Do I need another pro? Looking to upgrade from my Pro M1

Apologies as I know this gets asked often! Looking to upgrade from my M1 Pro and wondering if I could get away with an Air for budget reasons. I'm an academic researcher and use my laptop all day every day, I typically have around 15 browser tabs, multiple PDFs, Word, Excel, and a stats program (Python or R) all open at once. Have Macs improved to the point where an Air could handle this, or would I be better off with a Pro? Thank you!