Several years ago, PC laptop makers used to give you 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB SSD in the midrange models as they had to give you something more because Apple Silicon was so good (and Apple's build quality was better too). What later happened is that the PC makers upped their game to make stuff with better features and now they're charging for it.
The PC companies also span the market from $200 Chromebooks to $6,000 gaming monsters like the MSI Titan 18. But there are a lot of sales in the $600 - $1,000 area for people on a budget and they give you fewer features so that the people that want those features will spend between $1,000 and $2,000 for them. If they have the money and the features are worth it to them, they'll go upmarket or add options.
The PC world also has a crazy number of discounts, coupons and sales. I saw a $1,800 ProArt PX 13 for sale for $1,250 at Best Buy three weeks ago. After the sale was over, it went back to the normal price of $1,800. Could you ever imagine getting 30% off a MacBook on a current year model? I've never run into a deal like that.
So if you want a nicer display, more RAM, more SSD, the ability to add SSD or RAM, then you're going to pay for it. The upgrades will cost less than what Apple charges for RAM and SSD. I received a Lenovo Yoga this week and going from 16 to 32 GB of RAM was $50. Going from 512 GB to 1 TB SSD was $50. I can upgrade the SSD to 2 TB buy just buying the NVMe SSD myself and replacing the one that came with it.
The model I got was about $2K. I paid $1,514 after coupons and discounts. Last year's model dropped to $1,300 after this year's model was launched. They cleared them out at fire sale prices. So the time of the year can matter a lot on the price you pay.
There is a lot of cheap crap in the PC world. I'm in r/Lenovo and people there complain about their laptops failing after six months or a year. But you find out that they're in other countries where the weather is a lot warmer and they don't have air condition or they paid $400 for the laptop. I don't think that I'd touch a lot of PC models on the lower end of the price spectrum if I wanted it to last more than a few years.
Intel put the RAM on the SoC for Lunar Lake so your RAM options are limited and you can't add your own. If you want to add your own, you probably need to look at 14th gen Intel or an AMD laptop. I am personally pleased with the Yoga I bought - 14 inches, good battery life, runs cool, 32 GB of RAM, 4K UHD OLED and 1 TB SSD for $1.5K. The build quality and usability feel comparable to my M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16. The MacBook Pro has better speakers, bigger screen, and the performance is comparable. The M4 MacBook Pro would blow it out of the water but I don't need heavy performance for this laptop.
I think that there are competitive products in the Windows space for Macs today but the huge problem is product discovery. If you want to buy a MacBook, the options are relatively small and you know you're going to get great battery life, performance, build quality and support. It is much simpler than to look at Dell, HP, Samsung, Acer, Lenovo, MSI, Razer, Asus, GPD and other brands - each with their own records on build quality, support, warranty policies, etc. And some of these companies have a very wide range of products so figuring out where to start when they have five models with comparable specs in different price ranges means you have to figure out where they did the cost cutting.
