Pick up a slightly older workstation or flagship model. If it has dedicated graphics, that’s the best you can get. It’s a really good, repairable option that can last for a really long time. It’s the “waste not, want not” option and probably the most utility per dollar you can go with a laptop.

eBay thinkpads have been my last few laptops, ranging from t430 to t480. Depending on your use case you can pretty easily get one running for under $100.

I bought a refurbished T480 for $200 back in March and installed Debian on it.

As a work laptop I use to console into servers, a second screen I watch youtube videos on, and something I take with me when I travel, it exceeds all of my basic computing requirements and I’d say it’s definitely worth the money.

However it hasn’t been a completely smooth experience. My Trackpoint has never worked, the trackpad sometimes doesn’t wake up when I open the lid, and the laptop sometimes hangs and can only be saved by a hard reboot. Considering the performance I get 99% of the time I’m using it, it’s a totally acceptable level of jank for the price point.

Extremely cheap for performance and build quality via ex corporate market. Strong linux support and l largely unchanged form factor means parts are also cheap and widely available. Even stuff like trackpad assemblies can often be swapped between styles.

Performance is adequate for normal enthusiast computing. Excessive for common videos + internet but cheap enough to justify.

They’re good /shrug but they’re just a thing. Do what makes you makes you happy, you don’t have to impress anyone it’s just a grid of lights that make you sad in a distracting way.

you can get replacement parts for relatively cheap. that’s honestly the main hardware advantage they have. post-lenovo the build quality is just okay,

Replaced my stolen from work failing Razer with a T14s gen2 AMD two months ago and it’s been great so far. I haven’t tried gaming on it yet since I mainly use this for homework and hobby coding but for $300 it’s decently powerful and the battery lasts me 2-3 days with light use.

Got really lucky to find a model with the 5850U for the same price as the weaker model because the seller locked themselves out of bitlocker or something.

Unfortunately some of the newer models don’t have easily upgradable ram so if that’s something you need definitely look into it before buying.

Older models are sturdy (IBM ones are very robust but are also too old), probably better with replacement parts availability.

Two-battery models, like X230-X270 models (and others) can have a lot of battery power put into them. Mine has 72Wh external + 24Wh internal, and I can hotswap the external one, so if I want to I can buy a second 72Wh battery to style on everyone else.

Generally good Linux support, but do look specifically how well whatever you are buying is supported.

edit: the models I mentioned don’t seem to have magnesium alloy chassis, so while they might look like a close range weapon, you probably shouldn’t use them that way.

I have a t480 with the added battery and the thunderbolt dock for my desk and it’s great. Whatever you put on it these were the last computers built like this and it shows.

I did this and I love it, I went with the tried and true t480 plus mint and it was super easy to setup and it’s decently quick and very nice to use.

They’re cheap(edit: and available second hand), they’re well made, they work good, they got that keyboard nipple mouse.