I just wanted to report about my experience with the mini laptop I received from Aliexpress yesterday, as I read the posts on this forum beforehand to inform myself. The video's and this forum were very useful in knowing what I was getting myself into.
I received a 12GB ram intel celeron N4000 model. The model I received differs in a few places from the ones in the slage-tech video's. The device does not feature a USB-C port internally (sadly). Additionally, the metal plates have been replaced with a single copper plate (so no need for thermal compound between plates) that is directly mounted on the CPU. Thus, I don't really see a strong argument for opening and "upgrading" the device anymore. The thermal pad for connection between the copper plate and the housing is offset from the CPU mounting place, so one could consider adding a thermal pad there for better thermal management I suppose.
I put Linux mint 22 cinnamon on the device. In live boot as well as the installed version, all features except for the mouse buttons worked out of the box. The screen was rotated 90 deg, but this was fixed easily using the cinnamon display settings menu.