I have the 8GB M1 mini, which I bought as soon as it went on sale, so it's a year and a half old. In general the 8GB thing has been fine, and the notion that it can swap pretty quickly has been fine, but it's definitely noticeable now that the swapping is no longer fine, whether because the flash is wearing out or because there was a software update. These days I regularly reboot the thing just to clear the decks after the machine comes to a crawl. And I don't do anything stressful with it. VS Code, Chrome, and Terminal at the same time is about as extreme as it gets. All the real work is happening on adjacent Linux box.