that's only to the certain point.
I have 3 laptops, m1 air, amd asus zenbook and old intel workstation. You dont really see difference between 15 or 25 and cooling difference between 15 and 25W is like 20grams of copper if done right, nobody will notice. if your goal is to browse web at lowest possible power, then m1 is your choice end of story. A lot of people, like me, needs more than just working laptop, and m1's just dont do what I need them to.
AMD 5500u zenbook is a little bit slower than m1, noticeably so and uses a bit more power, BUT its a laptop that allows kids to play sims4 at reasonable speed, and it does not get very hot while doing it, m1 again just dont even run it.
My usual work loads 24GB of ram before I can even start seeing results, I tried air but swapping that much causes whole laptop to be unusable.
From my perspective, m1 is ONLY usable as a web browser and video editor. Its great at video editing, but I want much more from a laptop. Obviously, low power is good, but when it's not able to run what I need, what's the point ?
as for answear m1 vs m2 vs amd check this out
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-7-6800hs
obviously its 35W part vs 20W part but performance wise, amd wins already, and 7'th gen is another solid leap forward.