The Windows version of the Lenovo Legion Go S is on sale for $730.75 during Amazon Prime Day, which is lower than the current Steam Deck price of $789 listed in the article. The PC Gamer author believes that, based on this price and performance, the Legion Go S is the better buy.
This discounted model was originally priced at $849.99, featuring an AMD Ryzen Z2 Go processor, an 8-inch 120Hz 1080p IPS screen, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The lower-priced Steam Deck uses an OLED screen, while this Legion Go S uses an IPS screen; the author prioritizes the latter's performance and price in this trade-off.
Recalling previous reviews, the article mentions that the Legion Go S is comfortable to hold and has strong battery life, but its price was high at the time, and its performance lagged behind some competing handhelds. Game performance varies: with upscaling tools, F1 and Horizon Zero Dawn perform reasonably well at medium settings; Black MYTH - Steam Edition: Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077 still struggle to run smoothly at medium settings, even with similar tools.
The article also points out that the Windows system incurs some performance overhead, and switching to SteamOS may offer a slight improvement; however, Windows makes it easier to run certain games with anti-cheat mechanisms. The 512GB storage space can also fill up quickly with multiple games.
Another version features the Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, 1TB of storage, and 32GB of RAM, coming pre-installed with SteamOS. The Best Buy price listed in the article is $1,000. The two Legion Go S models have different configurations, so be sure to distinguish between versions when comparing prices.