It's perfectly reasonable to want to wait for the second-generation Apple Silicon Macs to start arriving, especially if you're on the far end of the performance extreme. The three M1-based Macs are the slowest Apple Silicon machines that will ever ship as public products (DTK doesn't count). Even max'ed out, they're under-spec'ed from what I would prefer to buy. Waiting is a totally reasonable strategy, even for an Apple hardware transition.
That was going to be my strategy. But my wife's requirements are lower end, and her laptop was a 2013 MacBook Air. Even the lowest spec configuration of an M1-based Mac blows it away. So I ordered her an M1 MacBook Pro, loaded, so it might last another ~7 years.
But the reports of real world users kept rolling in, about how great the new machines are. I started to get antsy, envious. And so, two days later, I decided the MBPro was mine, and ordered a second M1 machine (MacBook Air this time) for her.
After two weeks with the new machine, I can say that you're only hurting yourself by waiting. These machines are amazing. If you don't have specific hardware or software requirements, like virtualization, they are great machines right now, and compare to Intel-based machines with twice the spec.
That comparison isn't random. I coincidentally simultaneously got a new laptop for my job, a 2020 MacBook Pro with Intel processor, well configured, with twice the RAM (32 gig). While I haven't done (and won't do) any direct benchmarks, so far the M1-based laptop has handled everything I've thrown at it, in terms of many open apps, browser windows, etc., with at least as much grace as the Intel-based laptop with twice the RAM. There's no doubt which one of the new machines has more of The Snappy.
And it (M1) runs cool, all the time, and the battery life is "oops, forgot to plug it in the last two days, no big deal" good. It's actually disconcerting to put my hands on the M1-based machine, to find it cool to the touch, or even cold, even though it's been running all day. The Intel-based machine is warm-to-hot, even if just woken from the sleep screen (display sleep, not Mac sleep).
If Apple introduces the rumored 14" MacBook Pro, with significantly higher specs, I'll probably sell this one and buy the new one, Marco Arment-style. Then again, maybe I won't. Either way, for now I'm in no way unhappy with not waiting. These first generation machines are great, in a way that the first generations of prior hardware transitions were not.
(I went through both 68k → PowerPC and PowerPC → Intel transitions, and either owned or regularly used first generation versions of both. There is no comparison with this transition. The only downside to the new machines is you must use Big Sur, when I would rather stay on Mojave.)