We ordered four pangolins from System76 and had issues with three out of four. Two were sent back for motherboard issues (video and power) and one was sent back because a metal support bracket had come unglued and was bouncing around the inside of the laptop. To their credit they did accept our return of all four even though one of the four had not exhibited any issues. It was depressing for me because I had always thought System76 was supposed to be the best Linux machines. The higher end Dell laptops are "the new ThinkPads of yesterday" as far as Linux support and solid machines go.
Compatibility with the higher end Dells has been great for me, but the hardware has been a raging dumpster fire in my experience. Monitors randomly turning off and on after the last firmware update, battery randomly deciding it's now at 5% even though seconds ago it said 60% (even after the battery replacement), fans failing and getting super rattly, the battery draining even when plugged into their $300 USB-C/thunderbolt dock I only have because they don't allow charging at >65W with non-Dell thunderbolt docks, etc. This is a $3000 Dell laptop. I'm never, ever buying a Dell laptop or recommending them if I can avoid it. Unfortunately this is my work laptop so any replacement is going to also be a Dell product...
If it weren't for the fact that I have to run Windows-only tooling for my job, I would have requested the Mac in an instant even though I'm generally not a fan of Apple.
I've used a dell latitude 5420 and I think it's got that quality. Always works. It has a few quirks (rarely hangs on suspend or similar) but no major problems.
The 5400s and 5410s had tons of issues with power, heat, and general acpi funkiness but the 5420s and 5430s have been rock solid for my org. I really want an AMD 14" Latitude but I don't think that's happening any time soon.
