The upgrabability of this laptop does have one caveat, though. The bottom is a bother to remove, and most Youtube crap conveniently glosses over them. For one, some of the screws would get loose but not come out all the way. I eventually found the trick was to throw some pry tool under the screw head to hold it up so I could get it the rest of the way out. After they were all out, the bottom cover STILL wouldn’t budge. This too ended up being a matter of jamming a pick in one corner of the case and running another one to slowly pry up the bottom case on all sides. I lost a plastic tab or two in the process, but that doesn’t show up on the outside, and I think 24 GB of RAM (and 2 TB of NVME 2280 storage + 256 GB, the Windows drive that I left in the 2242 bay) will be plenty for a long time.
It’s an E series ThinkPad. They are a lot less durable than any other series - they are basically the Dell Vostro of ThinkPads. (Even Dell doesn’t consider the Vostro line business ready now)
For the next best thing for a slight price increase would be the L series which is a lot more bulky and durable (and more repairable in fact - you can’t replace a keyboard in an E) which still doesn’t come with the premium price of the T series.