Lenovo Legion Go S – An Almost Perfect Emulation Monster

If you want an all-rounder, emulation-focused handheld, there are a ton of options out there, but I feel like almost every single one of them is flawed in some way that forces you to compromise in a certain area. Most of the time this compromise either comes down to not being quite powerful enough for PS2 and GameCube content or simply being too small which impacts things like the screen size and potentially also the ergonomics.

So for me, it's probably worth spending a little bit extra to get a full-on handheld PC, this opens up the library of games you can access massively, gives you a bigger form factor which is probably going to be more comfortable than a cheaper alternative and it's going to have more power, meaning you can emulate beyond the PS2 and GameCube with ease.

This brings me to today's sponsor; Lenovo! They were kind enough to send us the Lenovo Legion Go S which is the newest model of the Legion Go which was released in late 2023, but what's different here and is it worth picking up to use as an all-in-one emulation machine? Let's take a look!

Getting To Grips With The Legion Go S

When you get your Lenovo Legion Go S, you're going to get the device itself, a charger and that's kind of it. It's a bit of a shame it doesn't come with a case, but it does come with this cardboard kickstand, so at least you get something extra!

To be honest, though, you don't really need any extra goodies here because the device itself looks incredibly impressive when you take it out of the box. The modern white shell looks great and matches the aesthetic of the PS5 and we've got some nice details like the texture on the grip area and the Lenovo Legion branding on the back of the device. Not to mention the glaringly obvious massive 8-inch display on offer here which immediately makes the Go S look super impressive.

In terms of inputs we've got all of the usual standard controller stuff, two hall-effect sticks, action buttons in the Xbox layout, Start and Select buttons and you've got the back bumpers and analogue triggers. Interestingly the triggers have these little switches next to them which allow you to change them from analogue ones to digital ones by physically stopping them from being pulled all the way down.

In terms of retro gaming use cases, this is actually a nice feature because most consoles older than the Dreamcast didn't have analogue triggers so it feels more natural with digital ones for those older systems but then you can instantly swap back to the modern analogue style whenever you want to play something released more recently. This is really interesting and something I've never seen another handheld system do before.

On the top of the device we've got two USB-C ports which is handy if you need to charge and use a peripheral at the same time, a headphone jack, volume buttons and a power button. Finally on the bottom of the console, we've got a Micro SD card port so that you can expand the storage on offer easily. All standard stuff so far, but now let's have a look at some of the more quirky elements of the device.

Firstly we've got these two handy back buttons tucked away towards the centre of the device which are easy to press if you need them but out of the way enough that I never found myself accidentally hitting them. These can be set as hotkeys to have quick access to emulator settings like save states or fast forward which is super handy. We've also got this tiny mouse trackpad which is useful for navigating the OS, but the vibrating haptic feedback is way too powerful for its own good with it being obnoxiously loud, but luckily you can easily turn this off in the settings menu.

Obviously, we've also got a touch screen, so you probably won't need to even use the trackpad anyway, but it's nice to have both options available to you. We've also got two additional menu buttons above Start and Select, with the one on the left activating the Lenovo Space frontend and the one on the right giving you access to the sidebar interface where you can toggle the performance modes, see CPU and GPU usage, and activate a frame rate counter which is extremely useful for making sure your games are as optimised as possible.

The final thing worth pointing out is the D-pad which is a circular plate style one which aren't normally my favourites, but this one is pretty good, with it snapping into the cardinal directions to give you a great degree of accuracy.

Notable Differences From The Legion Go

For those of you who are familiar with the original Legion Go, the main difference that you'll notice straight away is that the Go S doesn't have detachable controllers, instead going for the more standard all-in-one unit. These detachable controllers were pretty cool, but in terms of actual practicality, I probably prefer just having a more straightforward attached controller setup like this. If you wanted to do any multiplayer stuff or connect it to an external display, you can obviously still do that by connecting standard controllers to the device anyway, so it's not like you're losing out on any features by having a more traditional design either.

In terms of the feel of the device in the hands, I have to say that it's very, very good. It weighs 1.61 pounds which is fairly heavy, but they've done a great job distributing the weight here so it actually feels much lighter than that without feeling too light that it comes across as flimsy. All in all, the ergonomics and inputs on offer here are pretty much perfect and so far I can see this being a very good option for one hell of an emulation powerhouse.

But enough gushing over the outside of this thing, let's dive in a little deeper and take a look at some of these specs.

What Are The Specs?

The Lenovo Legion Go S is in a little bit of a strange place at the moment because there are actually a couple of versions of it that aren't out yet that will make it the first third-party handheld to ship pre-loaded with SteamOS. The version I have here is the Windows 11 one which has 32GB of RAM, whereas one of the upcoming SteamOS versions will have 16GB of RAM and the same Z2 Go chipset which is in my version of the device and another SteamOS version with 32GB of RAM and the more powerful Z1 Extreme chipset. To make things more confusing there's also currently a 16GB of RAM, Windows 11 version and I kinda wonder if they should have cut this selection down a bit and just had two models; a 32GB of RAM with Windows 11 and a 32GB of RAM with SteamOS version that both have the Z1 Extreme chipset and both released at the same time to avoid all of this completely unnecessary confusion.

