Need Help To Decide: Macbook Pro vs Air?

Macbook Pro vs Air, and how much is enough for web development?

For the past ten years, I've mostly relied on my work provided macbooks for doing my hardcore webdev. My personal machine that I use for browsing facebook and watching cat videos is a 2011 Macbook Pro. I do some coding for personal projects on it, but not much really. I spent about the last year and a half doing my professional work on a 2019 Macbook Air with the i5 processor and 8gb RAM. It would struggle sometimes with zoom calls if I didn't close the Postman app, or had docker running. It wasn't horrible, but it could have been better.

So now I am starting a new job, but it is one that will allow me to freelance. I plan on doing more in my personal time, so I am going to upgrade my equipment. Looking at the Air vs Pro, I'm not seeing a ton of reasons to upgrade to the pro. I am willing to spend the extra money if there is value in it, but I also don't want to throw away money.

Also for more context, 99% of the time I will be running this with the laptop closed and an external monitor and keyboard. So I am not concerned about keyboard or display features. I might even consider a mac mini, however I would still like the portability of a laptop just in case.

Any advice is welcomed, as I don't plan on buying another machine for a long time, so I want to get this right.

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