I'm holding out a little bit of hope that Valve puts out a laptop - the Steam Deck has notably good power management for a linux device of its class (and I've even heard of people using them as laptop replacements), though the idle power is still higher than a Macbook. They're going to have made a desktop, gaming handheld, and VR device; why not one more?
What would be the reason for their laptop to exist? People on the move get the steamdeck. Others get the GabeCube. Based on the steam hardware stats / graphics cards, there's very little laptop usage. I'm not sure there's enough market to get them interested.
College students playing video games in class? Also in dorm rooms where they don't have space for a whole monitor/keyboard/mouse setup.
But yeah seems like a game adjacent market... Which might be fine but isn't there MO.
The reason would probably have to be because the employees themselves want such a device; maybe there could be some angle of having an ARM dev machine for the Steam Frame. I agree that it seems unlikely though.
Maybe they will spend more than five cents and get a decent hinge? I would love to support Valve if the build quality is good and the price is decent.