How old is the intel chip that was used for comparison? Maybe a recent chip would not look so bad performance wise.
A recent AMD chip wouldn't look so bad. Intel chips from today are not all that different from their 2018 counterparts in the machines that these M1's replaced. For instance if we compare the 2018 Mac mini with it's desktop Core i7 to the M1 Mac mini in Capture One: The M1 isn't just 50% or so faster at every task, their is perceivably less latency between mouse click and action on screen when performing tasks like painting in a mask. The same is observed in Photoshop.