SteamOS offers up to 30% faster FPS than Windows 11 on handhelds, and way better battery life

That SteamOS is a much better bet for running games smoothly than Windows 11 on a PC gaming handheld is a conclusion that'll surprise no one - but some new benchmarking on this topic highlights just how much of a difference there really is.

As you might have noticed last week, a milestone arrived for a couple of handhelds that run Windows 11, namely official support for SteamOS from Valve.

This arrived primarily for the Lenovo Legion Go S, as part of an official partnership between Valve and Lenovo, and Dave2D (hat tip to Windows Central) was quickly on the case. The YouTuber carried out some comparative testing of Windows 11 versus SteamOS gaming performance with this portable, as you can see in the clip above.

• Read more: Microsoft delays the Xbox handheld to respond to the big threat from Valve

It's no surprise that SteamOS was the victor here, but the margin of the win may raise a few eyebrows out there.

In Cyberpunk 2077, SteamOS secured an excellent 59 FPS versus 46 FPS for Windows 11, and Doom Eternal was a sizeable win with 75 FPS beating out 66 FPS. The Witcher 3 saw a similar story with 76 FPS versus 66 FPS.

Helldivers 2 was a bit closer with 70 FPS plays 65 FPS, and SteamOS actually lost out to the tune of 63 FPS versus 64 FPS in Spiderman 2, although that isn't going to be any noticeable difference. Whereas Cyberpunk 2077 definitely was, with close to 30% faster frame rates for SteamOS in that case.

What's perhaps just as important was that the YouTuber tested battery life and found that SteamOS provided massive jumps here, at least for less demanding games.

Titles like Hades and Dead Cells lasted for two and three hours more respectively, doubling their running time compared to the Lenovo Legion Go S using Windows 11. And even a more demanding game, Cyberpunk 2077, ran for 1 hour 54 minutes on SteamOS instead of 1 hour 31 minutes, which is a useful 25% boost in battery longevity.

Apples and oranges

Okay, so yes, as we said at the outset, none of this is really a surprise. We're comparing a Linux operating system specifically built for gaming and nothing else, to a general-purpose OS from Microsoft which is designed to be a jack-of-all-trades.

However, it certainly makes the strengths of Valve's platform very clear for handheld PC gaming. On the other side of the equation, Windows 11 has obvious strong suits too, namely compatibility across all games, and particularly online titles (which rely on anti-cheat which is a big problem for Proton).

Microsoft is supposed to be working on a handheld mode for Windows 11, or at least it has punted this idea around internally - and we've seen hints of improvements for portables, such as the gamepad keyboard in Windows 11, and compact mode for the Game Bar.

Work on a full-on handheld experience, though, appears to be making slow, or even glacial, progress for Windows 11.