I think the last time was in 2020, when you could still get the non-retina MacBook Air?
That said, the Mac mini and Mac Studio are reasonable to consider here, since they're sold without displays and I'd be shocked if the majority of them aren't used with regular 4k displays. (We're less than a year out from Apple having a first-party retina monitor at a vaguely reasonable price-point, still.)
No, but you can use Apple products with external displays that may not be hidpi. And of course with the mac mini an external display is the only display option.
This answers my question - In recent years I have used MacOS with 3 different external displays, and have never had a problem. Their resolution was always QHD.
It usually doesn't look as good, but it's not like distractingly bad.
That said, the Mac mini and Mac Studio are reasonable to consider here, since they're sold without displays and I'd be shocked if the majority of them aren't used with regular 4k displays. (We're less than a year out from Apple having a first-party retina monitor at a vaguely reasonable price-point, still.)