I still own an HP ProBook 640 G1 from 2014. It is not a museum piece. It runs Windows 11, it has been opened more times than my two newer laptops combined, and every time I open it I am reminded that repairability used to be a baseline expectation, not a premium feature. The newer Dell 2-in-1 and MacBook Air that replaced it for daily use are faster, lighter, and almost impossible to service at home. That gap is the story.
Why the ProBook still works
The ProBook 640 G1 was not built to be a repair icon. It was a mid-range business laptop with a removable bottom panel, user-accessible RAM slots, and a 2.5-inch drive bay. None of that is exotic by 2014 standards. What makes it stand out today is that the same design choices made it trivial to keep alive through three operating system upgrades.
Back panel slides off after you unlock a single latch, with no screwdriver involved. Once the panel is off, the RAM slots and the drive are right there in the middle of the chassis. Upgrading from 4 GB of RAM to 8 GB took me about ten minutes. Adding a 128 GB SSD (a solid-state drive, the standard fast storage in modern laptops) for the operating system took another fifteen. Both upgrades happened on a kitchen table with a single Phillips head. That is the whole point: repair should not require a service event.
The battery is also removable. I have replaced it twice in twelve years, and each time the swap took less than a minute because the battery slides out without tools. Compare that to a modern laptop where the battery is glued to the chassis, requires a heat gun and a suction cup to remove, and voids the warranty if you try. The ProBook does not have a “warranty” story for these tasks because the manufacturer assumed the user would do them.
What changed in the newer laptops
My Dell 2-in-1 is a touchscreen convertible from 2021. It is fast, the screen is bright, and the pen input works well. It also runs hot enough that I keep it on a cooling pad. When I opened it to clean the dust out of the fan, the components were packed so tightly that I was afraid of breaking a ribbon cable just by lifting the cover. The battery is internal and the SSD is soldered to the motherboard. Upgrading the RAM is not an option because the RAM is soldered too.
The MacBook Air is from 2023. It is silent, it is light, and the battery life is excellent. The storage is also soldered, the RAM is soldered, and the only serviceable part is the bottom panel screws, which require a specific pentalobe driver (a five-pointed security screw shape Apple uses to discourage opening). I bought the 16 GB RAM configuration upfront because I knew I could not upgrade it later. That is a $200 decision I made at purchase time because the laptop does not allow the cheaper path of “buy 8 GB now, upgrade to 16 GB in two years.”
Both newer laptops share the same pattern: every component that could be a service event has been engineered into a permanent part of the device. The reasoning from the manufacturer side is sound. Soldered parts are smaller, lighter, and more power-efficient. From the user side, the cost is that a single failed component means a motherboard swap instead of a $40 part swap.
What the right-to-repair data actually shows
The right-to-repair movement (the push for laws that require manufacturers to make parts, tools, and repair manuals available to consumers and independent shops) has been gaining ground in the US and EU. The numbers behind the headline are not great. iFixit, the most-cited repairability scoring organization, gives modern ultra-thin laptops an average repairability score around 4 out of 10, and the trend across the last decade is clearly downward. The 2014 ProBook I own would have scored 8 or 9 by the same rubric. The 2023 MacBook Air scores a 3.
Economic data is what finally got legislatures interested. When a $1,200 laptop is scrapped because of a $30 battery, the waste stream shows up in regulatory filings. The EU’s recent repairability index, which rates devices on a scale that consumers see at the point of sale, is a direct response to that gap. The US has followed with state-level right-to-repair laws in New York, Minnesota, California, and Oregon, all of which require manufacturers to make parts available for a defined window after a product’s release.
For a consumer buying a laptop today, the practical question is not whether the device is “good.” It is whether the device will still be serviceable in five years when the battery wears out, the storage fills up, or a single component fails.
What I would tell past me
Three things I wish I had understood when I bought the newer laptops:
- Repairability scores are not optional research. If you keep a laptop for four years or more, the score matters as much as the spec sheet. A laptop that scores 3 will cost you a service event when a $40 part fails.
- Soldered RAM is a $200 decision you make at purchase time. If the laptop is not user-upgradeable on RAM, you are locked into the configuration you buy. The savings on the cheaper SKU disappear the first time you need more memory.
- A removable battery is a safety feature, not a relic. The glued-in battery is lighter and slimmer, but it is also a fire risk when it ages, and the only safe path for replacement is a service center. The ProBook lets me swap a swollen battery in a minute without tools.
When you are shopping for the next laptop, run through this short checklist before you click buy:
- Look up the iFixit repairability score. Anything below 5 means you are accepting service-event costs in the lifespan.
- Check whether the RAM is soldered. If yes, buy the RAM you will need for the full life of the device.
- Check whether the SSD is soldered. Same logic as RAM. A 256 GB soldered drive is a hard ceiling.
- Check whether the battery is glued. Glued batteries can be replaced, but the cost is real and the warranty usually voids.
- Search for a teardown video on YouTube. If nobody has posted a clean teardown, the manufacturer did not design the device to be opened.
The ProBook I am writing this on is twelve years old and still useful. That is not nostalgia. That is what laptops used to be.
Trade-offs
Modern laptops are not a step backward in repairability by accident. Soldered components are smaller, lighter, and more power-efficient. The trade-off is service cost. A $1,200 laptop with a 3 out of 10 repairability score will, on average, cost more to keep alive than a $900 laptop with an 8 out of 10 score. The savings at purchase get spent on service events later.
A second trade-off is performance. The ProBook 640 G1 cannot match a modern MacBook Air on any benchmark that matters. For users who need the performance, the modern device is the right buy despite the repairability cost. The framing is not “old laptops are better.” The framing is “if you do not need the peak performance, do not pay for it in service events.”
The migration from “I can fix anything in this laptop” to “I have to ship the laptop for a battery swap” is the cost of the last decade of design. For a power user who keeps a laptop for five years, the question to ask is whether the $200 you save at purchase on a non-repairable model is worth the $400 service event you will pay in year four.
If you keep your laptops past the warranty window and you do basic upgrades yourself, the answer is to buy the more repairable model. If you replace every two years on a corporate refresh cycle, the trade-off barely shows up.
Bottom line: the laptop market has shifted repairability into a premium feature, and the only way to push back is to vote with the spec sheet. Look at the repairability score, look at whether the RAM and SSD are soldered, and look at whether the battery is glued. If you cannot answer those three questions from the product page, you are looking at a laptop you cannot service.