A while back, I used to think hard about whether to purchase AppleCare to extend the warranty on a new MacBook Pro. Now, it's a no-brainer. Believe me, I know from hard experience that you won't regret it.
The lack of repairability and fragility of recent models has driven up the repair price and the need for repairs so much it makes AppleCare vital now. Apple outright lied in Europe for years about warranty duration to upsell AppleCare and went to court multiple times before they stopped, these "replace most of the computer" repairs might be nothing more than a dark pattern sales optimization. During iFixit's live teardown of this device it turned out there was plenty of space for socketed ram and storage, as is consistent with devices much smaller.
Well I bought AppleCare because of the keyboard and I regret it. They refused to fix the nonworking keys because of a 1mm scratch on the back of the top case, saying it voided the warranty.
I had the keyboard of my MBP 2017 replaced for free. Also, the display died roughly at the same time. At first, I thought it was a problem of the flex cable, but later I discovered a small crack. The Apple Store replaced the entire display for free, what is usually a $800 repair. I guess it depends a lot on the store, the country, maybe even the person you talk to.
