Most of the time people are slow due to network and humans, not waiting on a build or render. In practice the i3/i5 are hard to tell from the i7 even though specific things benchmark faster.

The Bluetooth stack is as reliable and prone to interference all other new Macs have in our experience. Nothing in your requirements are deal breakers and anyone could slow down even an iMac Pro and Mac Pro hitting it with some of your requirements. They are workhorses and unless you want to dip your toes in Apple Silicon, a 2018 or newer mini is a workhorse of a Mac. No issues with color calibration, all the Adobe apps, touch pads, web and teleconference apps. We run the i7 2018 Macs mini (and newer) in full design production.

i can do that on my MBP if necessary) - will I encounter any issues with the connection to keyboard and mouse randomly dropping?

My desk is wood (not metal) and I use a 2nd Gen Magic Mouse & Keyboard as well as a FitBit (and I don't NEED to connect the fitbit. PS - forgot to add that I've read about Bluetooth issues with the Mini as well. Also, if there are any other potential issues beyond having to get adapters for TB2 and HDMI that I've missed, please feel free to point them out. If anyone has any insight or personal opinion they'd care to share, I'd love to hear it. But for now based on the kind of work I do and my monitor setup (the 2 Dells and the iMac), I'm wondering if the Mini's onboard graphics can handle it alone. Eventually I'll upgrade to bigger 5K monitors and at that know I'll surely need to get an eGPU in the process - I'll be willing to bite the bullet when that time comes. I know I'd have to get a TB3 -> TB2 adapter (to use my current iMac as a display only) and 2 TB3 -> HDMI cables - no big del there. I found a great deal on a 2018 Mac Mini i7 6-core, 3.2ghz, 16gb RAM and 256GB SSD. Not wanting to put a dime into this dinosaur and already having gotten more life out of it than I expected, I'm ready to upgrade. This system handles all this surprisingly well, but one of the drives is getting to be on the older side and is making me nervous. Occasionally, I'll dip into AfterEffects and inDesign, and then there's other apps like XD, Figma, etc. i use it for web development (VS Code, various node servers and processes, databases, source control clients, dozens of browser tabs etc) and design, which means heavy use of Photoshop & Illustrator at the same with multiple files, layers and artboards - files are typically for screen (not print) so it's not like I'm editing ginormous RAW photos, but there are a lot of filters and smart objects at times. It's connected to 2 24' Dell U2415 monitors running at 1920x1200. I currently have a 2011 27' iMac - i7, 3.1ghz with 20gb RAM with a gig of vRAM on a standard AMD Radeon 6970M video card.

Egpu for mac mini 2012