I use an Acer Aspire 7 (Intel i7, 32GB Ram, GeForce GTX 1060, 2.5TB of combined SSD-based storage, 17" screen.) I spent $1800 for the privilege... two years ago. You might get something similar these days for maybe $1200-$1300 or so?

I bought a laptop because my company (until COVID showed up) made me travel a lot.

Expensive? Yup. Worth it? Yup. You get what you pay for.

My gaming laptop performs better than most common desktops. I abuse the unholy sh!t out of the thing, it went on the plane with me every time I boarded one, and yet it has, so far, held up like a champ. My previous laptop, a 2012-era MacBook Pro, held up through SIX YEARS of constant travel + rendering + whatever... and yet, my wife still uses it today. I paid $2000 for it (plus a couple hundred bucks or so for more RAM and a bigger disk) - which amortizes down to roughly $500/year. I think I bought new fans for it once too, but they were like $25 or so.

If I had stuck with $1000 laptops, I would have been forced to replace it every 12-18 months (because laptops generally aren't made for the kind of CPU/GPU abuse that CG art entails), which would have meant an additional $3,300 - $5000 above and beyond that $2k.

Trust me - save the pennies and buy quality - it will last long enough to pay itself back over and over.