Another area where the two brands take a different approach is how easy it is to take out the battery units. Steam Deck OLED is still loyal to the cause of smattering a generous heap of glue, which needs heating and prying to take the L-shaped battery out. The Legion Go makes it a tad difficult to access the battery by hiding it behind wires and brackets. However, removing it only requires you to pull flexible adhesive tabs, and it comes off without any risky business.

Notably, the internal engineering between the two handhelds is quite different. The Steam Deck was designed with repairability as one of the key priorities, and that reflects the moment you pop open its shell. In fact, Valve made some crucial changes over the past two generations despite the front design staying identical. iFixit notes that screw pillars on the OLED model have been upgraded with metal threads, which significantly decreases the chances of them getting stripped compared to the previous-gen’s plastic threads.

The Lenovo handheld could’ve done a better job with cable management and ease of accessing the internal components. However, both the gaming consoles still stick with soldered slots for the microSD card and the USB-C port, which is less than ideal from a longevity perspective. Overall, neither device is a repairability hell, but the Steam Deck came out on top with a repairability score of nine out of 10, compared to the eight out of 10 figure posted by the Legion Go.