The track pads are for sure unique and cool. The lack of proper adjustable short-throw triggers and the non-mechanical buttons will feel bad to what I am used to. I may still get one for the reason you point out though, I could play Age of Empires with it and further embrace my casual nature.

There are so many videos of people going through insane quantities of controllers. I would say to take each with a grain of salt though, as a lot of preference comes in. For me, I wanted mechanical buttons + triggers, buttons on the back, and an option to switch to short triggers that felt better than a lot of the ones where a feeble piece of plastic seems to just slide in the way. I tried quite a few, gave some to friends, and ended up championing the GameSir Cyclone 2. It is not perfect, but it works with my Linux setup and feels great with all the clickyness everywhere. My gripe is how the thing looks: it isn't a pretty controller in my opinion. I think I got mine for around $50 with the dock included. I think standard is $50 without dock and $10 more for with the dock.

I do have my eyes on some other options though. Mostly because the start and select buttons are in a stupid spot on the Cyclone 2. Nothing has swayed me away from it yet though, and that has only been a problem in games where I push those very very frequently (I have no navigation skills and open my maps very often).

Notably, Linux support sucks with those. I have one, and you can't do any of this on Linux through their software. There are ways to do it still though, as you can do with any controller really.

Is there any 8bitdo controller with 4 additional back buttons, too? Those are clutch for dual stick games; I'm almost always remapping then to the face buttons so I never need to stop moving or looking to do an action.

But yeah; the touchpads are critical. So many games become playable with touchpads. Nested radial menus allow for effectively infinitely many controls, which allows for most simulation games. Many Path of Exile builds are unplayable without back buttons and trackpad radial menus, due to input requirements.

tbh, I often play games on my Deck instead of my gaming PC for the controller. It's really that good. (Although nothing beats kB+mouse for FPSs.)