The new iMac seems nice and less expensive so let's price out a configuration.

• 23.5" screen (4480-by-2520 resolution at 218 pixels per inch with support for 1 billion colors)
• Apple M3 Chip: 8-core CPU (4 performance cores), 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine ($1500)
• 512 GB SSD (+$200)
• 24 GB unified memory (+$400) [100GB/s memory bandwidth]
• Two Thunderbolt/USB-4 ports
• Two USB-3 ports
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Magic Mouse
• Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (+$30)

Total is $2130 + $210 tax and fees = $2340 (about as expensive as it gets except for +$600 for 2 TB SSD)

• M3 8/10 is the best you can get for iMac.
• 512 GB SSD is good enough if I offload data to the Drobo.
• 24 GB memory I feel you need since 8 GB for GPU, 4 to 8 GB for Fusion, leaving 8-12 GB for applications. I heard Mx chips use less memory than for Intel so hopefully won't feel I skimped on memory. And you can't upgrade memory whereas you can attach an external SSD drive.
• No AppleCare (I've always skipped it for desktop computers since they don't move much and get banged up like laptops).
• Supports one external display so that would give me a 2-display setup.
• Has it's own mouse and kb and with the extra monitor I guess I could also use my MBP as a second computer setup next to me.

Overall kind of a nice setup. One thing is that the iMac is 10 pounds so could carry it when I visit mom and dad (a 24" screen is not that ungainly moving around), but otherwise it's not a laptop that you can use anywhere (though still have my Intel MBP but sharing common data is easier than it used to be with iCloud but still not great).