Cautionary note - if this is for uni, think before choosing Apple. Our lad did Physics and his MacBook became redundant for academic use.
Blimey the girl is fast: looking at a 13" MacBook Air 1.6GHz 8th Gen Intel Core 15 128GB already...
General use.
Not sure what pro she had, I have a 2016 13 inch and its light as a kite, not as light as the air obvs, but light anyhow.
Its worth opening it up as it may just be that the ribbon cable is not seated correctly or some contacts have become oxidised/tarnished. A computer USB microscope is useful for looking at these very small contacts.I'm not touching another apple macbook, my 2018 macbook pro (£1900) started having some dodgy keys and finally ended up with the keyboard not working at all. Apple have refused to fix it as it has a dent on the corner despite the poor keyboard design being all over the internet.
Apple can go fvck themselves as far as I'm concerned.
If being used for, say, uni work, then it's the Macbook Pro hands down. If indeed it's just to consume media & doodle, then iPad Pro.
Disagree - the iPad is so much more that a simple scribbler and movie box
As to Uni work - that is entirely course dependent, for most it wold be expensive overkill - particularly as Uni libraries are stuffed with PC suites nowadays ...
Leaving that aside, there is the swollen/exploding battery syndrome that Apple won't talk about (destroyed my daughter's MacBook in her 3rd year - out of warranty of course...)
Why? If he desperately needed Windows functionality dual-booting any modern Mac is no huge issue.