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Now that apple has their own silicon, all the older intel based MacBooks are pretty cheap. I just replaced my wife’s 2013 MacBook Airs battery, upgraded the drive, and installed Linux. It’s been a solid little laptop. Not the fastest but there’s probably a few pro models within your price range. Just make sure to get at least a 16gb model since the ram is soldered. Might have issues with the webcam, but the wifi drivers are pretty good.
Definitely not just for handhelds. Check out Universal Blue images which are built ontop of Fedora Atomic (the immutable variant). Bazzite is an awesome gaming distro that’s rock solid. Bluefin is awesome for Devs and more technical people. But even for non-devs it’s awesome since the images are purpose build with and without all the devs tools. You pick your preferred DE (KDE or GNOME), and your graphics drivers.
Almost everything is setup for you that you would have to do mannually compared to Fedora Atomic, and additional quality of life tweaks are included as well.
Been running, Bazzite on my gaming rig for months now and it’s been great. Running the Cosmic/Gnome UBlue image on my framework laptop for months and its also been amazing.