If you're really worried about indexation I think that's a fine solution. It's definitely easier to manage, and it'll also be easier to track pageviews in most analytics platforms. The only downside is that if someone emails or links to a category page with filters applied the recipient won't see it. But generally people share products and not category pages, so it's not a big deal. I'd probably go that route.

Also make sure that your category pages still update the URL when you go to page 2, or that page 2 is somehow also being indexed. You don't want products that don't get indexed because categories can't be crawled.