Yep I upgrade my SO’s 2012 MBP and my 2012 Mac Mini to the M2 versions and it was amazing how large of a jump it was. I don’t know if I will drag another 10 years out of these machines, I think I probably could but I may sell them off in like 5 years and upgrade if there is something worthy out there.
Would it have been nice for Apple to support them for an extra couple years? Yeah, but I’m sort of happy they forced me to upgrade as I too didn’t realize just how much I was missing.