System76 laptops are top rate, customizable, and most of them quite within your budget. The specs are on par, and usually exceed, anything Apple produces. (Personally, I'm drooling over the Oryx Pro.)
They also ship with Ubuntu Linux by default, instead of Windows, which is quite a bonus. (Being custom-built for Linux, you can obviously swap distros.)
System76 laptops are top rate, customizable, and most of them quite within your budget. The specs are on par, and usually exceed, anything Apple produces. (Personally, I'm drooling over the Oryx Pro.)
They also ship with Ubuntu Linux by default, instead of Windows, which is quite a bonus. (Being custom-built for Linux, you can obviously swap distros.)
Have you tried their Pop!_OS ? It seems only be a ubuntu overlay, but I wonder if it's any good.