I guess everyone has a different experience, then. I made a sport out of trying to kill an old Briggs & Stratton lawn mower by doing no maintenance at all. Running old gas, never changing the oil or anything else, just didn't care. It wouldn't die. Well, except for the self-propelled part, that was always a nuisance. But the engine was indestructible [0]. I finally retired it after 20 years due to rust, but the engine was still going fine.

I have my share of electric battery-powered lawn equipment, but I've already gone through one generation of batteries which rendered the old equipment obsolete. And the markup on batteries is on the order of 500% compared to what a generic battery of similar chemistry would cost. It's an excellent racket, very profitable.

I wonder about the people here on HN buying Ryobi stuff... maybe they're onto something. Normally I wouldn't touch Ryobi with a ten foot pole, because it's trash. But OTOH, it's cheap, so maybe the quality of the tool will match up with the expected availability of batteries so the TCO isn't as offensive.

[0] If you haven't seen those old videos where B&S demonstrates why the Slick 50 demos were BS, you should. Lawnmower engines are way overbuilt, mostly as an artifact of their small size. They're hard to kill.