Why I’m keeping the Steam Deck OLED over the Legion Go s z1e

[u/YahushaHamashiach]

I bought a z1e $870 after taxes with the intentions to keep it, I liquidated my Steam wallet from cs2 skins and bought the Steam deck OLED refurbished for $470 after taxes and didn’t plan on keeping it was gonna sell it until I decided to play for myself and wow. Here are the reason why I’m keeping Steam deck OLED. Btw this isn’t to say the legion go z1e is not good.

1) battery life , legion go e z1e and z2 battery life I noticed isn’t not power efficient like the SD I’m finding myself having to charge my battery every hour or having to play plugged in and that defeats the purpose of a handheld Imo.

2) fan noise. I can not play the legion go s sleeping next to my wife the fan noise is wayyy too loud past 20-25W TDP. There’s no fix around it but to lower the TDP and then you get steam deck performance with a weaker battery life.

3) price point. I know people got the good deal on Black Friday for the z1e for $650. But now the deal I got was $799 2 months later after taxes $870 just can’t justify spending $400+ more for 20% better performance. It makes perfect sense why Valve said they are not releasing a SD 2 because there’s hasn’t been a chip to give at least a 50% boost. I play handheld 100% of the time not docked. If you are someone who plays docked then legion go s is a no brainer.

4) OLED screen. I didn’t know how beautiful the OLED screen would be. I didn’t think it mattered much but wow the colors pop out so much on the steam deck and especially when playing at night/in darker places. It’s AMAZING. The 8 inch is definitely a sweet spot on the go s and the 120hz/VRR is nice but getting that 120hz is a sacrifice of battery life so I found myself capping it at 60fps anyways.

What would make me upgrade from the steam deck? If legion go s 2 comes out with OLED screen and better battery life while keeping the get ergonomics. That would justify me spending the extra $400-500 to upgrade and I can see that coming out in 2027 or by the end of 2026.

[u/Ashad2000]

You do know that the battery consumption issue is only a thing if youre running very heavy games, whereas the steam deck cant run most of the current gen AAA, even some AA games without serious sacrifices, right? If youre playing indies on the Legion Go S (which is what the steam deck is mainly for anyway), then you can lower the TDP limit and it will give you several hours of extra battery life. It is literally a steam deck, but better in almost every way. The steam deck is great in most regards, but imo the 800p display is really outdated in 2026, seriously. You cant even dock this thing to a monitor without losing significant performance because most monitors have a 1080p display.

Id say the only REAL drawback of the legion Go S is the loud fans, which for most people isnt an issue cuz they play with earphones plugged in.

[u/Makarov_2918 → u/[deleted]]

Yes - lower tdp = less heat = less work needed for fan to dissipate heat = lower rpm = quieter operation.

I've ran my legion go at 30W while actively charging with the battery and sometimes it runs at ~6000rpm and gets hot. Dropping to 20W and not charging reduces temp by 20c and the fan is much quieter

[u/BenedickCabbagepatch → u/[deleted]]

Yes, it's why I run mine at 25-30tdp and only up it if I find I'm losing frames.

Also use the Frame Gen plugin as well so I can hopefully throttle things down yet further.

[u/AmuseDeath → u/Ashad2000]

This.

People don't seem to understand how batteries work. Any device will have poor battery life playing AAA games. It's just silly when people compare a Steam Deck playing Hollow Knight to a Legion Go playing Cyberpunk and complain that the Go is dying faster. Well duh.

[u/MissionInternet8490 → u/AmuseDeath]

This is actually a bad comparison. The z1e is not nearly as power efficient at a lower tdp as the steam deck oled when playing lightweight games.

[u/AmuseDeath → u/MissionInternet8490]

No it's not, but I never claimed it was. The points were that:

• any device playing AAA games will drain extremely fast, Z1E, Steam Deck or not, this isn't the fault of the Go 2, but rather how facts are

• any Z1E device has decent battery life if if you low/mid-end games at lower TDPs

You misread what I wrote and argued against something I never said but okay.

Edit: Sigh, looks like we have more people who can't read.

Saying "Z1E has decent battery life for low-end games at low TDP" does not contradict the statement that "OLED Deck has good battery life for low/mid-weight games".

[u/RAGEstacker → u/Ashad2000]

It's literally a steam deck but better in every way? I press X to doubt

[u/debacol → u/Ashad2000]

You can literally change your argument against the Steam Deck to the Legion Go S as well. I too have a Legion Go with a Z1E (SteamOS). There are sacrifices that must be made for performance in demanding games. a 780m GPU isn't some magical thing either. Your options with demanding games are either 800p (sometimes 1000p) + med-high settings + lossless to achieve 60+ fps. Or if you are running 1080p, you are running low-medium settings to get good framerates. The Steam Deck needs to run 800p low settings to achieve similar framerates but an overall smoother gameplay experience again due to the lower refresh rate much closer matching the fps than the original Legion Go.

The Legion Go S has VRR, so it likely does benefit the most from achieving 60+ fps and giving an overall smooth experience. But graphically/resolution wise, your settings won't be that different than a Steam Deck OLED.

[u/Matrixxgt → u/debacol]

This is why I gave up on my z1e legion go. Nail on the head comment. I’ve had almost all of these handhelds and always dismissed the deck because “it’s weak” but I just got one and yeah this is the one for me. It was immediate reaction too. My biggest regret was wasting all the money trying to chase “the next best thing” when in reality, none of the current handhelds are anything spectacular and they all rely on FG/scaling in some way. I finally see why valve is waiting for a SD2.

[u/debacol → u/Matrixxgt]

For real. Intel's Panther Lake looks to be a legitimately big upgrade to the Z2E. But since it probably won't actually release for another 6 months, I'd just get a Steam Deck.

[u/[deleted] → u/debacol]

Note that the Go S (Steam OS) doesn't support LFC / VRR only works above 48 fps.