our experience is entirely different. sister is using a lenovo (rs.24000) having intel n series cpu 4gb ram for over 6 years. i added a sdd some 3 years back. it worked fine till 6 months back when it started some issue with many keys.
[Begin longpost]I always tell my friends that in the end these devices are just machines. They will either work fine for years or give problems from the start.
For the same reason you mentioned, I bought my wife a Lenovo laptop a few years ago. It's plastics are much more stronger than the hp but it has a terrible IPS screen.
To her its perfectly fine but I cannot unsee the backlight bleed, the 1 soldered RAM, the inability of the m.2 slot to run sata SSD, mobile phone like charger with a 1mt wire.
In comparison, my hp has no backlight bleed, 2 user accessible ram slots, m.2 that can run both nvme and sata and an AC adapter that can be connected to the other room.
Both laptops are 7 years old now. Both work. Both have the same CPU. Only one works much faster than the other and has a more capacity. You can take a guess which one.
I would suggest you to check the lenovo website for a service guide for the model of laptop you have narrowed down. It will help you understand it's upgrade capability and repairabilty.
[End long post]