[Angostura]

When you say lag spikes what kind of thing are you talking about? I have an M1 iMac I run pretty’s hard and I’m not sure what kind of behaviour you’re seeing.

Anything weird showing in Activity Monitor or Console?

[foobar1962]

If it refers to random beach balls for 30 seconds when accessing disk ether directly or through apps... yeah I get that. I found it disappointing, a flaw in an otherwise great machine (M1 Mac mini).

[MBCook]

Network disk drives, like SMB, are a finder killer. Have been forever. It’s like they have an exclusive lock over finder GUI updates/events.

It’s sad but it’s true.

[Angostura]

I probably see a beach ball once every 6 months. But I have 16GB RAM.

[foobar1962]

I have 16BG too. I have a Time Machine backup set up for a disk plugged into an AirPort Extreme, could that be the issue? (The machine connected to the network using WiFi if that matters.)