I personally liked the Wii U.

But I don't think that the bar for success is going to be that high. With a console you might spend many millions on R&D for controllers, the chipset. 
A lot of times you want your device to sell many 10's of millions so that other companies support it, you get licensing, and a large consumer base to buy random games. 

A lot of these things aren't considerations for this. It doesn't need support aside from OS support. It probably was very cheap for R&D, it's just using basic parts. 

It's probably like the earbuds they sell, they probably are just hoping for a million people to buy their high margin item.

1. A major deal breaker for me is not adding to the game clock/game log if you play offline. If I was per say to travel on airplane and not have access to Wi-Fi, my game log wont be updated.

2. I dont plan to use any other apps/launchers.

3. I'd rather save the money and get a laptop if that is the case for both Steam and emulation - and on top of that to be able to do other stuff that I would use a laptop for in general use.

4. No use for me

Edit: With your points, fine - the PS Portal is more useless - regardless, still not getting either device because its not worth it for me. The PS Portal is literally the worst device Playstation has made since the PSVita.

It seems rather affordable considering the usual inflated asking price of these second-tier PS products.

Will be interesting to see how the streaming quality hold up; what kind of latency can be expected and to what degree the image is affected by artefacts.
The Wii U Gamepad actually had a very low level of latency for what it was, it was quite an impressive bit of tech in that regard.

Also, yeah, needing special PS branded headphones is a bit of a yikes.

The price of the Pulse Explore Ear Buds really ticks me off. For the same price as those buds I could buy a Switch Lite.

Why are the buds more expensive than the headphones? Will they keep selling the Pulse Headset (which I own) for $99?

I mean the price doesn't mean that much. Presumably these are good quality headphones/earbuds.

The headphone company that SIE just bought, seems to sell earbuds ranging from $900 to $2500, and headphones up to $4500.

I'm not into handheld gaming at all, but if devs are allowed to use it as a secondary screen, GT7 HUD in your hands instead of on the tv, I could be persuaded. (Well not with GT7 as I rather play that in VR). However it has no touch screen capability? So not even useful for inventory management... (If it was possible to act as a second screen)

Anyway, I miss the WiiU gamepad, this doesn't look like it will offer anything like it.

Yeah. I would like for Sony to re-enter the handheld market.

Nintendo needs competition as they are a handheld only company now and are dominating that entire market... You need that second player to keep them humble, Microsoft does this for Sony with the home console market.

Cool as it would be to see Sony re-enter the handheld market properly, it would be almost impossible for them to do so successfully.

They already couldn't manage adequate support for the PS4 and Vita simultaneously; supporting both the PS5 and a handheld close to the PS4 at once would be even more difficult, and likely lead to severe software droughts for both platforms.

Can count on one hand the number of times I've used my PS Vita for remote play. This isn't for me.