The Lenovo Legion Go S handheld was released with Windows, with SteamOS being an alternative that’s coming later. It’s also the only device that’s officially “Powered by SteamOS” that’s not the Steam Deck. But if you need to choose between the two, it looks like the one that’s not running the Microsoft operating system is the superior one, at least when taking only straight up gaming functionality into consideration.
Tech YouTube channel Dave2D did a comparison between the two, and found that the Lenovo Legion Go S running SteamOS performed better in just about every metric where gaming is concerned. Not only did it provide better framerates across a number of games, but also better battery life. But more notably, sleep and suspend functionality works better on the Valve operating system as well, with less battery loss over time, and more immediate resuming of games.
It is worth pointing out though that the framerates comparison chart is done only with a handful of games. And the results being in favour of SteamOS over Windows is “not every game that I tested, but most of them”, as Dave admits. Also worth noting is that the games shown in the battery life chart is not the same as the one for framerates, so there may be a case of selection bias going on.
Overall, the difference in performance between the Windows version of the Lenovo Legion Go S and the one running SteamOS boils down to what the former does. As Windows is normally made for desktops and laptops, there’s a lot of background tasks going on. That being said, it does have the added benefit of being to run games on other launchers with less workarounds. At any rate though, you can give the video a watch yourself.
(Source: Dave2D / YouTube)
