Your Lenovo example was quite surprisingly expensive for what it is. I don't personally consider them to be very appealing, but they do have a particular aesthetic that's more or less remained consistent for at least a decade, same as MacBooks, presumably with a few iterative changes. I'm looking at $4800 CAD for a 14" with 32gb of ram, 1TB SSD, and a pretty miserable looking screen. 1920x1200 seems insane to me in the current era, and I've used those screens, they ain't brilliant even for what they are imo. By the same token however, I do think direct cellular connectivity is probably quite nice to have, and that would make any future upgrade a much easier sell.
Pretty good connectivity though. Would I like a USB-A port? It's a tough call, but I'd take it in-place of HDMI if given the choice. Comes down to personal preference I guess.
Don't have a car though, sometimes rent, but I'd say most are pretty hideous and rarely avoid design flaws.
1080p is pretty reasonable on a 14" display, you can option a 2.8K OLED display but personally I think its overkill.
The x1 carbon is a light weight option, for similar weight to the macbook you can get a X1 Extreme which has 4K panels including oled, discrete graphics, etc.
No org ever pays list price for a Lenovo, typically they have around 40% discount.
I picked up my carbon X1 on sale for around 1300 AUD.
I have an X1 carbon with the newest screen and every day I think about changing it because of the screen. The rest of the device is absolutely perfect for my needs and I love it, but after getting used to sharp screens on phones and macbooks, I feel a slight ting of negativity every time I open my laptop and realize I'm going to be looking at the worst screen I own, on the most expensive consumer electronic device I own.
1200p used to be fine on a laptop, and OLED might be nice but idk much about how well they do these days yet, but 2.8k is a no-brainer, which I guess would be the equivalent to the bottom-tier Air. I've had a 2560x1600 screen on my 13" for 10 years at this point, it's tough to see how that's a compelling thing to look at for any period of time.
