You will see a difference but I very much doubt it's going to be night and day. When I compared my base spec. M2 Air (8GB / 256GB) with my M1 Pro (16GB / 1TB) they feel mostly identical, but that's because unless I get silly with the number of open apps and tabs (i.e. purposefully bog the machine down) the performance differential just isn't that much for most daily computing tasks.
I'm not saying the M1 Pro isn't more powerful than the M2, it is. It's just there are specific situations where that extra power comes in handy and makes a difference. Day to day they are pretty comparable.
Next, I swear that memory pressure in the 'yellow' is something that Apple's marketing (not their engineering) group put into activity monitor to create anxiety over low RAM. Memory pressure in the 'yellow' or 'red' category along with some swap doesn't automatically mean reduced performance. It's there for diagnostic reasons - i.e. if you're having an issue, check to see what the problem might be. I can easily push the 8GB Air into red on memory pressure and it responds just fine.
I'm not trying to talk you out of the upgrade. It's your money and better spent on MacBooks thank alcohol imo. 🙂. Just temper your expectations so that you're not disappointed. It's a better computer without doubt, just don't expect it to feel all that different unless you're really pushing on it.
