I still have a 2012 Air. It's on its second battery, which is shot, but until recently everything else worked. Unfortunately the mic has mostly stopped working as of late. Still, we got a lot of use out of that thing, and my kids still use it--just can't use it for video conf any more.
Exactly, it's great to hand things down to family like that. And with the 2016+ laptops, with these known issues, its quite possible it just becomes ewaste with an expensive repair that you can't do yourself at home
