They are all quite fragile now -- nothing like my battle tested 2015 15" MBP, nor your indestructible 2017 MBA, both of which hail from a vastly different design era.
Indestructible is totally right. My 13" Air has been everywhere with me, from gnarly cat sitting to hectic tarot reading to English teaching and everywhere in between. My 11" Airs have travelled oceans with me in the hell that is airline coach class. I love my A1181 mainly because I learned how to repair Early Intel Macs by taking them apart, but for a ride-or-die computer, I'll still reach for my 2017 MBA. I suspect it's the same for you and your 2015 MBP.
I still yearn for the days when I could easily strip down a MacBook and replace the thermal paste, fans, or display if something broke, on top of the RAM, battery and mass storage. They just don't make 'em like they used to.
As for durability, again I think people are just lying or making things up. I've had my M2 Air for 6 months now, and the solidity of it and sturdiness does make it feel like a tank. If you just dropped the old Airs once, the aluminium would cave like butter. This seems much more solid, and perhaps the form factor also makes it always less likely to be dropped in the first place. It's really nice.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, or maybe I'm just letting alarmist posts on Reddit get to me. At first blush, my M2 Air certainly feels solid – at least, no less solid than my 2017 Air does.
The smaller size of its chassis, plus the presence of MagSafe 3 does make the M2 potentially less likely to be dropped, but then I look at how frakking thin it is and can't help but wonder if I'm going to experience something like Bendgate on the iPhone 6.
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