I am the developer of Summit for Lemmy.
If you spend a little more (like $700) you can get 16gb ram and 512gb. For performance I think “light office work” is selling it short. It’s more than capable of handling heavy office work IMO.
I’m not in the Apple ecosystem but I have a 16" 32GB M1 MBP. It was given to me when I started my job as my work machine and the thing is a beast especially comparing it to all the terrible laptops Apple came out with prior (removal of mag safe, addition of touch bar, the keyboard issues). I still use that laptop for work today and it honestly doesn’t even feel like it’s aged a day. Everything is still extremely fast and I use my work laptop 8 hours a day for extremely demanding tasks (I’m a dev so things like running dozens of docker containers, compilation, Android emulators, multiple IDEs, etc).
I was recently convinced that the M1 MBP is one of the cheapest and most cost effective laptops on the market right now. I know it sounds crazy but it appears to be true. You can get a m1 mbp refurbished (sometimes with warranty) for anywhere between $400 - $700. Making it a budget laptop. It also destroys anything in that price range in terms of performance and what you are getting.
It does have a warranty. Check the screenshot/link.