Buying a new macbook air

As others have said, for your needs the M1 should be just fine. Plus, if you shop around you can find some pretty good discounts from Apple Authorized dealers.

If you feel having a larger screen will be of benefit and don't mind the larger size, then a base 15" M2 MacBook Air would serve you well.

Either one. The M1 model is much more than adequate for the uses that you listed.

X2 regarding FoxFifth's recommendation.

The M2 would give you maybe one more year of MacOS updates...and slightly better performance. But for your needs the M1 is fine.

The M2 MacBook Airs have a MagSafe 3 charging port that the M1 model lack. They have better sound systems and better Web cams. You can get them in 13" and 15" sizes, whereas the M1 models only come in the 13" size.

If you're looking to do a lot of writing on the run, a 15" M2 MacBook Air would give you the most workspace (for seeing more of a Web page or word processing document at once).

Any of these notebooks can drive a single external monitor. None of them have hardware support for using two external monitors. If you have desk space at home, a 27" 4K monitor, keyboard, and mouse could make the Air more pleasant to use when at home.