As surprising as you may find it, Apple doesn't have a monopoly on good hardware. The stereotype of any non-macbook being a toaster is practically a strawman at this point (while people are so quick to forget the atrocity of the i9 macbook).
The M1/M2 chips are just that good. My old 2015 Macbook turned into a toaster/jet engine if I only looked at it funny, macbooks between 2015 and 2020 were garbage, crappy keyboards, crappy USB ports and the thermal energy monsters that are Intel chipsets. It only really changed with the 2020 Apple silicon laptops, and they are just that good. A blazingly fast workhorse with outrageous battery runtime that rarely ever gets hot, and I think I heard the fan maybe once? since I bought it 3 years ago.
I'm sure there are great laptops out there, but at least in my company the other Dell or Lenovo (including Thinkpad) machines just don't stack up to that.
Mac hardware is better though. My HP Elitebook from last year is a pretty good device: good screen, solid build, nice glass touchpad, really great keyboard. But the screen resolution is only 1080p, the battery lasts for 6 hours and the fan noise is meh. These are quite expensive premium Windows laptops that cost somewhere between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro.
Overall I'm happy with my Windows laptop considering that the competition for a Windows laptop is not better, but MacBooks are really a lot better with battery life, screen quality and fan noise.
Show me the laptop that is as good or better than the new 15” MacBook Air at the same price. Needs the same or better specs, build quality, and local in-person support (i.e. a worldwide dense network of retail stores). Good luck!
Dell XPS spec’d to meet the 15” MacBook Air requires the nicer screen which makes it $2,000, the screen is higher resolution than the MBA but it’s 100 nits less bright. MacBook Air is $1,700 after adding memory and storage to meet the XPS. The MBA is $300 cheaper for a laptop that is thinner, the same or better specs in almost every category, miles better better build quality (plastic trash vs aluminum) and actually has a network of stores throughout the world. So nowhere close to the 15” MBA, but I appreciate you trying.
The T15 isn’t available so I’ll look at the T16. The cheapest T16 is $1,570. The comparable MacBook Air is $1,500. The T16 has a 300 nits low resolution screen, slow DDR4 RAM (didn’t know they made RAM this slow these days), and is made of cheap plastic. And again, no worldwide network of stores to support your device.
So you’ve really failed to come anywhere close to the specs, build quality or support system of a MacBook. And this is without considering the huge advantages you get with Apple silicon over intel.
