Which MacBook to buy (New or pre-owned) for work

[Imsomadbg]

Hi everyone, just wanted to ask as my work might be trialing a Bring-Your-Own-Device policy for Macbooks where they will pay us £50 a month for 1 year to cover depreciation/maintanence etc. I currently don't own a Mac but if this policy is approved I will be looking to buy one (I have been looking to buy one for quite a while but could never justify the cost) My partner owns a Macbook Air M1 base model and I have been using it occasionally and actually find it a very capable machine (albeit with very little storage)

I work in Digital Marketing mainly handling Paid Search (PPC) I work from home most of the time and have to travel to the office about 1-2 times a month. My work generally involves 20+ Chrome tabs (Google Ads, Google Analytics and such), a few spreadsheets, PowerPoints and very rarely editing some promotional material in Photoshop (very rarely and hardly ever demanding as it is normally quite small images used in banner ads and such) I currently use a company laptop (to open VPN restricted reports and such) and my PC (with Intel i5-7500, GTX1070, 16GB RAM) which I use 95% of the time with 2 external monitors (1080p both) as the laptop is a slow Dell with 10th Gen Intel i5 and 8GB RAM. 

So with all this in mind I have been looking at the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13 inch for my current workloads but have also been looking at some older Intel based 13 inch MacBook Pros from 2020 with 10th gen i5 16gb Ram and 512gb SSD which here costs about £790 refurbished in Excellent quality or around £600 in acceptable quality, which will mean I will barely need to use personal funds to cover the MacBook. If I go with the new ones they will be around £1100-1200 for the base model and going up to £1400-1500 if I need more RAM and the 512gb SSD (which M2 ones migth need due to the slow 256gb one)

So my question is whether if I go with the Intel based 2020 Macbook pro if it will be enough to handle day-to-day stuff and have 4-5 hours battery at least so I can use it without being plugged in all the time and being able to use my 2 external monitors as well, which the Air and 13inch M2/M1 Macbook pro can't do, so if I go with the new ones I will still probably use my PC and then use the MacBook when not at my desk only. Whereas with the Intel one I will be able to do both but just concerned with its speed in 2023 and battery life. (4-5 hours will be plenty for me, I am hardly away from a socket for more than that) Going Intel will also mean I get to see whether I can cope with MacOS on a daily basis for my work and then in a couple years time sell it if possible and upgrade to the Apple silicon ones and also save some money at the moment. 

Apologies for the long post, just wanted to list everything. 

[Joshcanread]

an m1 MacBook Air lasts like 10 hours for a single charge. I've had my one for over a month and only put like 5 charge cycles on it (waiting for uni to start). I think you would be fine with 8gbs of ram but the storage you can get an external drive like a Samsung t5 if 250gbs isn't enough. You can find these laptops for like 450 pounds if u get a good deal. In my experience there's no need to be apprehensive with apple silicon you can run basically every program you would normally need to. Intel MacBooks also basically don't get software updates anymore

[NinJake]

I'd also recommend any of the Apple Silicon Macs. At that point it's dependent on your budget. If you can afford a newer M2, go for it. If not, the M1 Air or Pro are still very powerful machines that don't even break a sweat when hitting with heavier loads. (such as video editing/music production etc)

[Imsomadbg]

Thank you guys, Apple silicon seems like the choice here, they are quite cheap at the moment, especially M1 and M2 MacBook pro, since they launched the 14 and 16 inch ones, so I might go with that. It does make sense to spend a bit more and get the new ones even if it is with only 8GB of RAM (16GB seems to be quite hard to find anywhere apart from the Apple store where you can't really see any deals) I found a 13inch MacBook Pro 8GB RAM and 512GB slightly cheaper than the M2 Air.