If you're going to do any kind of work on it I'd choose a 5-year old 16 GB memory M1 over a Neo every single time. 8 GB is what's painful. The CPU difference is very small anyway.
Yeah but the base Mac Mini comes with 16GB. So getting that for $600 instead of a very clapped out M1 for $300 seems worth it. That's what I thought when I was browsing on ebay, anyway.