It seems crazy to me that the only way to get a Linux ARM laptop that isn't essentially a Raspberry Pi (or equivalent) is to buy a Mac.
I'd be happy to be wrong about this. If I am, please let me know where I can spend my money.
[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-6800U-Efficiency-R...
[1] https://gadgetversus.com/processor/apple-m1-vs-qualcomm-sm84...
Part of might be that -- and this is just an observation, speculation -- nobody seems to be licensing newer core designs in high volumes outside of server-class chips or explicit mobile SKUs. That means there's no volume to drip down to consumer parts. Everything is either a mobile SoC design or a high-margin server SKU, there's no mid-range option for a modern ARMv8.5 core -- which happens to be exactly the kind of device Apple targets with something like the Macbook Air.
The rumor is that Nvidia is aiming to get the Xavier/Orin series devices to have full upstream Linux support (GPU acceleration is a different story and needs Mesa, but may come later I suspect, since both the mobile and desktop GPU drivers are now open.) If that happens I think these would probably be the best alternative options you could get, in potentially mobile form factors -- but they are still much pricier when considering performance.
You can't drive a Nvidia GPU with anywhere near the same performance/functionality with an open source driver.
Corrections welcome.
Most ARM manufacturers for consumer hardware don't seem to think that working with upstream is a good idea. Intel and AMD actively work with linux developers to provide the drivers, and some other companies provide partial (with closed firmware) or complete documentation so developers can create drivers. On ARM side, some companies are fine while others are refusing to provide documentation: Qualcomm's modems and GPUs and Broadcom's wifi hardware are some examples.
You can always force the new Intel processors in low power mode (by activating only the low power cores, at least with Linux) if you want to save power.
Of course there are the other things a laptop is compose of that consume power.
Maybe Framework is the right company to bring an ARM + Linux laptop with decent performance and battery life.
Another option is an Android tablet with a keyboard, just pick one with an unlockable bootloader so that you can run your own software.
That said, I'd love to see an ARM option from Framework.
The likely OEM's the SOC for a laptop like this (rockchip, amlogic, etc) are mostly non-helpful. Though rockchip is getting upstream reasonably well now (IE you could probably build a mainline kernel that works).
But honestly, I would expect a linux laptop built with any on-market ARM SOC to be a mess right now.
There is actually one SBC vendor who runs linux in a container under the android kernel because the android kernel has much better ARM hardware support :)
(which is probably right - most of the SOC's you'd put in a laptop are being built mainly for android based set top boxes, tablets, etc)
It would take a couple iterations and dedicated work to get somewhere good.