Square taper doesn't wear out though I have seen plenty worked loose over time and be ruined in the process, really depends on how well the bike was put together to begin with in most cases I've seen. However I've noticed that Hollowtech BBs do wear out the bearings sooner then a square taper, upside is that other then needing to buy a special tool for the BB, if it is a threaded BB this is an incredibly easy home repair to learn, probably one of the easiest when dealing with Shimano, GXP is a little harder, but both can be hard to screw up if you buy shimano or sram parts respectively. I have FSA cranks, at the 300+ level for just a crank FSA makes a decent crank, at the levels that come on a 500-600 bike FSA makes a nice anchor. I've had three that came on 1200 USD level bikes and replaced mine for much nicer FSA, Shimano or Campy cranks. Even at that level bike FSA was just a dog at smooth shifting.

Of the two bikes I would always lean towards the nicer one at this price range. Claris has never, in my experience, been worth buying or using. I just swapped out a set of Claris shifters on my son's Diamondback for microshift and the improvement was noticeable when adjusting them, the fact that he can now shift them is a marked improvement as well. I don't have experience with the current level sora but in the past it was always marginally better then Claris level components. Personally I like to skip to Tiagra, the new stuff is better then the old by far and not a bad group, but I do know that current Sora and Tiagra do not use the same pull ratios or derailleur leverage ratios, so contrary to an earlier claim they don't share that much. Besides not liking Claris, the Shimano crank and the consistencies that they tend to have at this level would lead me to the more expensive one.