Expectations are lowered appropriately, I think. There are a number of other handhelds on the market. Of the high end PC handhelds that came out reasonably close to the Steam Deck, they have to trade away a lot of battery life to perform better than the Steam Deck. Valve was clearly optimizing for battery life and I don't think it was a bad choice. The Switch 2 isn't even held back by x86 and it's battery life is still quite painful.
Now, handhelds with newer hardware are definitely going to trounce the steam deck without having to trade away battery life, but I think they did the best they could at the price point and time.
