First, full disclosure: I don't own a mac with M1 (yet).
All I know is from reading stuff that people have published online.
My only direct experience with an M1 mac was at a large store, where they had one MacBook Pro on display, side by side with an Intel one. I had only some two minutes with it. Still, I was impressed, as most applications launched basically instantly.
They had Final Cut Pro 10.4.10 on it, so it was NOT a "universal" application - it was all Intel. I started it, and it took a while (presumably that was Rosetta 2 doing what it does). Then I quit the application and started it again, and it was pretty quick to launch, and worked buttery smooth. I did not, alas, have the time to do a good test, but it seemed faster than the Intel mac, even though it was not running a native application.
That concurs with what I have read multiple times. An M1 mac running an Intel application is, for the most part, as fast or faster than an Intel mac of similar configuration. When you put native or universal applications, there is no contest.
Now, of course we are talking about the "low end". So, say, an M1 mini will blow an Intel mini out of the water.
But what about an M1 versus, say, my current machine, a 16" MacBook Pro?
From what I've read and seen, an M1 mini, a machine costing about a third of what my mac cost, would be slower in some but faster in other cases...
If you search online something like "m1 mini vs macbook pro" you will get many articles and videos of people comparing an M1 mini to different macs.
