What do I look for? I'd like something powerful enough to run games, just in case I'm away from my console, but it'll mostly be used for work. Ideally I'd like it to be durable, because I'll probably have to take it on flights when Covid eventually burns out.
What's the lesser of two evils with Intel and AMD? One is run by a woman, the other talks about the future belonging to women.
I suppose I could buy used and negate that issue.
What's a good brand to get? I always had Lenovo before, except for a Surface Laptop that barely lasted a year.
Battery life is pretty important, unfortunately.
In that case I'd suggest getting a gaming laptop for gaming and a cheaper one for work. Any laptop powerful enough to run the most demanding games is going to consume a lot power, even when it's not running the games. There's just no way around it. I don't know what you do for a living, but I can't imagine there's anything you would be doing for work that would come close to exceeding what even a cheap piece of shit could handle. With the cheap work laptop you could focus on finding something with decent battery life since the other specs wouldn't be an issue.
Edit: I also wanted to add that gaming laptops are meant to be plugged in when running games. Trying to game on battery power will a) cause the battery to last than an hour on a full charge as opposed to the usual 3 or 4 and b) the game will run too slow to be playable as part of the computer's attempt to conserve power.