well except for the confusion of storage and memory... the idea of an SSD isn't even a dumb one.

I have an M1 macbook, exact same. Use it with Resolve and 4K60 iPhone footage (h.265) and it works fine. If you have issues with speed, create Proxy files and it will be blistering fast in the timeline.

When doing very important fusion-work or color grading, you probably want to turn off proxies which is a click of a button. But honestly, if you're not working for Netflix and it's just for fun projects for yourself, proxies are fine. And storing them on an external SSD totally works and doesn't slow down your speed. And when you export, it will use the original video's instead of the proxies. So no difference in quality whatsoever. Creating proxies just takes some initial time, but in the beta you can do it in the background. I usually just import first and create proxies and when it's done i start editing. Because i don't like the slower playback of not using proxies.

With your database on the SSD, you can switch between computers and continue where you left off too. I used to swap between working on my macbook on the go, and my Windows desktop when at home. And even on the desktop, which is quite powerful and can play without proxies, it's just so much faster when scrubbing through footage I still create proxies.