The cheapest Air is $999 for a fast but pretty limited 8G device. That budget gets you a 16G Meteor Lake Chromebook which runs Debian cleanly in a VM. It's true that Apple is doing a better job than it used to in serving the budget market, but Macs remain pretty exclusive. Similarly a low end Windows laptop with WSL is a better budget choice, though IMHO very inferior to the Chromebook in Linux integration.
The thing is that I don't really want a budget Chromebook (which certainly exist).
I want something for travel mostly. Ended up getting a new iPad Air recently which isn't all that light but probably fits my needs best as it now has a pretty functional keyboard and can easily be used without the keyboard as an entertainment/consumption device.
