This mimics my experience. I bought the absolute bottom barrel M1 when they launched to replace my 2014 MBP, 8gb RAM and 128gb of space. The HD space is annoying, but otherwise this machine is untouchable. I do game dev work bouncing between the MBA and my gaming rig, which is Ryzen 7 2700, 64gb RAM and a 3070, and with certain benchmarks, the MBA still wins, silently, on battery for hours. Still blows my mind.