My requirements were kind of similar to yours, price range below 1000€ (~1130$), at least 8GB of Ram, at least a mid class i5/i7, 120+ SSD, Win10, connectivity, suitable for travelling, so preferably 14" or smaller and good battery life. One of my main review platforms I use(d) and trust is notebookcheck(dot)net (or in my case, the german version of it, though contents don't vary much and are mostly translated between each version of an article/review); they go rather in-depth on stuff like display qualities, noise levels, built quality, battery test scenarios, and maintenance possibilities, beyond the usual subjects other review pages usually cover too (there are other similarily high-quality review pages in english, especially for the american market, but those don't apply to me, so i don't have concrete recommendations). Other than that i have a few main online stores on which i search for fitting candidates. Usually there are about 5 candidates in a reasonable price range that emerge after getting a general overview, which i arrow down with the help of reviews and/or price comparing pages. So much about my process...
Since I wanted more connectivity than probably most other average users need, I did not go for Tablets/hybrids; otherwise the surface (pro) and lenovo yoga's would've probably fit well for the job; or an older-gen macbook, if you can arrange yourself with that (and find a good offer). I don't have enough time for a Linux machine to be my main workhorse.
My choice: Asus Pro B8230UA 12.5" i7 8GB RAM ~240GB SSD Win10 Pro for 800€ (~905$); a rather unknown model in a rather unusual size, but it has served me very well so far and exceeded my expectations in some regards even. I had only found full reviews on its larger sibling, the 14" B8430UA, which complained about a rather dim TN panel, but my model in particular seems to have a much better panel installed, from the looks of it an IPS panel (1080p btw) with lots of brightness, enough to give me no problem at all reading everything even with direct sunshine, a pleasant surprise (the seller had IPS display technology listed in its specs sheet, though these aren't always reliable in my experience, especially on display tech...). The lack of an HDMI port is something i also am not the biggest fan of, but other than that 3 USB ports, LAN (!), mini-DP (and VGA, it's a business model after all...) as well as SD card reader leave nothing else to be desired in terms of connectivity IMO. The other business features such as finger print sensor, smart card reader and trackpoint i haven't had use for yet, though i do very much appreciate the built quality, which has been excellent for travelling and general use. Backlit keyboard, mousepad, >5h / often >7h battery on WiFi and medium-high brightness under real world usage, connectivity speeds (USB/SD/LAN/WiFi), main storage and general performance have given me no reason to complain in more than a year of usage and the whole package delivers a way more rounded and efficient experience than the 800€ price tag might suggest; it definitely holds up to a "business-notebook" promise.
Now my biggest complaint, which also seems to deviate from its bigger sibling according to reviews praising its low operational noise, has been fan noise; while completely quiet in idle, the fan becomes not completely unbearable but still pretty annoying under bigger loads; the motor noise (not air flow noise!) is loud enough to be heard in the whole room when ramped up under big loads... This might be due to constraints from the small form factor and good system performance, resulting in temps around 85°C (185°F) Other stuff that could be taken into consideration is a now 2 generations old i7 (it's still quite adequate for most of my university workloads, but it'll always be the case that there will be newer and better models out at least every half a year or something for about the same price point, it's a never-ending cycle...). I would also recommend that any notebook nowadays at least has 8GB and preferably offers the option to upgrade to 16GB+ of RAM IMHO, I personally run into 80-100% usage of my 8GB under a load of Firefox (to be fair, i'm a guy who frequently has 15 or more tabs open...) + Spotify + either one of Matlab/Eclipse/another programming suite open (with Explorer, Thunderbird, Adobe reader, anti-malware and Discord running in the background for example), a quite common workload for myself.
Overall I'm still really happy with my purchase after over a year of almost daily usage, and I think I got lucky price-performance-wise compared to competitors. I can live with no native HDMI-port, might upgrade the RAM in the future, and thermals are still bearable for me personally with all the upsides the device offers. A better compromise than most competitors sub-1000€ could hope to offer IMHO!
Overall a recommendation to at least consider the Asus Pro models if you look into
Feel free to call me stubborn for not going with a hybrid or ultra-mega-slim whatever convertible notebook with only-USB-C-for-everything...
