If you're on a $500 budget, then this sale will be one of the better 15.6-inch laptops you can find if maximizing both performance and portability for the price.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-Modern-15-office-laptop-now-just-499-USD-with-11th-gen-Core-i5-CPU-8-GB-expandable-RAM-and-512-GB-NVMe-SSD.596068.0.html