I told it I had all the needs, and I needed something for under $1000. It suggested an M2 Air with 8 GB, and the $1200 model (although, interestingly, prioritizing disk space rather than RAM) if I was a little more flexible on my spending.
Now…
Yes, those are the only two possible options at anything close to that price point. But when a customer says they do video editing for work on long, extended trips, IMHO it’s a touch concerning that it doesn’t try to educate the customer that a $1000 Mac probably won’t be the best option for them.
Let me guess…that’s what it recommended when you said you need something affordable for light browsing, using an office suite, and watching an occasional movie, and that it has to be to be ultra portable for frequent travel
That was more interesting than I expected. It recommended more or less what I had previously worked out for myself (the Intel iMac won’t last forever) but instead of prioritising RAM and SSD, it went for a 16 inch MBP instead of the 14 inch one. Food for me to think about.
Reminds me of Digital/DEC’s expert system used to configure working VAX systems; called R1 or XSEL or XCON depending who was writing about it and when.
So I truly and honestly selected everything I do for work, which was basically everything except 3D graphics. I tried the test with portability and desktop in mind.
I was interested to see that they recommended the M3 Max laptop, which is cool. But what I thought was most interesting is that they first recommended the Mac Studio with an Ultra chip, which seems unnecessary considering my usage.
If I lower my budget to $3000 (instead of $3500, because, you know, I want the nice one for work), they recommend the M3 Max Mac Studio, but recommend splurging on an Ultra.
I guess they have no way of asking how hard you drive a CPU or GPU day to day, or what programs you use, but it seems to me they were too quick to recommend overkill machines too.
Probably won’t suggest a refurb. That’s where I buy most Macs. Rumor has it they are better than new because of all the quality checks.
I thought the recommendation for me was “underkill”. It suggested a 500GB drive and doesn’t know that I’m already using more than that on my current system. Also, even when I tell it I’ve got an unreasonably large amount of money to spend it won’t suggest any more than 8GB RAM.
Which I would still tend to do, regardless of the opinions of Apple’s bot
Refurbs aren’t constantly available, and they might not even be available by the time you finish the bot and try to go buy one. They go quickly. 
I used refurb.me to get a notification when the config I wanted came into stock. And then I’d jump on it.
And then I spent a lot of time today fighting Photoshop as the machine ran out of RAM and used swap. Maybe 96GB of RAM with an Ultra isn’t a bad idea…
It actually suggested the exact model I currently have! It’s … magical! 
It did the same for me.
For me it recommended an iMac, Mini, and Air. As it happens I currently use an iMac as my main computer, a Mini as a file/backup/media server, and an old 2015 Air for my limited travel.