I have only two nitpicks with my M1 Mac: (1) it's not a good fit for virtualization (whether docker or VMs) -- but this limitation is well-known, and (2) the only time I see slowdowns is occasionally when opening a new tab in Safari -- even when almost nothing else is running. The second one also happened on my Intel Mac, just a bummer that the issue hasn't magically gone away.

Beyond that, I wouldn't change a thing about this machine. Very easy to recommend!

Have you given UTM (https://github.com/utmapp/UTM) a try? It can run ARM and Intel virtual machines. It's basically a wrapper around QEMU, and it can be a little unstable depending on your chosen configuration, but it'll work in a pinch.