> The laptop isn't running Linux yet, I'm not confident the battery lifetime story is great.

Depending on the laptop, you may be surprised. My HP EliteBooks (800 g8 series, AMD and Intel) are an absolutely better experience on Linux than Windows, it's not even close. I'm thinking specifically about sleep, of all things.

The other day, my 2020 845g8 (amd) laptop crapped out during sleep while on windows, but was not actually dead, since it was hot to the point that it heated a different laptop which was lying underneath (a 14" mbp, so a pretty chunky piece of metal). I had to forcefully power it off. I was under the impression that some windows or driver update had fixed this, but apparently not. This never happened on linux, ever, which is my main os for this particular machine since day one and I never turn off the laptop, only reboot it for a kernel update. The Intel one is fairly reliable on Windows, but it did crash a few times (garbled screen).

Battery life on the Intel model is better under linux (around +25%). On the Amd I can't comment, since I rarely use it on windows, and basically never on battery.

At the office I have a 27" 5k screen which I have to use at 200%. Windows is basically always a blurry mess for some reason, although it recognizes the correct resolution. The only way to be sure to have sharp output is by booting it up with the screen attached. Which then goes to hell when the screen shuts off (think going to the toilet). Wayland on Linux (sway / arch) just works and is always sharp.

I also can basically not connect my sony bluetooth headphones when running Windows. They connect instantly with LDAC under linux.

My Lunar Lake Zenbook has over 10 hours battery on Windows. Maybe Linux is ok, but I don't get the impression it's in the same category, much less ahead. But I don't use my laptop for much more than browsing and wsl2, and most of that is ssh.

I had a 2020 dell XPS 13 on which I installed Fedora. Battery life was an atrocious 4 hours at best, I tried out all the power management tools as well. Windows was much better. Not that I used it, I just kept it plugged in and running fedora. Still glad I returned the laptop eventually though.