Fedora is stable enough (never have any crash with Fedora for 5 years, as long as I remember on Thinkpad), and it's bleeding edge, most of software that's just published, will be available in most fedora repo less than 1 day, as I remember. If it's not rolling release, then what is it? Or the term of rolling release is different?
If you care about battery, well you need to consider macbook, they have better battery management, just I don't know how it's under linux. 2nd if it's design, go twith macbook. If it's not then always go with Thinkpad.
Yeah. Sadly I can't. But I also can't live with.. Gnome bar.. I need native xfce with no CSD. But since gtk4 it's harder 😔