We are mostly an Apple ecosystem household and all the kids had Mac laptops by HS. Our HS even (redundancy in our case) supplies every student with a Macbook Air (part of their Covid equity solution in 2020). I only say all this to demonstrate a starting bias for Mac…
Despite all that our HS son researched on his own and instead asked for a MS Surface Laptop Studio and it’s been game changing for him. He never bothers using his old Mac or school Mac anymore, or his old Ipad. It (and others like it – there’s roughly similar 2-in-1’s from other brands) is perfect for students. He uses it as a regular laptop but also takes it to class, flips it into tablet mode and does all his class notes on it. And his homework, even if it’s hand written – he scans the original page and uses the pen to hand write the answers but that way it’s all organized in one place on one device (and backed up in the cloud). He’s also in various school bands and even puts his music on their and places it in tablet mode on his music stand instead of sheet music. He’s also found online versions of most of his textbooks so this laptop is really his one-stop-shop for all things.
My wife is now kind of jealous and thinking about switching when her next upgrade rolls around.
Here’s what he got: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-laptop-studio/8srdf62swkpf?activetab=pivot%3Aoverviewtab