is still a lot of money to spend on what is pretty much guaranteed to be either a secondary or tertiary gaming device for you, and kinda flies against everything that made the original Steam Deck such a tantalising option for a lot of PC gamers. But considering the Legion Go S price went well over the $1,500 mark, this Amazon deal is netting you a discount of over $600 on the list price.
We loved the device when we first ran our Legion Go S SteamOS Ed. review, with Jacob giving it a coveted Editor's Pick award and a 91% score. The native SteamOS install makes the whole thing a joy to use; it's a really well-designed device from an ergonomic point of view, and it looks great, too.
- Check out the latest Black Friday PC gaming deals and join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.
Inevitably, you do run into the familiar Linux-based issues for PC gamers, namely that not every game you might want to play will work. That is largely down to kernel-level anti-cheat software at this point, but this is also something that developers are working on right now to reduce the number of incompatible services.
Other than that, it's an excellent handheld to game on, despite the Ryzen Z1 Extreme being a relatively old chip by now. It was introduced around the original ROG Ally, but still stands up, especially against the cheaper chips that have since been released. If you think that because it's Z1 versus Z2 the bigger number is always better, that's not the case. Look at the cheaper $800 Legion Go S at Walmart, and that's sporting a Z2 Go chip.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Ryzen Z1 Extreme |
Ryzen Z2 Go |
Ryzen Z2 A |
Ryzen Z2 Extreme |
|---|---|---|---|---|
CPU architecture |
Zen 4 |
Zen 3+ |
Zen 2 |
Zen 5 |
CPU cores / threads |
8 / 16 |
4 / 8 |
4 / 8 |
8 / 16 |
Integrated graphics |
12 × RDNA 3 CUs |
12 × RDNA 2 CUs |
8 × RDNA 2 CUs |
16 × RDNA 3.5 CUs |
Configurable TDP |
15–30 W |
15–30 W |
6–20 W |
15–35 W |
NPU |
None |
None |
None |
Up to 50 TOPS (AI Z2 Extreme variant) |
Which sucks. The Z2 Go is a Zen 3+ chip, with four CPU cores and 12 RDNA 2 CUs in its integrated GPU. The Z1 Extreme is a Zen 4 chip with eight CPU cores and 12 RDNA 3 CUs, making it far more performant in games. And don't even get me started on the Z2 A which goes into the ROG Xbox Ally. That only has 8 RDNA 2 CUs, and it's weak sauce even for its $599 price tag.
The Z2 Extreme in the ROG Xbox Ally X has more about it, however, and is the better gaming chip. So if you're happy with Windows, that is an option and is only $50 more, but with less RAM onboard.
1. Best overall:
Asus ROG Xbox Ally X
2. Best budget:
Asus ROG Xbox Ally
3. Best high performance:
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+
Available Coupons & Deals
