How good is the current model Mac Mini? ( thinking of upgrading from 2012)

I have compared the 2 minis using Geekbench to test their speeds.

The 2012 mini has a multi-core score of 1388 which is 10% above average for that model.

The M2 mini (running from the external SSD) scored 9873 which makes it 7.1 times faster though speeds for different apps may vary.

For comparison the 2017 iMac got 3461

Apple, like many other companies uses scare tactics to "encourage" you to buy upgrades . . . they produce an excellent base model but then sow seeds of doubt . . . "its CPU may not have enough performance, the SSD may not be large enough and 8 GB RAM may not be sufficient, so just to be "safe" increase it to 16 GB or even 32 GB! You can never have too much RAM, storage or processing power".

The situation is exacerbated by the countless users and commentators who parrot those concerns.

Those worries are absolute BS unless you really are a power user with loads of cash to splash.

Before you know it your £600 bargain has turned into a £2,000 + white elephant which will be outdated in a couple of year's time when another model comes out.