Developing and running emulators on Apple Silicon laptops

[Lastic]

Just wanted an opinion, not related to one's preference of an operating system or price of hardware.
A bit of context.

I've ammased a number of laptops throughout these years partly to use for work and to use for my retro-hobbies.
Altough these machines are perfectly capable of running the tools needed for work and retro purposes they all lack in one compartment , battery life when unplugged.

Thinkpad X220 running Windows 10 was my main machine to take with me on travels to events but for graphic tasks/emulation it does start to feel a bit slow.
Thinkpad X230 running Ubuntu is my main work laptop , again it can handle most things but starts to feel slow.

Both Thinkpads are excellent due to their possibliltiy to have bigger batteries but the screen estate starts to feel cramped.

I also bought a cheap second-hand Thinkpad E130 for it's size and weight but the 12" screen when not having an external monitor is cramped.

I switched to a Macbook Pro 2012 Retina 15inch (which I still had lying around) but it has a dying battery but running Linux I can still squeeze 4 hours out of it on battery.

Back on topic, I am looking at investing in the latest Macbook Pro M4 base model with a 14 inch screen to replace all of the above ( I would sell them to recuperate some money of them)

Mainly for it's better compatibility with work related stuff (sadly not everything can be done using Linux) , still being portable in a backpack when travelling (I mostly travel with hand luggage) and
the most important factor battery life when unplugged.

From what I have gathered I could run most emulators (Amstrad/Atari 8-bit/Atari 16bit) on it and also run my work stuff on it.
As a noob development for retro would be mainly Assembler or C.

Is anybody using a Macbook Pro Silicon for retro purposes that could share his/her experiences ?