New Mac mini to edit ?

I currently own a mid 2017 iMac (not pro). Everything runs smoothly when I edit.
Might be a bit slow for some task but nothing excessive.
I have 32 Gb of RAM and it is an i7.
I will need to change my setup a one point.

Will the Mac mini with the M1 (you can only go to 16Gb of RAM) be a good tool to edit and work.
Also a bit of After effects when needed.

Thanks for your input.

16 GB RAM is adequate for most things in FCP. The integrated GPU improvement, 6X faster they say, will be much more important to you.

I'd wait to see what they do with the 16" MBP or the desktop models.

A possible issue is Rosetta2 doesn't work on x86 plugins. So if you are OK with just the ARM64 version of FCPX, you could probably use the new machines immediately.

However if you need CoreMelt, MotionVFX, Neat Video or any other non-template plugin, those developers must produce ARM64 versions of those to work (as plugins) on the new machines.

Some apps like iZotope RX are both stand alone apps and FCPX plugins. The stand alone x86 version would possibly work under Rosetta2 but the plugin would not.

Based on Apple's WWDC talk it appears straightforward to rebuild the app for ARM64. Re-writing is not required, usually just fixing a few minor issues. Afterward the developer would likely maintain a single code base and produce universal binaries that work on either x86 or ARM64 Macs. This would be much easier than, say, maintaining two significantly different code bases for the Mac version and Windows version of Photoshop.

While all existing x86 Mac apps & utilities which don't require plugins should run on the new Apple Silicon Macs via Rosetta2, any which require plugins must have those plugins rebuilt for ARM64. I think the combined x86 FCPX plus x86 plugins will work on Rosetta2 (for whatever good that is). But it can't handle a "split" app where some of the code within the same address space is x86 and some ARM64.

developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10214/

I should be good. Won't de upgrading before 2021.
Macbook pro are nice but still quite lot more money...