There are a lot of laptops with soldered RAM.

That's a shame, it's a bit weird seeing someone having to limit what software they can use, and looking to offload things onto external machines, over something you can get 4 times the amount of (32 GB) for under $50 (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=sodimm+ddr4+32gb)

For the price point of entry level M1 Air or Pro, there is nothing that competes on battery life.

I'm in South Africa, with spotty electricity. I need a laptop that can sustain work for 4-6h without charge without spending an extra arm. Anything non-Apple that does this competes on the top end range, not entry level.

Cheaping out on hardware here just means I need to buy bigger backup batteries, so either way I need to spend a ton of money if I really want to avoid Apple that much.