Real World MacBook Pro Performance

My wife, who runs her own graphic design business, used for several years an old intel based iMac. Forget the exact specs but it was old 27 inch model. She had a need for mobile option so I "lent" her my M1 MBA. It has 16Gb RAM and 8CPU/8GPU. She ended up hanging on to it, and after adding an external monitor it became her primary machine.

She'd run into a few minor performance issues from time to time - but in the main the MBA performed admirably running Adobe PS, Illustrator, and In Design.

Recently, in search of a performance bump - she invested in a new MBP. I suggested a Mac Studio, but she was kinda sold on the laptop form factor so took the MBP option.

She invested in a 14inch MBP M3Pro 11CPU/14GPU/18Gb model.

To use her words, she's feeling bit "ripped off". Having spent several thousand bucks on this machine it has not given her the real world performance bump she expected. The machine is capable and reliable, but in real world use not perceptibly more responsive than the MBA she handed back to me.

The benchmarks are no doubt factual - but they haven't translated to the user experience.

Any thoughts? Maybe even help?