Ever since Valve released SteamOS for handheld manufacturers to use as they please, we've slowly been seeing companies adopt it as an officially supported OS on release. Now you don't have to strip out the pre-installed operating system manually and hope that SteamOS works with your new hardware; now you can purchase a handheld with Valve's OS right out of the box.

Lenovo disappointed fans of SteamOS when it announced it wouldn't release a version of the Legion Go 2 with the Steam-based system pre-installed. However, if a recent leak is to be believed, it seems the company has had a change of heart for the better.

Leaks reveal that the Lenovo Legion Go 2 may get SteamOS as a default OS

As spotted by Notebook Check, this leak comes to us via Evan Blass on X. Evan recently posted several galleries of screenshots, which they titled "Legion Go 2." It looks like they're stills from an official reveal video that hasn't been released on the internet yet.

If you want to take a peek at the stills, you can head over to this post by Evan Blass and pore over all the details. However, there is one image that piqued some interest, and let's see if you can spot it too.

See it there at the bottom left? That looks like a Lenovo Legion Go 2 running SteamOS, if you ask me. There's even the little Steam logo at the bottom left of the screen. This is quite the surprise, as Notebook Check also noted that Lenovo said it had no plans for a SteamOS version of the Legion Go 2 during CES 2025 in January.

So, if the leaks are to be believed, why did Lenovo do a U-turn on its original stance? There's a good chance it's because SteamOS ended up running significantly better on the Legion Go S than Windows. The discourse began when a YouTuber claimed that Windows was actively causing Lenovo's handhelds to run poorly compared to SteamOS. We then became curious and gave it a try for ourselves in the XDA labs. We discovered that SteamOS destroys Windows by up to 75% on the Legion Go S. Additionally, SteamOS has already deterred one of our writers from ever returning to Microsoft's OS.

I'm not sure about you, but if I were in Lenovo's shoes right now, I'd want to get SteamOS on pretty much every handheld I release from now on. As people discover that Valve's operating system unlocks the console's full potential, it'd be foolish to continue offering only Windows versions of the handhelds. Whether the SteamOS version of the Lenovo Legion Go 2 will be released alongside the Windows version is yet to be seen, assuming it is released at all. But my hopes are up.