[ideonode]

I'd second this recommendation, given your price-bracket. My home laptop is a 2020 LG Gram 17 (which I've augmented to 40GB RAM and a 1TB Samsung Evo Plus SSD). The combination of sheer screen real-estate plus incredible lightness makes this a joy to work with. Obviously, it's never going to win in raw performance benchmark comparisons, but I tend to move any significant heavy lifting to cloud anyway.

What makes things easier for me is using it in conjunction with remote VSCode (into either local WSL2 or aforementioned cloud boxes).

Of course, if you're wedded to specific Mac software, then I'd imagine that an M1-based machine will be your only realistic option.