Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?

I’ve been buying old/new Lenovo/Dell laptops for the last 7 years, and I’ve noticed that the build quality of recent models is worrying.Lenovo: Ex-company gave me a new Carbon X1 around 2019, and the battery only lasted less than a year (!). On the other hand, I bought a used 2017 470S from the same company, added more RAM, didn’t touch anything including the SSD, and I’m still using it in daily coding. I bought a new battery last month so technically the old batteries should last about 7-8 years.

Dell: I bought 3 laptops + 1 desktop from Dell refurbished (so quality should be consistent). 2 laptops + 1 desktop are older models, and 1 is a Precision 5550 (2021) that I bought last December. Everything works fine, except for the 5550, which has problems with the battery (dropped from 31% to 4% in a few seconds) and (more fatal) the charging port (doesn’t charge from time to time). Even if I bought it new in 2021, I’d be surprised if it only lasted a little over 4 years.

The second issue is that the 5550 uses a USB-C port. I blame myself for not examining it closely before purchasing. I really hate those ports. Why is everyone copying from Mac?

What are my options? I can’t really justify the $2,000+ CAD price point for a new laptop, especially if it lasts less than 5 years. I would prefer a “low-end” workstation with 32GB of memory, but due to price I can only buy a 16GB non-workstation. I don’t gaming anymore but I still like a good integrated video card. I can’t buy Framework and other Linux laptops because they are expensive and generally not operated in Canada so delivery is expensive too.

I purchased a used MacBook Pro M1 16GB (2021) from my current company last month. I haven’t used it but I believe the hardware is good. The problem is that I don’t really like the software, so I thought I still needed a Linux box.

Did you find a sweet spot?