Not sure how you got that ballpark 6000 M1 Mac score. The Geekbench site currently shows 7398 and using their app locally on my machine delvered a score of 7460, not so far away from your reported score for the NUC. On a machine I paid $650 for discounted. What precisely were you comparing...
Torn between my iPhone 6s and 2014 27" iMac. Phone is always there for me, but the iMac is almost 4 years old and freakin' rocks.! Admittedly, I'm booted up in Windows 10 all day for work (v.1803), but this machine has been flawless.