The first one is better for lod0, 478tris isn't that much at all, I have chairs where the lod0 is 300 tris
For about lod2 or 3 removing thous edges would be an idea, possibly on lod1 but that might be a bit too soon tbh but depends on the texture.
I spotted a few issues with your model but nothing major, first of all is more a tip than anything else is I always turn backface culling on as it then renders the object in the same would ingame, where if there isn't a back face there it wont show one. You can turn this off by clicking on the object, right clicking, properties and then it will be in that window there or you can stop it happening on all the new objects you make by going into your preferences, viewport tab and turning it on there:
Next you have a load of underside faces that need deleting, no one is going to see these and just taking up pointless tris and more importantly, loads of lightmap space.
Here's quite a big issue, this face here isn't welded up correctly, its one tri instead of 3 and as such it could cause small visual issues where it isn't fully connected to the middle bit, you can see that white line on the edge of the selection zfighting in max? ingame you might have an open gap zfighting slighty there.
Should be like this with 3 tris, which is ye 2 extra tris than before but ensures there are no issues and helps with lods etc too.
Final point is your base seems a little small compared to the ref's base, you might want to make it a bit wider etc?
Other than that, looks good to me, keep up the good work!
