I don’t actually use laptops as laptops, they are just PCs to me, I plug in a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers, or I have them in rooms with quality speakers plugged in to use as a stereo while I’m working in that area.
That approach is just fine too. I used it particularly in my consulting jobs, setting up workstations both at home and at the customer’s offices if I needed to be there very much. Sometimes the laptop was mine, but very often the customer wanted to supply the laptop, have their IT team maintain it (particularly with regard to security), etc. Either way, the laptop(s) got shuttled back and forth a lot.
My laptops get used a lot in our kitchen too: Prepare food or eat while listening to music (over good external speakers, as you do), catch up on weather, news, FR, e-mail, etc. :-)
I also don’t particularly understand why desktops with limited ports are even much of a “thing” anymore. Few of those low-end users are going to be getting in there under the hood, such as to add an expansion board. If you are going to have the real estate available, fill it up with ports! The one exception might be in business or educational uses, where a SFF desktop or better yet a small tower or tower is a bit more conspicuous than a laptop, to carry out of the building...