definitely avoid lenovo

asus make very nice laptops, so do IBM

HP, MSI are ok, but not great

if you want to just unpack a linux thing and use it, system76 is good that way

if you are ok with using a proprietary OS, my personal recommendation from years doing tech support is asus, nicest overall for the price, is ASUS... Thinkpads are solid also good, but kinda dated looking even the new ones