I get asked this a lot and I'm honestly a bit out of touch with that budget level; as a developer I spend up on my machines. Has anyone done the research already?
Thanks!
My personal favorites are the Thinkpad T series which are super practical and still built like tanks. But any old corporate Ultrabook should do you pretty well.
Hopefully folks can chime in on specifics of models etc. but for this price point my first assumption is used hardware may be relevant.
I’ll post relevant links if I can find then
I paid $700 for mine, used, about 18 months ago. Upgraded the ram to 64gb ($90), added another 1TB SSD, and got a dock ($30?)
The price to performance ratio, the durability of the hardware, the portability, the ease of use, they are all unmatched. It’s the best deal in laptops.
If you get your average $500 windows laptop, you will be buying another one before the MacBook shows any sign of age.
I also think they are quite delicate - the aluminum and glass construction makes them very susceptible to spills and drops. And repairability is garbage.
After a couple of "incidents" having to deal with repairs from commonplace accidents I instead travel with a Thinkpad and leave my Macbook Pro permanently parked on my desk.