I'm running Manjaro (Arch) on a nine year old X220 with almost the same specs as the authors'. I'm getting 4-6 hours on a 4 cell battery (70% remaining lifetime capacity), which is almost two hours more than what I was getting with Windows 10.

Aside from needing to write a quick bash script to get the settings for my trackpoint to stick with systemd after reboots, it's been absolutely rock solid.

I don't know which laptop you're having issues with, but a $120 used Thinkpad (X/T/W430+ for dual external monitor support) and any modern linux distro will work out of the box with little to no fooling around and will keep up with almost any new laptop in terms of performance, reliability, and battery life.