Microsoft and Lenovo both offer full-metal laptops with good rigidity and build quality. The Surface Book is weird but feels great in-hand. Trackpad is quite good, but, the whole thing is a giant gimmick. Lenovo X1 line has an all-metal option. I haven’t handled the 2019 version but previous iterations were quite nice - in a totally un-Apple-like way.
Unfortunately, there’s no retailer out there that I trust to actually display these high-end laptops so you can go actually get a feel for them. The Microsoft Stores was the best bet, but those are all closing. I shopped for an all-metal laptop 2 years ago after leaving Airbnb and was wholly disappointed with this $600-$1400 lineup at BestBuy. I ended up getting a Huawei Matebook Pro X (sic) from the Microsoft Store in San Francisco. I put Linux on it, but were I to do it again I’d just spend 2x more on an actual MacBook.
I also looked at the Matebook... and came to the same conclusion, and just bought an M1. The Matebook felt like it was trying to be a MacBook without being a MacBook (down to the marketing page for it).
That said, to me the existence of the Matebook _proves_ that what I'm after should be possible, and it just comes down to nobody actually doing it.
Unfortunately, there’s no retailer out there that I trust to actually display these high-end laptops so you can go actually get a feel for them. The Microsoft Stores was the best bet, but those are all closing. I shopped for an all-metal laptop 2 years ago after leaving Airbnb and was wholly disappointed with this $600-$1400 lineup at BestBuy. I ended up getting a Huawei Matebook Pro X (sic) from the Microsoft Store in San Francisco. I put Linux on it, but were I to do it again I’d just spend 2x more on an actual MacBook.