Make of it what you want. For $400-500 I want RT. RT is at third generation already, it shouldn't be confined to the high-end still.
(Just to be clear, I know the suggested cards are cheaper, but I am willing the above amount, provided I can play with some level of RT.)
If you want to have a little fun with RT, you should probably look closely at RTX 4070, and if it's only a little more than you're willing to pay, then just set up a price notification (I'm sure there are a such service in your country too), and wait for a little discount. RTX 4070 is a good jump in raw performance over RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti, but RT performance varies a lot from game to game, so you have to see which games are relevant for you.
If you give up on RT, then RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT are probably better value, but then as you implied you might not want to pay that much in that case, so look at RTX 4060 then.
If I can't get anything decent (by my own standards) by the time my 1060 goes belly-up, I will happily go IGP.
Not likely going to happen. It's a moving target, so unless you want to play 5 year old games at low by then, the performance deficit is only going to increase, not decrease.
Sadly, games in general, even top games, are to a larger and larger extent mass-produced "shelfware" game engines with very poor optimization, so games in general are getting more buggy and inefficient in the last years. There probably will be gems that are 3x more efficient than the rest, and looks and plays amazing on a RTX 4060 in 4K, but those will be exceptions, not the rule.
I hate laptops with a passion. I'm a software engineer, I need the raw HP. And I've been building my own system for 20+ years. I'll just keep building whatever makes sense to me.
Totally with you on that. I can't stand laptops either, "neutered" desktops either (underpowered or throttling after seconds of load). Laptops have incredible inconsistent performance, are hot, noisy, and by the time you find a "desktop replacement", it has all the disadvantages of both and none of the advantages.
I'd rather stick with my old Sandy Bridge-E i7-3930K over any laptop today, if it wasn't for the fact that my 11 year old computer is a bit unstable.
If you're not dead set on gaming in 4K, you can get a very good gaming experience with a decent mid-range GPU today. I personally prefer smoothness over resolution any day.