Laptops and also smartphones dont last in my experience.. Too much miniaturisation imo. I dont buy them 2nd hand, I only buy new ones as they only have a limited life. Desktops on the other hand, will last forever, I buy those 2nd hand and they are so cheap but they function perfectly.. Also if something does break they are modular and its trivial to replace the broken part.
It greatly depends on the laptop, even within the same manufacturer. I have lots of old Apple gear that still works but is just too old to get security updates:
- 2012 13" MBP, works great with an SSD upgrade, and the hinge is still solid, which was not the case with my 2009 15" MBP where the screen literally ripped off.
- 2013 15" retina MBP. Great laptop, still plenty fast to use today, but runs a little hot and the battery life was never amazing.
- 2015 12" retina Macbook. Survived two glasses of water spilled on it, but the speakers and bluetooth died. It was miserably slow to use anyway.
My daily driver is now a 15" M3 Macbook, which has been amazing in nearly every way. Only minor complaints is that the ram maxes out at 24GB and I wish I had 1 more USB port on the other side.
