@paul M1 Pro chips are amazing. Mine still going & will hold out to see M6 lineup.
My personal recommendation for people is to get refurbed M2 Air or potentially higher. Or identify their use case as even iPad with stage manager could be more than enough
Too many UX compromises - no Touch ID on base model & usb 2 port instead of MagSafe. Plus the fact it’s a binned a18 pro chip! IMO it really ought to have the A19 Pro chip to benchmark higher than M1 for both single & multi core