[wrxtasy]

I'm trying to decide between getting a cheapish $65 S912 box or to pony up the extra cash for the Vero4k+. Ideally, I'd like to get the cheaper option. 

I've been trying to go through all of this thread to get some decent information on the limitations of the S912 chipset. From what I've gathered, the 912 will no longer be able to be updated bast Kodi v.18.

That will be for any of the Linux Kodi forks only. Android Kodi will still work past Kodi v18 Leia on S912's.

I'm sure there aren't any concrete answers given that this is all in the future, but what are the downsides of not being able to keep up to date with Kodi on the 912? If I'm able to just get my 4K and HD Audio from the 912, will it matter that it won't get updated?

Maybe some of the 3rd party Kodi Addons may cease to work going forward, but for 4K HDR and HD audio with high quality Deinterlacing throw into the mix on a pretty snappy device, I'm not seeing many downsides to be honest even sticking with Kodi Krypton.
Maybe mySQL database incompatibilities between different Kodi versions running on different devices in the one household might be an issue if you use that.

I'm sure stuff like Scrapers for audio and video Metadata can be updated over time if there are issues.

Some of us figure by the time a stable Kodi v19 comes around we will likely see faster, cheaper hardware anyway, it's just the way the upgrade cycle goes.