SteamOS on Lenovo Legion Go S beats Windows 11 in gaming performance

Lenovo launched the Legion Go S earlier this year, which is the first third-party handheld to officially ship with SteamOS. However, early tests have shown that SteamOS outperforms Windows 11 significantly in terms of gaming performance.

Recently, YouTuber Dave2D (via Windfuture.de) put both SteamOS and Windows 11 versions to the test, and the results were hard to ignore. In games like Cyberpunk 2077, SteamOS pulls ahead with almost 60 FPS, while the Windows 11 version struggles to hit 46. Titles like Doom Eternal and The Witcher 3 also ran better, showing frame rate boosts of 12 to 13 percent.

SteamOS isn’t just faster than Windows 11 in terms of gaming performance, but it is also more efficient. In lighter games like Dead Cells, battery life doubled under SteamOS, lasting over six hours. Even with a heavy-hitter like Cyberpunk 2077, you still get an extra 23 minutes of gameplay on the same hardware.

That difference comes down to how each OS handles system resources. SteamOS, built on Linux, is tuned specifically for gaming and handheld use. It runs fewer background processes and uses AMD’s Vulkan drivers, which perform better on Linux than on Windows in many cases.

On the other hand, Windows 11 was never really designed for small gaming handhelds. It’s powerful, sure—but also heavy. Fans spin up more often, the standby is less reliable, and the overall battery life suffers.

That’s not all; SteamOS has other benefits, too. It doesn’t require a license. That means future devices might be cheaper if they skip Windows entirely. The Legion Go S still ships with Windows right now, but that might change.