I bought a 16" Pro thinking I would need it and realized I never do anything other than simple photo/video editing, occasional VM usage and browsing the internet. Returned it and used the $1000~ savings to book a vacation to the Caribbean instead.
I had fallen for the future proof fallacy when even than, the savings could have been used to buy another new MacBook Air in 3-4 years which would be newer than whatever ‘future proofing’ I can do now. I would rather buy a new and updated MacBook Air every 4 years with the savings than budget for a Pro model every 7-9 years.
I noticed no difference between using the Pro and Air at all, at least not worth $1000. This sub convinced me that the Air is what 99% of the population would need and is very powerful as is!
The pro certainly has some features that the Air can simply not compete with.
Screen quality, multiple displays supported, better audio, has a built in cooling system that wont reduce your system to a crawl should you happen to run something intensive. I think those features are quite useful for more than 1% of the population.
I bought a new 16" M2 pro, 16/512 Gb a few days ago for the same price as a 15" M2 air 16/512 now. For the reasons you wrote above. It will replace a 13" pro retina from early 2013 and I expect to replace it not before 2030. And the old retina I hand down to my kids for homework. The last time I spent 2000 bucks on a windows laptop were totally gone in 5 years.