can confirm

But they could barely do it without swapping in my experience.

The OS alone takes 2GB or more (200MB just for spotlight iirc), a bit is used for graphics, and once you add a bunch of browser tabs and windows you're easily in a situation where RAM usage is permanently above 80%. You don't feel it as quickly on the M1 but by the time you notice lags it's already swapping 15GB, sometimes for no apparent reason.

I still don't quite get it, on the 16GB Macbook I feel like I can do much more without exceeding 8GB usage.

Swapping is fine as long as performance remains acceptable. Obviously at some point it won't – the 8GB models do have limits. But these limits are often wildly exaggerated in this sort of discussion.