If you have AppleCare you won’t have to pay for that replacement. After 3 years, you would, however buying a laptop with an inferior OS just in case one day a machine catastrophically fails is like riding a horse because you are afraid your car might fly off a bridge at some point in the future.

I know I am anecdote-land, but I have never in 20 years of using Macs, had one catastrophically fail. Or fail at all for that matter.