I like the Carbons but I also have a Mac/use all three OS's

It's hard for me buy a brand new device though idk... What sucks about used devices is the battery and replacements are usually fake.

Funny M1 has been pretty good (cool) but with rider it was getting warm, open up htop and all cores working.

I'm a fan of the screen the most on Macs.

Eh... the newer models aren't what they used to be. They used to have arrow keys you could feel. Now it's all flat cost-savings.

I have some thinkpads privately and an M1 MBP at work. Bang-per-buck is best with the MBP, no doubt. The absolute number of bucks for a used thinkpad is super low and they live for a long time, so I have old thinkpads for light home use. The fact that anyone would go back to a thinkpad is surprising to me, but if you need win10/11 (or insist on no-VM linux) I guess it begins to make sense. On every other point they seem objectively much worse. (And I have a beard!)