Tldr: Should I get a MacBook air or is there a windows that is powerful, yet long lasting and durable?

Hello,

To start with sorry for the long read.

I am currently a student in university, and my old Asus Zenbook is starting to reach closer to the end of her period. When I bought the Asus it seemed perfect, but almost immediately the battery life was subpar barely being able to last 4 or 5 hours when new, but everything else was good, and I was able to get a lot of stuff done in high school with it.

However, now the fan isn’t working causing it to over heat, half the keyboard isn’t working needing me to remap half the keys, and the touchscreen just cracked in the middle of typing something.

The reason I’m telling all this is to give insight to my mentality about coming to this dilemma.

The Zenbook when new costed about 800 euros, and I expected it to last pretty long, however it seems like my sister’s Hp Pavillion with an i3 10th gen, which barely costed 500 euros would outlive my device.

However the HP barely lasts 4 hours, and one thing my research has concluded is that Windows laptops tend to have a pretty short battery life, unless it passes the 1000 mark.

I have always loved Windows for its ease of use, but the lack of long battery life, and durability is causing me to look elsewhere, especially at the M1 MacBook air and M2 MacBook air.

I don’t game on my laptops and usually only use it for university stuff, YouTube and video calls. The portability of the laptop seems perfect, and it being fanless seems to be a great feature as I wouldn’t need to worry about dust getting in or the fan failing, furthermore when I touch it the quality seems to be really great. In addition to the quality macbooks seem to have a long durability, and from what I see a lot of 2012 and 2013 macbooks are still listed at nearly 200-400 euros on sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace hinting at its durability and ability to hold value.

But in the end of the day its a steep price, however I seem to be locked into this option as no windows laptop seems to be able to be able to fit this niche of powerful and good battery life.

And just to add, I don’t have any any apple devices that I use everyday.