I think M3 Pro chip has the best price/performance and as a practical matter also limits my options to not excessive amounts of RAM and SSD.

The best configuration:

• MBP 14" Space Black (I'd rather have a big external monitor so 14" is good enough for the rare occasions I use my laptop away from home)
• Apple M3 Pro chip, 12-core CPU (6 high, 6 performance); 18-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine ($2400)
• 36GB unified memory (+$400, maximum memory)
• 4TB SSD storage (+$1000, maximum SSD size) - currently I use 3TB of my SSD, mostly movies and comics)

Total is $3800 + $370 tax and fees = $4170. That's a lot so I'd probably wait a couple of years, to end of 2026.

Lower configuration:

• MBP 14" Space Black
• Apple M3 Pro chip, 11-core CPU (5 high, 6 performance); 14-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine ($2000)
• 36GB unified memory (+$400, maximum memory) - I still want a highish amount of memory
• 512GB SSD storage - I'll have to offload almost all data to my Drobo

Total is $2400 + $235 taxes and fees = $2635. A little more expensive than I'd like but doable, target end of 2024.

Just realized I have a 16" MBP Intel and it seems kind of small so 14" will be tiny. But again, for rare usage so should be ok.