I figured I'd replace it at M2, and then at M3. But to be honest even with the 8GB it's fine enough still. I don't use it for much heavy lifting but it works ok-ish for that in a pinch. And for day to day personal use it's fine. So every year I go through the cycle where I *want* to replace it and then convince myself I don't really need it. I already have a monster machine for my work stuff, having extra horsepower for my personal machine would be nice but ....
I'm sure M4 is the generation I'll upgrade. Just wait :)
Turns out that my 8GB machine would slow down significantly when hitting the RAM limit. This was expecially noticeable when running Final Cut Pro (almost unusable) or Photo Mechanic + Photoshop (I'd have to quit one to run the other). I tolerated this situation until the M2 Airs came out and I maxed it to 24GB RAM, and have been beyond happy with it since then!
My partner now has my 8GB M1 and it works perfectly for her.
but yea 8gb is barely acceptable except as a pure consumption laptop. TBH even 16/256 is too small for anyone who's posting here, some npm/rubygems/pipenv/gradle/docker packages will eat that right up.