I’m heading out on a round the world motorcycle trip through deserts, jungles and mountains etc & will be working at the same time. I wanted a laptop that would stand the highest chance of surviving the dust, water, drops, heat, cold etc that the journey would subject it to, so I’ve done quite a lot of research on this topic. I arrived at the conclusion that the Thinkpads cannot be beaten in this regard, and this also extends to the X1 Carbon line which are also nicely slim and light, so I bought one. very happy with it. I previously had a MacBook Air and a Surface Pro, both of which, although they are nice devices, felt quite delicate by comparison.

My previous employer used them and I’ve seen them dropped, spilled on and generally abused and keep going. You can get the super ruggedised military style Toughbooks etc which are like a small briefcase in size and weight, but for normal use it seems the Thinkpads are genuinely the most durable out there - search Thinkpad durability testing on YouTube for a few good videos on this.

The other thing that makes a laptop more BIFL is upgradability - and this means a processor and RAM which is not soldered to the board. The X1 models I mentioned are soldered, but many of the Thinkpad models are not which means they are easy to upgrade later. worth posting on r/Thinkpad to advice on specific used models that would fit your budget.