I was excited to give Lenovo’s latest Windows gaming handheld a spin. Seriously. My mind’s been changed on PC game handhelds since the Steam Deck won me over. Loading Steam games on the go works surprisingly well on Valve’s hardware, which has opened up my ability to play all sorts of games I can’t find on the Nintendo Switch. But Lenovo’s Legion Go S, a more compact follow-up to Lenovo’s previous Legion Go, dumped buckets of water on my excitement. Over a year has gone by, and not much has changed.

Starting at $730, the Go S isn’t cheap, and it isn’t small, either. It makes the long, large Steam Deck look compact by comparison. And yet, Lenovo’s large 8-inch, higher-res 1,920×1,200-pixel 120Hz display, along with its comfortable analog sticks and buttons and triggers, seemed ready to show me some fun. If only I could play the games I wanted to.

5.0

Sturdy buttons and triggers

Can run games from multiple app stores via Windows

Crisp 8-inch display

Unimpressive game performance

Bulky size with no kickstand

Microsoft Windows gets in the way

The first thing I did was use my Microsoft GamePass Ultimate subscription to download some games to play. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle? I got a graphics/driver error, and it wouldn’t run. Forza Horizon 5? It loaded, slowly, and ran at such a terrible frame rate, even with lowered resolution and graphics, that I gave up. Madden 25, a game that won’t work on Steam Deck because of EA’s anticheat authorization requirements, did technically load up… and was so unplayable and stuttery that I wanted to cry. I lowered my expectations and tried some indie games. Chants of Sennar and Cuphead — all good there. Is this all Windows handheld gaming can do? If so, Microsoft’s Xbox app has no idea how to let me know what works and what doesn’t.