Yes, spend $600 on an base iMac Mini then spend $800 on an TB SSD with $200 worth of NVME inside it because ... logic ???
Meanwhile a 12th-Gen NUC with 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD costs ~$240 on Amazon, and you can replace the internal RAM and SSD with whatever size and models you want.
A 1 TB NVME SSD is like $40 retail these days.
He said external TB SSDs not USB SSDs. Check how much those cost. TB SSD of 4TB is like $1000.