All of that nonsense aside though, purely looking at the specs of this particular version of the Go S, let's break the specs down.

We've got the AMD Ryzen Z2 Go chipset with integrated AMD Radeon graphics, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 55W per hour battery. The OS is Windows 11, there's WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity and it also comes with a year of Legion Ultimate Support and 3 months of Xbox PC Game Pass which is an awesome extra.

These specs sound quite fancy but this is actually one of the weaker handheld PCs on the market right now. Not only is it less powerful than some of the competition but it's even technically inferior to the original Lenovo Legion Go, but I would argue that the ergonomics offered by the Go S are superior, and I personally prefer the look of the Go S too, but that is probably just a matter of preference.

Something that beats a lot of the competition though is this screen. It's an 8-inch, 1920 x 1200 resolution display with an aspect ratio of 16:10, it has a refresh rate of 120Hz and goes up to 500 nits of brightness. Looking at the display here you'd think it was an OLED, but it's actually not; it's just a very, very nice LCD which honestly easily looks as good as, if not better than a lot of OLED screens I've seen.

The sheer size of the display and the fact it's a full HD resolution means that you're going to be able to massively upscale retro content and it's going to look absolutely phenomenal.

How Easy Is It To Set Up?

However, as we all know the setting up process on handhelds running Windows 11 can be a bit of a nightmare, so has anything been done here to streamline this?

Well... No. Not really. When you boot the device up it's just the standard Windows interface and you're going to need to do all of the stupid signing in stuff, getting rid of the bloatware that still comes pre-installed on Windows for some reason and then mess about customising everything to make it look less cluttered.

This isn't really a fault of the Legion Go S, it's just Windows itself being poorly optimised for all of the different devices that exist nowadays, but even so, this setup process could be a little bit daunting for a newcomer to PC handhelds like this and even for a veteran handheld enthusiast, it's still an annoying process to go through.

Once you've done all of that though, Windows actually becomes somewhat of a positive thing simply because everything will be compatible with it. Even games that don't run on the Steam Deck like Call of Duty will work here, so you're trading some user friendliness for more compatibility which could work out to be a good trade-off depending on what you're using this for.

In terms of my setup here, I'm mostly going to be running games through Steam Big Picture Mode so that things feel a little bit more console-like and I've also installed all of my emulation software through EmuDeck which is an absolutely amazing piece of software that will download and configure individual emulators to your specific device's hardware and even give you easy access to a frontend like Emulation Station and then connects everything together pretty seamlessly. You could install something like Bazzite which is an OS that aims to mimic SteamOS, but I feel like that's probably a bit advanced and I want to stick to making things as easy as possible here.

There's some emulators that do need further tinkering beyond this, like PS1 and PS2 needing BIOs files, Switch needing Product Keys and Title Keys, Wii, Wii U and 3DS benefiting from creating a Mii character and stuff like that, but again, this stuff is always going to need to be tinkered with on any device because emulation software developers can only do so much without bumping into copyright protection laws.

So yeah, it's not the most foolproof setting up process, but it's also not the most difficult either. I feel like if you know what you're doing, you'll be fine and if you don't, you can learn how to set everything up fairly easily with the help of online guides and video tutorials.

So the setting up process is a little bit messy, but we've got quite a powerful handheld for emulation performance, we've got great ergonomics and an amazing screen. I think it's time that we actually test out some games!

Game Time

Something I want to point out is that because the screen is 16:10, 4:3 content looks amazing here because we've got a little bit more vertical space to work with which makes the black bars on the sides of the gameplay appear smaller than they would on a standard 16:9 display. Plus because the screen is a huge 8 inches at a 1920 x 1200 resolution, you're definitely going to be able to take full advantage of upscaling across every retro system here.

The Usual Suspects

Any 2D retro systems from the SNES and Mega Drive and before are going to work absolutely perfectly upscaled to 1080p and these games are really going to pop because of the quality of the display. The D-pad being great also helps make these games feel incredible too and I can easily see myself playing a lot of SNES stuff on this device.

The early 3D systems once again are going to perform flawlessly upscaled to 1080p. So PS1, N64 and Dreamcast are all fully playable here and you can take full advantage of any analogue stick or analogue trigger functionality these systems have which gives the device 100% compatibility across every single game on these systems.

