Despite my daily driver being my i9 16" MacBook Pro, I've started falling for the Thinkpads. Had a couple E-series before but right as the pandemic started I gr

Despite my daily driver being my i9 16" MacBook Pro, I've started falling for the Thinkpads. Had a couple E-series before but right as the pandemic started I grabbed a used i5 X270. Swapped in a 1080 IPS screen, an SSD, and eventually 16GB of RAM so I'm at about $500 for a machine that can do everything I _need_. Charges with IBM chargers or USB-C. Has enough ports. Can run macOS in VirtualBox and I've even built iOS apps on it. Handles light gaming. Matte screen. Cheap enough that I'm not paranoid about damaging it. Yeah the used market prices crept up, probably due to families buying up laptops for online school students, but you can still catch bargains. Unfortunately much past the X280/T480 generation and you stop being able to upgrade things yourself. It's like I see in the used Mac Mini market where there are a ton of otherwise useful machines from 2014 but they're crippled with 4GB of non-upgradable RAM.