My current laptop, the Lenovo ideapad S540 which I bought around 2019, is about five years old. It is broken - and I figured out that repairing is just not worth it:

• The two speakers are blown up, thanks to the shoddy repair done two years ago, when I sent them to repair the melted BIOS/UEFI ROM
• About two month ago, I had to replace the DC jack four times in a span of few weeks (the new one works fine, however, but I don’t trust it)
• The battery is dead, I’ve tried searching for the same on the entire internet but to no success, and I’m at the mercy of a continuous power-supply, which is not a thing in my country
• The top panel (which houses the keyboard) was swapped recently, and was also an expensive replacement, but the new one is of an inferior quality, so one of my keys has a key-cap with a permanent damage

I am looking for a new laptop now, but since I can’t afford to buy a good one, I am considering to buy something cheaper with a loan of some sort. Here’s a few constraints I had in my mind - they’re not hard constraints:

• Linux-compatible
• 16GB of RAM - no more, no less
• 512GB or 1TB of SSD - no more, no less
• No CPU + dGPU - I’m looking for a CPU+iGPU/APU combo (I’d rather have a good iGPU than a bad iGPU + dGPU combo)
• AMD Ryzen processors preferably (I’m sick of Intel, and my experience with AMD Athlon, despite being a weaker CPU, was pretty good)
• Specifically the Phoenix (7040 series) lineup, but also open to HawkPoint (8000), Barcelo-R (7030 series) and Rembrandt-R (7035)
• Don’t want the half-soldered + half-socketed “RAM Flex mode” config seen in most Intel-based laptops - it should be either completely soldered, or completely socketed - I would appreciate the latter, however
• Don’t care about the thickness
• Also, don’t care about the weight as long as it’s not heavy like some of those laptops that come with a metal panel (like my present laptop)
• USB-C based charger would be preferred
• RJ-45 port not a must, but would love to have one for convenience
• Will prefer a almost-no-bezel design
• WiFi driver should come with 5GHz support
• No fingerprint drivers (I have one, has no driver on Linux, so I’d rather avoid it)
• Comes with a web-cam shutter (physical or hardware-based, does not matter)

For now, I think that the target laptop should come with either the 7440U or the 7540U. 8440U and 8540U would be nice too, but they’re probably going to be expensive, and won’t be available, since they were launched about a month ago. But since Phoenix-based laptops are still not available even in 2024, I am open to looking for a 7330U (so far, haven’t seen any 16GB config with this APU) and 7530U-based laptop. I am still skeptical of Intel-based laptops, but I am open to recommendations.