What is bricked vs recoverable has always greatly depended on time and effort, individual skill level, available hardware/software tools, documentation, crypto keys, physical access, willingness to replace individual parts etc.
Sometimes, even within an org, some teams e-waste expensive devices that aren't bricked deeper than what other teams recover from as part of everyday workflow.
Taking a typical network device as an example, where do you draw the line? Driving to a remote location to plug the cable into another port, pressing a reset button, booting from USB, flashing a new firmware with TFTP, plugging in an external or internal console cable, opening the case and soldering a header to get access to the console, doing the same with no documentation, or an unknown (but maybe Google-able or reverse engineerable) password, flashing firmware with JTAG, shipping the device back to the engineers (or shipping an engineer to the device)...? It's always been arbitrary.
If you are able to fix it then it is not bricked.
One device may be bricked to one person but not to another. But that must still be the definition, right? Otherwise the word has no meaning.