The Supercard is not at all a hack of the M3 product. In fact, I believe the Supercard was out before the M3 did. However, you're right in that it has slower RAM and therefore does not playback GBA binaries as well as other products.
If you want a product that has very good DS and GBA compatibility, the M3 Perfect + Passcard 3 would work fine. Alternatively, you could get a slot-1 device like the Supercard DS or R4 or M3 Simply combined with the slot-2 EZ-V 3in1 expansion pack, which will give you near-perfect GBA compatibility and other benefits. The expansion pack uses built-in flash, but you use software on the DS itself to write files from the microSD card in slot-1 to the flash memory of the expansion pack.
Homebrew devices should not alter your DS in any way.
There are a couple of brickers out there, but honestly I've never seen one myself, and the two that were released had very limited distribution, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.
There is the alternate firmware replacement called FlashMe. If you decide to go with the M3 Perfect + Passcard 3 combo, you can then install FlashMe to remove the need for the PassCard 3, as it will autoboot to the M3 Perfect. This also will provide bricker protection, as you can use the emergency recovery mode to reinstall FlashMe should your firmware get bricked. However, FlashMe installation involves bridging a contact under your battery cover, and technically it voids your warranty, though I've never heard of Nintendo returning any DS due to the presence of FlashMe. There are two versions - one that removes the health and safety screen at bootup and one that leaves it intact.
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