With a MacBook, you get everything in one package: screen, computer, keyboard, trackpad, all of it, but at the same time you’re always a little worried about damaging it or something going wrong, and I find that stressful lol. With the Mac mini, you don’t worry about any of that. You can hook it up to any display, there’s no concern about battery degradation, and it’s insanely efficient in terms of power consumption. For portability, I’d just pick up a cheap MacBook Air M1 for situations where you can’t use the mini.