Deck is great value, and as a general purpose PC it’s more than capable, but the main focus should be on how are you going to use it. Laptop has the benefit of being one piece thing that you can grab on a public transportation or any other place and you get access to your usual PC stuff with full blown keyboard. If you need to finish your essay before arrival, you can do so. However, if you want a laptop to game on, it will be either chunky (which defeats the portability argument) or expensive. Also, while having Deck, you can still access your notes, scans, books etc everywhere from the comfort of Deck’s gamepad.