Haven't tried, but I don't expect it to be competitive. Note that software transcoding means: CPU only, and M1/M2 is still just a bunch or ARM cores.
We've tested on Amazon's Graviton 2 and 3 systems and so-far found them to be on par or slightly cheaper than their x86-64 counterparts. But this is mostly due to AWS aggressive pricing of ARM systems, which is quite the contrary for Apple hardware.
MacMini's currently are approximately twice as expensive as the Intel i7 NUC, Gigabyte Brix and similar hardware we bought. Also, dev tools targeting server software development on Apple hardware (ie. Linux, please!) are still wanting.
We've tested on Amazon's Graviton 2 and 3 systems and so-far found them to be on par or slightly cheaper than their x86-64 counterparts. But this is mostly due to AWS aggressive pricing of ARM systems, which is quite the contrary for Apple hardware.
MacMini's currently are approximately twice as expensive as the Intel i7 NUC, Gigabyte Brix and similar hardware we bought. Also, dev tools targeting server software development on Apple hardware (ie. Linux, please!) are still wanting.