It literally is a gaming computer. Its design prioritizes gaming applications at every turn, from the form factor to the unusually low-resolution display to the gaming-oriented features of the (default) operating system. It's optimized to provide the best portable PC gaming experience at its price point, and due to the fundamental power/heat constraints of the "deck" form factor it's pretty close to the point of diminishing returns regardless of how much you want to spend.
Ultralight laptops can match or exceed it in [burst] performance, but that's table stakes. They aren't designed for gaming, and if you try to play games on one you will understand that very quickly.
The implication was that laptop-class hardware and "gaming computer" are at odds with each other. Sure ultrabooks can play games, but they are not referred to as "gaming computers".
Am I a bad dad if my son doesn't know the difference? Because he's not chained to a desk he uses it for the same purpose as his high end custom built PC.
I meant it in the sense of, "it takes the place of and serves almost all the same purposes in usages as..."
You aren't a bad dad, but if you're going around the internet telling everyone the Steam Deck is "a gaming computer" you're going to mislead less technical people into thinking it's on par with a huge RTX 3070 laptop for performance, since that's what "gaming computer" usually means
It doesn't take a ton of compute or GPU power to play games from 5+ years ago, especially if they offered a good variety of settings. And when you include emulated games, that makes for a huge catalog.
