Dell XPS

I had a number of laptops broken by my children so decided >1k for a decent development machine was quite a risk! So last year I went to China (or rather, GearBest) and bought a Chinese machine that clones the macbook design for about $500 - www.gearbest.com/laptops/pp_6… - it has a fantastic screen, reasonable fanless processor and 8GB ram, + the equivalent spec would have been 2-3x the price at retail in the UK. I love it, tho I do miss a faster CPU from time to time, and have had no real issues, though some have reported build quality problems.

The Xiaomi Pro 15 gets pretty well reviewed for a more powerful Chinese laptop - and the spec is roughly the same as you'd pay $2k for from Dell or similar - but as with any of these Chinese models you can expect little to no customer support or after sales service so spending almost 1k for a machine with no warranty might feel a bit nuts.

If you're happy with the risks of buying overseas then techtablets.com seems to do pretty fair reviews, might be worth a look?

Whatever you buy, format the harddrive and all the bloatware that comes with and install a Linux distro. :)

A second hand Dell XPS 13, or if you can add $300 a Dell XPS 13 2017 (I don't like the 2018 version)