Budget Gaming & School Laptop Options

Budget: $1,000-$1200
Country: USA
Use Case: Gaming (Resident Evil series, Borderlands series, etc), school, & digital art (on a Huion Kamvas 16 pro).

Hello! I am someone who, while I spend a lot of time on computers, doesn't know much about the current landscape of gaming laptops and so on. I am based in the US and I am looking to get a gaming laptop within a 1,000-1,200 dollar budget (obviously under 1k is fine too) but I am stumped as to where to start looking.

I have had an Asus Rog Zephyrus G15 since I can remember and honestly I have loved this laptop to death, so much so that when my first was broken, the only thing I wanted to do was replace it with another g15. Unfortunately, the one I replaced my original darling laptop with a year ago was secondhand (refurbished) and came with some issues that, while I didn't notice them at first, are mounting and I am looking to get a new laptop now.

As I'm anxious about trying to navigate through the landscape of all the available laptops, I have half a mind to buy another g15. Sure, I love this laptop and it has always kept up with my gaming habits, but I worry now that it's getting a bit old with the RTX 3060 GPU. Soon enough I will want to play RE:9 for example and my computer struggles a bit with hefty games now, even as I tend to play on lower graphics settings. What are some general recommendations for where to start my search? I don't need anything extremely fancy and though I play some chunkier games, I don't value playing with the best graphics and I'm more so looking for something I can game on, do schoolwork on, and use for digital art.

It is a must that there is a HDMI port and a USB port on the same side of the laptop as that's how I plug in my drawing tablet! I know this sounds like a gimme but I almost got a Rog Zephyrus G14 ages ago before realizing that issue.