The Xiaomi Air 12 is really good quality for ~$550 if you go for the m3 CPU. It's fanless (but only 4 GB of RAM), which is something I love.

It's a different price point than Lenovo. Much cheaper. They are good ultrabooks.

Regardless of the CPU you choose (e.g. i5 has 8 GB, but it's not fanless), all 12 inch models have Intel components only, including the wireless card. It's one of the few laptops that truly runs well on Linux out of the box with zero glitches.

Only a few classic Thinkpads are better, with even good ACPI support for battery discharge events. But that's really rare, and does not make much difference if you run a HAL like UPower to abstract your ACPI-battery.

There's a few ThinkPads where you can remove the BIOS and replace it with Coreboot, and remove Intel ME as well. For example the ThinkPad T60 and X200, available on second hand market. Replace the keyboard if you find it dirty to use those 2nd hand. The advantage these have is the hardware is serviceable by the user.

These Think pads were released 10 years ago, it's a really bad idea to invest in used hardware that old. They can fail anytime.

Thanks. I find $550 a bit expensive. Linux Mint runs flawlessly on a Lenovo S120 (11.6"/4GB RAM/32GB SSD) but I can't upgrade the SSD and that's a bummer. Can't complain, though, it was $170 new from Amazon...

Asus Zenbook UX305 also support Linux 100% out of the box. It’s essentially a MacBook clone with 13” 1080p screen, m3, 8 gb ram, and 256 ssd. I currently use one with Mint Linux and is happy with it.