Recommended Business Laptops with USB-C Charging and GFX other than Thinkpad?

[MajorEE]

Didn't see any other recent threads so forgive me if I missed them --

My Acer nitro s5 just kicked the bucket with a broken hinge and I need to get a something new but all I seem to be finding is Thinkpads at a huge price premium. ~$3k US and 4+ month lead.

Any recommendations for business use case before I dump that kinda cash on a T15 G2?

Goal:
- USB-C Charging (Portability factor, easily charge in car/plane without huge brick)
- Graphics Card (MX450 should be sufficient, or something similar)
- 16-32GB RAM
- Thunderbolt - External GPU for docked applications if/when larger more complicated stuff comes up.
- 15" with numpad for symbol entry purposes
- >1080, 2k would be awesome, 4k would be invisible to me at 15" (I run a 4k 27")

Use Case:
Matlab, Simulink, LabVIEW, Python, C/C++ (35%)
Solidworks (25%)
Altium (40%)
General office (w/multiple monitors)

Pre-pandemic I was on 2 flights a week and traveling a ton for work. I don't need something ultra portable, or high performance, but I would like to no longer have a 1 hour battery life with a 10kg brick of a power supply.

It seems that if I dump the USB-C and any concept of weight and battery life I could go with a standard gaming laptop for $850, but I'd like to hear what you folks have to say first, and at that point I might as well just stick with my desktop.

Thanks!

[nctnico]

I always have had good experience with the 'for business' laptops from Dell. It looks like some models support thunderbolt and USB-C charging. Otherwise Toshiba could be worth looking at but I have not had one in my hands for over 2 decades. Just stay clear of anything that is targeted at consumers.

[nightfire]

The HP Zbook range offers some models that should address lots of your requirements- have my own (well, work-provided) Zbook 14 Gen1 for 6 years now...

[rsjsouza]

My work provided me with an HP Elitebook 840 G6 fully loaded that has been working quite well for the past year. Great quality keys, ports and overall finish.

I am also a big fan of Dell business lines, but my last three year run with the Latitude E5510 left me with a bad taste and with the impression the quality is dwindling. The laptop had great specs, but the battery swollen after just 1-1/2 years of use (out of warranty already), which almost took out the touchpad. The replacement was expensive (although on company dime) and I have 7~8 year old Dells (Latitude E6520) with batteries still in great health.