For my non-gaming use M1 Max still slaps in a way that no 3 year old laptop ever did. Even the battery is still doing great, which is insane. I can spend *4 hours* working on a flight recompiling Python and running tests over and over again. If you just consume content, it's double that.
So I'm holding off for M5 Max *at least* and possibly even M6 Max if the hardware won't downright fail before that.
In your case my only recommendation is to buy more storage than you think you want.