A Dell Latitude 5520 Laptop, 15inch, 4k, 2TB SSD is $4,099.00 form Dell (after a 35% off coupon). A Apple M1 MAx 16 inch, with a far better display both in quality and display, better keyboard, same storage is also $4099.
Thinkpads are notoriously well made. 'shitty plastic' is ultra durable. Macs are great if you are ok being locked into the Apple ecosystem
In real world use I don't notice any difference in restrictions from my Ubuntu server.