Umm, I didn't buy a low end machine to do high end work. If I still needed to do that, I'd have waited for the M-whatever Mac Pro or iMac.

The SSD stuff is more hysteria than real. Every new machine is going to do a lot of disk writes while it reindexes everything. Also, having dozens of browser tabs on a low memory machine is going to cause swapping. If all that is going to cause premature disk death, change your work habits.

Finally, back when I did need a heavier work load, I counted on replacing the hardware as soon as the Applecare ran out. Given the very low cost of that hardware, I'll be replacing the M1 Air on the same schedule because why the hell not?