I'd pick a brand that is good for what you want, then find a machine that meets that spec.
Most brands conflate "high spec" with "gaming", which is the opposite of what you need. I'd recommend looking at the business lines from Lenovo and Dell, and at the Microsoft laptop range.
Lenovo Thinkpads – good quality, business focused (read: less GPU, more CPU/RAM), Dell – pain to buy from, shitty sales, but I've heard great warranties and support for business customers, Microsoft – no bullshit, pretty much guaranteed to be great for Windows if that's what you want.
All my cards on the table, I'd just buy a Mac, likely a 14" MBP, but that's because I like macOS and the CPUs are very good at the moment. However if you're running Linux/Windows this is not a good option.
