Glad to see that there are laptops that don't suffer like this. But I think the combo of having a steam deck + business laptop beats buying a gaming laptop. Assuming you already own a gaming rig at home.

20 years ago, I had a midrange laptop with a dGPU and while it played games with mediocre results, the laptop experience itself was also mediocre. Stupidly, 10 years ago, I bought a laptop with a dGPU again, but because NVidia didn't play nice with Linux back then, I don't think I've used that GPU for more than an hour or so.

Never again. A laptop with a dGPU runs counter to the things a laptop should be. Keeping gaming activities on a desktop is the best option in my experience.

A few months ago, I started working at an e-waste recycling company, and discovered that used Microsoft Surface tablets are what I've been looking for. My work "laptop" is a Surface Pro 5 with Debian (my work desktop is an Optiplex micro). I'm typing this on a Surface Go (with BlissOS) that I bought for myself. The cameras don't work on either and the work Surface never knows it's battery status, but I don't care (it lasts an entire afternoon with a barcode scanner, good enough for me).

Almost any Ryzen laptop these days will have faster integrated graphics than a SteamDeck just due to the age of the chip set Valve still uses.

I've had 2 now from different manufacturers and the firmware seems alright due to the integrated nature of the API making them all fairly homogenous.

Well, I do play games on my laptops. But that's just a nice perk, what I bought them for is 3d content creation.

Also, comparing a steamdeck to a modern gaming laptop is like comparing a $1 water pistol to a super soaker.

That is my current approach as well. A steamdeck/switch/none + FW13 while traveling.