My nephew just graduated high school, and wants a laptop. When he decides what computer to buy, price (or more precisely, value) is the most important attribute.
Apple's MacBook Neo upended the 'value laptop' equation—Apple's not supposed to be both the cheapest option and the best value... but it seems like that's squarely where the Neo landed for the good-but-cheap laptop category.
My nephew is also my godson, and to kick off his computing journey, I thought I'd let him choose from a Framework 12 I bought to test, or the MacBook Neo I bought a couple months ago to use around the studio.
I got a free, second hand Framework 13. It had a dead motherboard, but was in excellent shape otherwise. I bought a newer gen motherboard and some second hand RAM to move from DDR4 to 5. Kept everything else.
Works great. Only paid ~$500 for parts.