From my experience with M1, M1 Max, and M2 Max laptops, I think the only real limitation to useful longevity of the M1 machines is configured RAM and Apple's willingness to provide software updates.
A point in its favor is that Apple is still selling the M1 MacBook Air new today as their entry level laptop, which is now 3 years old. And it's still a great machine with better performance and battery life than a lot of competitors and it's completely fanless. I expect Apple to push for dropping new OS support for Intel machines fairly quickly, but the countdown clock on M1 support probably doesn't even start until they stop selling them as new.
My previous Intel MacBook Pro was still perfectly serviceable 8 years after purchase when I traded it in, although it wasn't going to receive major OS updates going forward.
The only time I've had issues with my M1 MacBook Air 8GB is when I temporarily tried using it as a real dev machine while waiting for a backordered company laptop. As soon as you really hit that RAM ceiling due to running docker and big IDEs you really feel the performance drop, but until that point it was perfectly competent, and again this is a fully fanless machine.
A point in its favor is that Apple is still selling the M1 MacBook Air new today as their entry level laptop, which is now 3 years old. And it's still a great machine with better performance and battery life than a lot of competitors and it's completely fanless. I expect Apple to push for dropping new OS support for Intel machines fairly quickly, but the countdown clock on M1 support probably doesn't even start until they stop selling them as new.
My previous Intel MacBook Pro was still perfectly serviceable 8 years after purchase when I traded it in, although it wasn't going to receive major OS updates going forward.
The only time I've had issues with my M1 MacBook Air 8GB is when I temporarily tried using it as a real dev machine while waiting for a backordered company laptop. As soon as you really hit that RAM ceiling due to running docker and big IDEs you really feel the performance drop, but until that point it was perfectly competent, and again this is a fully fanless machine.