I got a Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P back in 2014. It was big, heavy, prone to getting hot if I used it hard for a long time, had about four hours of battery life, and is still working to this day. It's banged up, it's literally falling apart, but it still goes. It also had excellent speakers. It wasn't fun to transport, but it was a solid laptop. Nice key depth, too.
In November of 2017 I got hold of an HP notebook of some kind (I misremember the exact specs right now, but I kitted it out pretty nicely). This thing goes for about nine hours if the lid is closed (so it's great for music or audio and whatnot), and about six hours with the lid up. Its keyboard is absolute trash (I've had to replace it twice, and may need a third replacement eventually, but for now I'm using a cheap external keyboard that does the job) and its speakers are fairly tinny...serviceable, but not great. But it's seriously fast (boots in about eleven seconds), is very quiet, is extremely light (I can just tuck it under an arm and go) and its build quality, apart from the keyboard, is quite good. I shove it in a backpack pretty much daily, and there's still no sign of wiggle on the lid or anything like that.
So I can't make any recommendations, but I like my HP with the external keyboard, personally. The Lenovo had its upsides though. I've always wanted to play with one of those Dell machines, though.
Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1