I'd say the low end is closer to a Raspberry Pi or perhaps a used old Thinkpad. A $600 machine with good single-core performance is only low end if you ignore everything outside the Apple product lines.

> trackpad is only incrementally better than what was available in Chromebooks and cheap PCs

Did you use a touchpad of an old cheap PC? Apple would not dare to use one comparable to that in their wildest nightmares.