Students at the university where I worked before retirement researched the environmental impact of PCs. Their conclusion: manufacturing is the most important part of the environmental impact. Using a PC consumes electricity, but even when a PC is kept in use for 10 years, the impact of that is still small compared to the impact of manufacturing.
I don’t think that in this regard, there is not much difference between PCs and laptops.
Students at the university where I worked before retirement researched the environmental impact of PCs. Their conclusion: manufacturing is the most important part of the environmental impact. Using a PC consumes electricity, but even when a PC is kept in use for 10 years, the impact of that is still small compared to the impact of manufacturing.
I don’t think that in this regard, there is not much difference between PCs and laptops.
Also, halfway modern devices (last 15 years) have far smaller differences in efficiency than devices from the 10 years prior.
Basically everything with DDR3 RAM, give it a SSD and you’re good.