pls reccomend an engineering student laptop

hi! im about to start university as a computer engineering major, and i would love some reccomendations for good laptops for running linux (distro tbd but looking at mint).

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

• Country

Canada

• Budget

2500 CAD, 1800USD maximum

• Are you open to refurbs/used options?

VERY much so, i would prefer a premium model from a few years ago to a new midrange

• Screen size

14" is preferable, as i would like for it to fit in most backpacks

• Weight limit

Weight isnt a massive factor but preferably under 2kg

• Purpose

note taking with long battery life, light gaming with integrated graphics, heavier gaming while connected to an external gpu

• Form factor

standard

• Intended usage

while on battery, just productivity tasks such as note taking and emails. when plugged in on integrated graphics, i would like to be able to play genshin impact on low settings at at least 30fps, preferably 60 and do light coding. when connected to an egpu at home (tbc but looking at smth like a rx 9060 xt) i would like to be able to run similar games on mid-high settings at 120fps.

• Desired battery life

given the low performance i require for tasks on battery, i would hope for at least 8 hours on low performance, hopefully more

• Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life

battery life (9/10) > performance (when plugged in) (8/10) > size (6/10) > weight (4/10)

repairability and upgradeability werent included here, but i would put these between performance and size as i would compomise on a slightly chunkier frame for non soldered ram and ssd, and preferably other components

• Info/Requirements

i really dont care about monitor or speaker quality as i will mostly be gaming on an external display, so if a shittier display saves battery then so be it.

i would prefer it to be integrated graphics without a dedicated gpu for portable battery life, and because i will use an egpu for all performance tasks. however, i would love if the integrated graphics could play on low settings when the computer is plugged in

i would like the laptop to be as modular and repairable as reasonably attainable, upgradeable ram and ssd are quite important to me but if i cant have them then 32gb and 1tb respectively are a minimum.

other things such as build quality and lighter weight are of course nice to have; i have mostly looked at recent generations of the thinkpad t14 and p14s, and the framework 13, but i am very open to reccomendations from other companies!

thank you so much for reading this!