I'm in a bit of a weird situation personally, where I am considering the M5 Pro chip at 1TB/24GB, or the M5 air at 1TB/24GB and the upgraded GPU. (I don't think I'd consider pro with regular chip. At the point I'm upgrading from air to pro, I personally find the chip cost negligible.)
I currently use a 2020 i5 air. It's been a pain for about 2 years, but working well enough that I couldn't justify upgrading, so I obviously don't need the pro for work and even the M5 air would be overkill for my day to day but... I have a lot of downtime at work and would like to be able to run games on my second monitor while running mindless tasks.
The final wrinkle, is that work is willing to pay $500
1218