I went with: https://puri.sm/products/librem-13/ it looks lovely (pure matte black with no branding gets my vote every time). The OS is a standard Debian derivative, so no surprises there, and I have the option of replacing it if I want to (haven't yet).

Build quality hasn't been fantastic to be honest - I had to return the first one because of a faulty monitor connection (but to be fair I had exactly the same problem with my 2015 MacBook too), and the replacement has a problem with its space bar. But the great thing is that I can unscrew the back with a normal screwdriver and have full access to the internals so if I get really bothered by it I can replace/upgrade/fix any of it. Purism support was great, and they encouraged me to take the back off and see if I could spot the problems, which really blew my mind after Apple support.

I've been using it for most of a year (writing this on it) and it's been a great experience. The article's view that "I'm no longer reliant on hardware" is true, though I haven't (yet) gone the next step of picking a different window manager and storing the setup for it in a git repo. It's on my to-do list though ;)