Framework is an obvious choice if it's within the budget

The Asus OLED Zenbooks are really nice with solid specs for the price (at least here in Canada)

I'll drop in because I'm sort of dissatisfied with my Thinkpad E585 and don't need to start another similar thread. The performance is sufficient (On 8G of RAM and an aftermarket SSD, should break a $20 note and go for 16), but the screen's dim and unpleasant, the battery life is less than stellar, and the build and servicability is hardly the same as the X230 Tablet it replaced.

But I love eraser pointers. Work assigned me a Dell with a 7th gen Core i5 a few years ago, and their eraser was far worse (I think the drivers, particularly using middle button for scroll, were the likely source of the suckage, but I was docking it to external pointing devices anyway). Is there anything else out there worth investigating? I thought some HP ProBook or Elitebook models have one, but I'm not sure if it's actually a decent execution. Probably doesn't help that I tend to be very Ryzen-oriented (too many AMD shares I bought too cheap to be not obsessed) and so this was among the very first Ryzen Thinkpads.

Maybe I just need to get a refurbished/newer "better line" Thinkpad rather than the "barely qualifies as a Thinkpad" E-series.

I'm currently a fan of Eluktronics. I haven't used their lower-end models near that $1k price point, but the two MECH-15 models I use have been fantastic.

I’d look at ryzen 7840U laptops, which should have similar gaming performance to the ROG Ally without paying a lot extra for a graphics card that may push you out of budget

If you want reliability, buy a business/enterprise line laptop, not a consumer one. For example Dell Latitude. However it might exceed your budget if you want a business laptop with a gaming GPU.