I usually buy laptops in the more affordable range. Last two were HP's, and both were AMD with their APU's that were better in terms of GPU. But not as good as Intel for CPU throughput. However, when running Linux there was appreciable boost in performance as part of what held the pre-Ryzen AMD cpu's back was Windows' scheduler being only optimized for Intel.
My older HP was all plastic and it came apart on me after a few years of constantly moving around with it.
Went with a nicer HP for (around $700 I think) that was very thin and all aluminum, and ended up breaking the hinge/screen within 2 years sadly.

I hear good things about Lenovo. ThinkPads were always a gold standard under IBM.
I personally love Dell Precision products, and I have a Precision laptop that's probably 15 years old and I only use it hooked up to monitors.
It's like an inch and half thick, and the display on it is the flat/matte kind which aren't pretty but they're good in bad lighting.
For performance I think Apple's new M-based laptops are probably at the top, but I don't know how reliable or well-built they are and they are very expensive.
Before Apple Silicon, Macbook Pro's had a terrible reputation, and people who repaired them didn't have good things to say either.