[bbatchelder]

I follow more of this track as well...buy the highest end model and use it 2-3 times as long as you would a lower end model (but you're not paying 2-3 times the price).

My 2015 MBP made it to the end of 2021 for me - when the fans started to have to run constantly and even still caused thermal throttling - when I had 2 Thunderbolt external displays attached (thus running the discrete GPU). I think it was an OS bug introduced in Catalina or Big Sur.

I even tore down my hardware and re-applied thermal compound and clean dup the heatsinks...no joy.

Running "pmset -g thermlog" while using it sealed the deal for me. I was only getting a fraction of the CPU power when running on two displays (and this is when the ambient room temp was 68-70F). I had a day when my AC conked out for a day and the room temp jumped to 76-78F and it was unusable.

I am really enjoying my 16" 2021. Didn't realize how much of a slouch my 2015 had been by comparison.

That being said, I still rock a mid-2012 MBP for light tasks when I just need a laptop and not a desktop replacement laptop.