I guess it depends on a “ship of Theseus” type of a thing. Sure, I’m technically using a 2018 first gen Ender 3, but it also has linear rails, a Phaetus Dragonfly with a Bondtech CHT nozzle and BMG extruder, a BLtouch and it’s running Klipper with input shaping, and as a result it can spit out an almost flawless not-a-speedbenchy (because I have a 0.6mm nozzle running 0.3mm layers so it doesn’t qualify) in 22 minutes. Only thing missing is that I still haven’t upgraded the main board or stepper drivers as I’m not bothered by the noise.

So it’s both 5 years old, and also better and more moderd than quite a few of the models provided by Creality today.

We have four Ender 3s in my makerspace, but replaced them with Prusa i3 mk3+s a few months ago. It’s such a difference in quality and time management since I don’t have to troubleshoot nearly as much. Usually with the Prusas, issues are with the models or the filament instead of yhe printer itself. I’m not sure I can go back now that I’m spoiled.

I’m still using my Ender 3 that I got in 2018, but I’ve been slowly upgrading it. Right now it’s got BTT SKR 3+raspi+klipper, a magnetic PEI build surface, direct drive extruder, dual Z (but I’m going to switch to the belted z mod by kevinakasam with a single Z stepper, partly so I can use the endstop phase feature of klipper to increase Z accuracy.