Differences Between Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go

Not only are portable PC gaming now a reality, you actually have quite a few great options to choose from. One of the most notable, of course, is Valve’s Steam Deck , beloved for its easy-to-navigate menus and excellent emulation. However, the new Lenovo Legion Go is also an enticing device, albeit a bit more expensive than the Steam Deck. So how do you choose between them?

Price and features

Legion Go costs more, starting at $699 for cheaper storage options. (This almost matches the most expensive storage option for a Steam Deck.) The Steam Deck starts at $399 for the smallest storage option, making it the cheaper portable of the two.

Of course, the price will only go up with the amount of storage, though the Steam Deck will never cost more than $649. This makes any Valve handheld option cheaper than any Legion Go. But price isn’t everything: both devices have their own advantages and disadvantages after purchase. Let’s start with the specifications:

Features of Lenovo Legion Go:

• Display: 8.8 inches, 2560 x 1600, 144Hz.
• Processor: AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme
• RAM: 16 GB
• Storage: up to 1TB (expandable storage supported)
• Battery capacity: 49.2 Wh

Steam Deck Specifications:

• Display: 7 inches, 1280 x 800 IPS, 60Hz.
• Processor: AMD Zen 2/RDNA dedicated APU
• RAM: 16 GB
• Storage: up to 512 GB (storage expansion supported)
• Battery capacity: 40 Wh

Performance

Looking at the specs, it’s easy to see that there are big differences between portable devices, especially in storage and display options. The Legion Go display has a much higher resolution and higher refresh rate, which means it should support smoother gameplay (at least as far as visuals are concerned) compared to the Steam Deck. Legion Go also offers a larger storage option, with its 1TB configuration nearly double what you’d expect from a Steam Deck. However, both devices support expandable storage, so you’re not tied to built-in storage.

The Legion Go processor is also better than Steam Deck’s aging AMD processor built on the older Zen 2 architecture. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger performance boost; The GPU built into the Deck processor handles graphics better thanks to more cores. Many games are also well-optimized for Steam Deck: for example, the recently released Starfield performs great on Deck due to how well it is optimized to work with lower-level components.

Of course, none of these laptops can deliver the optimal experience you’d expect from a higher-end PC, but they’re not meant to be. The Legion Go will provide better performance when running at higher power, although this will also mean reduced battery life, which is another important aspect to keep in mind.

Battery Life

On paper, the Legion Go has a slightly larger battery: a 49.2Wh dual-cell battery compared to the Steam Deck’s 40Wh battery. However, the battery life of these two devices will greatly depend on how this juice is used, as well as how much power the internal hardware consumes.

Steam Deck is well-optimized to make the most of battery life, and I’ve seen a good two to four hours of battery life when running intense games like Starfield , Cyberpunk 2077 , and Red Dead Redemption 2 . The Lenovo Legion Go, on the other hand, has more powerful hardware, which can mean reduced battery life, depending on how much you turn those settings up in the games themselves.

It’s hard to match the battery life of two devices when the battery life on each cycle really depends on how you use the device itself. If you’re willing to play with lower graphics that don’t put as much stress on your hardware, then you’ll be able to get much more battery life than someone who maxes out and really stresses the system. Either way, both devices come with excellent charging capabilities, so while there’s no clear winner here, neither device is a loser either.

operating system

This is one of the biggest differences between Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go because Legion Go is designed to work directly with Windows 11. Now it does it well, but still not as smooth as Valve’s SteamOS that was built into Steam Deck from scratch. Steam Deck offers a desktop mode that mimics Windows, and you can even install Windows 11 if you like , though that’s a whole other thing.

Of course, which operating system you want to rely on will solely depend on your opinion, although I will say that the easy-to-navigate SteamOS Steam Deck is a huge winner. Steam Deck uses a system similar to Steam Big Picture Mode that makes it easy to decide which games you want to install, play, or stream from another computer. On the other hand, the Lenovo Legion Go will require you to install Windows apps designed for Windows 11 and then navigate through them like you would on a normal PC.

That’s not too bad thanks to the mouse-like trackpad built into the Legion Go controller, but it’s definitely not as intuitive and simple as the Steam Deck OS. Additionally, the Legion Handheld is reportedly having some issues detecting whether you’re playing on a dedicated PC with a mouse and keyboard or a handheld gaming device. Some games use keyboard and mouse controls without registering the handheld’s built-in controllers, which can be quite annoying for gamers who just want something light.

Emulation will work the same on both devices, although you’ll need to do some deeper work to make it work on Steam Deck. In neither case is there a clear winner in the field of emulation, although I lean towards Steam Deck when it comes to overall ease of use.

Which laptop to buy?

Lenovo Legion Go is scheduled to release in November 2023 and Steam Deck is available now. So, if you are looking for what to buy right now, the deck is the clear winner. If you don’t mind waiting, Legion Go is a great option, although it will cost you a bit more.

Overall, the Legion Go is likely the more powerful handheld of the two, thanks to a more powerful processor, full Windows 11 support, and a larger, faster display. But for the price, the Steam Deck is hard to beat – it offers just about everything you could want in a portable gaming PC without too much hassle.

Of course, it would be nice to use a more powerful option, but in the end, downloading Steam Deck and starting the game is as simple as pressing a few buttons. Plus, if you don’t want to, you won’t have to worry about any Windows 11 junk getting in the way and ruining your gaming experience. So, if you want something that just works – and that’s what handheld games are all about – go for Steam Deck.