I disagree. I loved my Thinkpad T450s so much I bought an identical used machine when I quit the job. Since then it's been stepped on, dropped onto concrete multiple times, had beer and wine spilled on the keyboard.
It cost me $250 + $100 for a battery replacement + $34 for a new keyboard (when the wine spilled on it, it still worked but the keys were sticky) + $150 to upgrade the RAM.
It's currently running Visual Studio Code, Photoshop, and prepping to run a pub trivia event later.
But this is all a digression - my larger point is that a $500 laptop bought today is going to have a lot more longevity than people will give it credit for.
See https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hvb60f/thinkpad_t...
and https://twitter.com/jacobgorm/status/1496099294159544321 for an acceptable workaround using Sugru.
But my current Dell Precision from work is a spectacular nightmare POS.
I love that the older macbooks can be opened up and fixed if needed. I had to replace the HD connector a couple times (and learnt to add some electrical tape to stop the issue), and I recently cleaned the old CPU adhesive off and added some new (old macbooks can start to smell like Body odour!).
With 16GB of RAM the macbook performance is still decent, able to run docker and run modern IDEs.
It's a great machine. The only downside is that you can no longer update to the most recent OS versions.
Im unsure about the 2012 MBP (not having had one), but if its an internal battery, battery death usually means user unfixable, for most users.
It blows all the “premium” work laptops out of the water.