To replace the 2012 which was mostly OK, but had blown speakers.

I still have an Intel MBP provided by my employer. I don't keep a personal laptop, it would just gather dust 99% of the time.

First, thank you for your reply. I am curious, after this experience, would your next machine be also an Apple with M1 (or the next iteration of it), assuming nothing else goes wrong?

Probably, this is my wife's computer.

We aren't attached to Apple, but finding build quality, battery life, high quality screen and likely to last 10 years is hard elsewhere.

Thanks for the insight, I hope it works out for you all.