The 11-inch MacBooks were compact, capable and good-looking. Discontinued in 2019, nothing similar's come along since from Apple, though rumors emerge now and again. The reason seems obvious: that segment is now occupied by the combination of iPads and Magic Keyboards. The problem is just as clear: as powerful as Apple's tablets are, iPadOS isn't MacOS and has many shortcomings for many kinds of work. Riccardo Mori's 2019 lament for the 11-inch MacBook stands the test of time, but the devices themselves are slipping: the last generation, from 2017, can't meet the computing demands of some current apps. I bought a "deadstock" one about 18 months ago and it's just not cutting the mustard.
I tried a few alternatives (including the iPad) but the sweet spot—11/12-inch display, ultraportable, neither low-end nor expensive—is still depopulated. Appropriately capable laptops tend to be too big and heavy (MacBook Air, obviously, or Asus's 13-inch Flow X13) or smaller (GPD has a pricey 10-inch model), and the few that get the screen size right are low-resolution Chromebooks/Netbooks with big bezels and plenty of plastic.
I found two good options, though, for old MacBook users looking for a similar experience at a reasonable price: Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go (Microsoft, Best Buy, Amazon) and Chuwi's Minibook X (Chuwi).
Microsoft's model is a little larger than the ideal, with a 12.4" display, but the bezels are small and it looks and feels surprisingly similar to the old MacBook. It's 10.95" wide, 8.12" deep and 0.62" thick, and weighs 2.49 lbs. The 11-inch MacBook was 11.8" wide, 7.56" deep and 0.68" thick, weighing 2.38 pounds. The Surface Laptop Go is on its third geneneration and prices start at $700. The low pixel density of the 1024-line display was my biggest annoyance (though I did like that it was 3:2, great for old games!) and you can't upgrade out of it. The performance of the 12th-gen i5 mobile CPU was fine.
The Minibook X, at 9.6" wide, 6.5" deep, and .68" thick, is a wee bit small. The 10.5" display's 1200 lines look much crisper, though, and I was surprised by how premium it felt given the very winning $350 price tag. The keyboard is wide enough not to feel cramped. While it uses the same processors as those netbooks (Intel N100/N150), the 12GB of RAM makes a difference and I haven't felt pinched when multitasking. It folds into a thick touchscreen tablet; I've barely even tried it in that configuration.
A third option I was interested in was Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Nano, which squeezed a 13-inch 2K display into a 11.5" by 8.15" by 0.55" case, but it's discontinued too. Prices for used ones start at about $500 on eBay. The business-class specs offer plenty of power, though, and it would be a better pick as a main machine if you have anything performance-hungry to do.
I settled on the Minibook, due to the lower price and good-enough specs, and have had no problems with it. It lives hooked up to the same 21.5" LG UltraFine 4k that I got years ago for the first 11-inch MacBook, acting as charger and external display.
