Every laptop I’ve ever owned has been at the 500USD or less price point, and every laptop I’ve ever owned has had some kind of catastrophic structural failure in the chassis that causes the entire thing to gradually disintegrate after about two years, like clockwork.
Like, that must absolutely be something they do as an explicit design goal that forces you to buy a new disposable laptop just after the standard warranty expires, right? It’s not just me being bad at computer or something?
With a 500 budget, just buy a much more expensive device secondhand, preferably from the pro market
Thinkpads comes to mind but Dell has good stuff in that category too.
Also I still use a macbook air from 2013, no issues.