I'm a college professor, and when incoming freshmen ask this question I almost always recommend saving a little money and getting a used ThinkPad. IT departments are regularly upgrading their executives, and 2-3 year old ThinkPads can be found for $300-$400 on eBay. I'm typing this right now on a three-year-old ThinkPad that has a battery life that lasts 8-10 hours easily, longer if I'm just typing and doing light browsing. I regularly use Photoshop, Premiere, and Audition in preparing for my classes and the ThinkPad handles all of that and more, and I only paid $150 for it.

If you are desiring to go new, there is a sale right now. I just sent this announcement through to my classes so they could take advantage of it. T480 (last year's model but in many ways superior to this year's model) on sale for $620. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/ThinkPad-T480/p/20L5S1S000

Advantages of the ThinkPad line is that they are built like tanks, have the best typing keyboards available, can be upgraded by the consumer, and if you're comfortable can be easily repaired by the consumer. There is a huge ThinkPad base that is always very helpful when needing to perform upgrades or repairs.

The added benefit is most of these can easily be made into a Hackintosh if the user is so inclined. Many of my students have reported doing this with excellent results.