PS2 & GameCube

Moving up to the consoles that most cheaper Android or Linux-based handhelds struggle with, I'm happy to say that PS2 and GameCube performance is absolutely perfect even with a 1080p upscale. Even F-Zero GX runs at a full 60fps and if you're looking for a console to immerse yourself in this generation of games, the Legion Go S has you covered. Sometimes I feel like this is the generation of games where some handheld screen sizes are a little bit too small, but having this huge display is a real bonus for this era of games and anything more modern too.

To take full advantage of some of the more demanding games from this generation though, you're probably going to want to boost the performance mode up to the performance setting. This will allow the Legion Go S to use all of its power in order to get the best frame rates from your games as possible with the disadvantage being a drop in battery life and the fans becoming much louder.

For less demanding games or any older systems, you'll probably be fine on the power-saving setting with the fans on quiet, but you'll have to test this on a game-by-game basis.

The problem here is that the fans can actually get to a point where they're so loud that it becomes slightly distracting, even if you turn the volume way up you can still hear them over the game audio so if you're playing this in public you might want to stick to those less demanding games or somebody might think you're about to blast into the sky with your jetpack.

PS3, Wii U, & Switch

Moving on up to the more demanding emulation that is really only fully possible on handheld PC devices at this point, lets test out PS3, Wii U and Switch performance.

Starting with PS3, I have to say that things here are really good. PS3 emulation is still in its relatively early stages but it's quickly improving and becoming much more viable on slightly lower-end devices, meaning that games like Demon's Souls and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction are very playable even with their frame rates being boosted beyond what was possible on original hardware. I would have appreciated a setting on the Go S that quickly capped the frame rate of games here, because Demon's Souls was running pretty solidly at around 40fps in 720p but sometimes went into the high 50s and this makes things feel a little bit inconsistent and I would actually rather just cap it at 40 to make things feel smoother overall.

Wii U emulation always impresses me with just how great it is, everything I tested from Wind Waker HD to Yoshi's Crafted World ran flawlessly on the Go S and revisiting some of these Wii U exclusives in a new format like this always makes me think about how the Wii U is a little bit underrated in a lot of ways.

Switch-wise, I want to avoid showing any first-party stuff because Nintendo don't like that, but I did test out a certain popular kart racer and it ran in a highly playable state but was dropping frames every now and then. I did find that things did smooth out over time, so it seems that after the shaders have been cached, performance is improved but it's still not absolutely perfect.

Less demanding games indie games run like a dream though but for the vast majority of these you might as well just get the native PC versions because they'll most likely perform better at higher resolutions, this is a handheld PC after all.

Outside of emulating all of these retro games, another option at your disposal which is much simpler to set up is to use the included 3-month subscription of PC Game Pass which offers a small selection of retro re-releases to dive into. Admittedly the amount of retro content provided on this service seems to be very minimal, but it is an option that you can access at no extra cost.

Battery Life

A lot of people have complained about the battery life of this device and while it isn't amazing and will die very quickly if you're playing anything like Elden Ring or other fairly recent AAA games, on the emulation side of things it's quite decent. With PS2 and GameCube you're going to get around 2 hours on performance mode, with Switch, PS3 and Wii U this is dropped to around an hour and a half and with anything before the Dreamcast on the power-saving mode you're going to get around 4 hours of gameplay on a full charge. These figures are fairly loose though and it will somewhat depend on the exact game you're playing, but the ballpark is that for demanding emulation you're getting between 1.5 – 2 hours of gameplay and anything less demanding will be around 4 hours.

Final Thoughts

So, after all of this testing and weighing up the positives and negatives here, is the Lenovo Legion Go S worth picking up as an emulation device?

This is a great device for emulation, there's a couple of little things that stop it from being perfect, mostly coming down to that fan noise when you crank up the performance settings and the clunky Windows setting up process, but there's also a lot it gets right.

The screen, ergonomics and look of the Go S are all phenomenal and the performance is extremely impressive all the way up to PS2, GameCube and Wii U with it also being capable of great results from PS3 and Switch. These positives alone make the Legion Go S an extremely appealing console that I'm definitely going to continue to use in the future.

The major sticking point is the price. This particular model of the Legion Go S costs £649.99 which is quite expensive for the specs the device offers. The upcoming SteamOS version of the Go S which releases in May is going to cost around £399.99 which makes it instantly much more attractive because not only is it cheaper, but it also has a much more streamlined and user-friendly OS which instantly eliminates one of my negative points with the model I'm holding here. In fact the approximate price tag of £399.99 brings it into direct competition with the Steam Deck with it being smack in the middle of the 256GB LCD version and the 512GB OLED version which is a great place to position yourself in the market with a device like this.

So I guess my advice here is to either wait a little while until the SteamOS versions come out, or if you really prefer Windows as your OS, then the current Legion Go S is very good and will most likely meet all of your emulation needs even if it is a little bit expensive.

But what do you think of the Lenovo Legion Go S from an emulation standpoint? Will you be picking one up to turn it into an all-in-one console or are you going to be testing out some PC games on it? Let me know in the comments below!