I have a high specced MacBook Pro, but honestly I mostly use it for vscode tunnels to my actual dev machine.
So the only real benefit compared to my MacBook Air is that the screen is a bit nicer, and I can keep more Firefox tabs open, because it has more RAM.
Bingo! IMO, laptops are best used as thin clients and you do the heavy lifting on servers or a box in a closet somewhere.
I'va been migrating my workflow to this approach and I'm an embedded dev! My closet does have hw strewn about but once you set it up that you don't have to touch wires it's super convenient.
My one gripe with MacBook airs up to m4 was support for only one external monitor. But m4 fixed this.