My experience with the M1 mini is a bit iffy dual monitor support wise. Thunderbolt -> USBC/DP/HDMI is best bet on high resolution monitors since it offer more scaling options. HDMI does't offer as many scaling options, I prefer 3008x1692 scaling on my 4k screens but alas, only one of them can be scaled like this since HDMI is 4k (not scaled), 2k or 1080p scaling only.

All of the Mac minis can do 2 monitors, the new M2 Pro one can do 3

Yes, but you need to pay the extra $700 for the Pro to add a third display unfortunately.

There's hacky third party solutions to this, but they all involve giving questionable applications permission to record all your screens.

Almost certainly. The Thunderbolt spec requires any port labeled "Thunderbolt 4" to support dual 4k/60hz displays.

You'll note that, for example, on the Macbook Air (both M1 and M2 versions), Apple labels the ports "Thunderbolt / USB 4," which is confusing and IMHO downright misleading. Either way, the reason they do that is that those ports don't support dual displays, so they only meet the Thunderbolt 3 spec, which doesn't mandate dual displays.

A better label for the Macbook Air might be just "USB 4," or "USB 4 with Thunderbolt 3 support" (though TB3 is part of the USB 4 spec, so that's technically redundant).

USB/Thunderbolt standards are fun.

Yes, in tech specs:

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

And up to three monitors for certain models.

thank you everyone, it was very unclear to me based on past releases.

It has hdmi and thunderbolt so you could connect to both at a minimum most likely.