>That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook.

Hard to be when other oems need to profit from hardware and pay windows/Intel/Nvidia/etc. For using their parts. But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do.

Apple just metaphorically throws out a MacBook at the slightest inconvenience, they don't even bother trying to fix their own devices.