I have an iMac with M1...

How are you running Windows now? Dual-boot, or in a virtual machine?

As of this writing, Microsoft now officially blesses running Windows 11 for ARM inside of Parallels virtual machines. Neither Apple nor Microsoft have given any hint that they have plans to come out with the products needed to run Windows 11 for ARM "on the bare metal" in a dual-boot (Boot Camp) environment.

Some Windows applications (e.g., Photoshop) have ARM versions, but many do not. Windows 11 for ARM can run many Wintel applications using a built-in emulator/translator, but there is some overhead, and there are limitations.

See:

Parallels Knowledge Base – About Parallels Desktop for Mac with Apple silicon

Parallels Knowledge Base – Parallels Desktop for Mac with Apple silicon limitations

Parallels Knowledge Base – Limitations of running Windows 11 on Apple silicon Mac computers in Parallels Desktop for Mac

Microsoft Support – Windows Arm-based PCs FAQ

Microsoft Support – Options for using Windows 11 with Mac® computers with Apple® M1® and M2™ chips

Hi iPhoneography,

Assuming your M1 iMac is on the same macOS version and has the same version of your virtualization software (I'm guessing Parallels??), it should run similarly well. That said, if the iMac only has 8 GB of RAM, that could slow down both macOS and Windows.

If I recall correctly, M2 was advertised with 20% faster CPU performance and 40% faster GPU performance than M1.

So both are Apple Silicon based Macs that would be running Windows for ARM inside of an ARM virtual machine. In that case, the 15” MBA may already have given you some idea of what works well - or doesn’t - compared to running Windows software on an Intel-based machine.

FWIW, it runs fine on my M1 MBA. It does have 16GBs.