@bowline The philosopher Jagger suggests that trying can help you get what you need. Sadly this doesn’t seem to apply to AirPods—Apple’s customer service has denied my desperate begging. 
@r2d2 I don’t want to tangent this thread too much—you can see more discussion about my deliberations over here: Comparing Mac hardware—amortized cost and approx. performance gains. (I just edited the original post to add the specs I’m looking at.)