Best laptop for year 7 plus

[Nohero]

Hello,
We were planning to buy a laptop for DC2 on starting secondary school but given the amount of online learning happening now, thought it might be easier to do that now.
We are an apple household and DC1 has a hand me down MacBook Air but it’s not brilliant; I think the storage is very low which makes it very slow.
I’d rather not shell out for a brand new MacBook; what would be a good option for a robust, reliable easy to use laptop that won’t break the bank?
Thanks in advance.

Maybe a chrome book?

If you make a gmail account then they can use google docs/sheets for most homework and don't need to store things in the computer drive

Thanks. Any particular brand/ model? There are a few, I believe.

We've just bought a refurbished windows laptop. Good spec, they install new hard drives, provide warranty etc. We got a lot more memory, particularly RAM for our money.

The reason we did was so that dd could use Roblox Studios. This is where you can bike your own games - it is quite hungry and you need a decent spec.

The disadvantage compared to a Chrome book or a Mac is that it took quite a while to set up. The others are quite simple out of the box but this tool half a day on and off installing and tweaking.