I realized that it'll be years before I can buy a Steamdeck where I live.
However, the frustration led me to discover something even better: it's possible to stream games to a tablet from my laptop (which is way more powerful than a Steamdeck).
So I bought a a clip on gamepad and attached it to a 10 inch tablet. The weight comes in within 10g of the Steamdeck and streaming over Moonlight is surprisingly easy to set up. Parsec is another app that looks interesting and you'll need to use that if you have an AMD card.
So now I can play an a super high quality 10 inch screen with zero fan noises and hours of battery life. I've played through most of Stray and it's a gorgeous game.
I still need to do some work - the gamepad I bought (Ipega 9083s) clips on quite low on the tablet which makes it a bit top heavy. It's also very cheap and the d-pad is a bit crappy. Neither is a deal breaker for a casual gamer.
However in the future I'll get a better quality gamepad. There's surprisingly few that can attach to a tablet but I've seen examples of people DIYing it with a Razer mobile gamepad that is designed for a Samsung Galaxy and it looks pretty easy. You can probably just detach the two halves and glue them onto the tablet cover in a stylish looking way if you have decent DIY chops and a dremel.
Oh and you'll also need a HDMI dongle to create a fake screen on the pc, then give it the same resolution as your tablet. These cost about a euro.
Bonus: I now have zero interest in buying a Steamdeck.
Yeah, also the Steam Link is quite nice, and I have used it with XBox, PS and Steam controllers.
Now the issue here is that I am trying to boycott Steam, what kind of open source support is there for Valve's hardware : Steam Link, Controller, Deck, whatever their VR headsets are called ..?
[0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-HID-Steam-Deck-Linux-6.3