I hear you, but in Europe it's around 700€, which also buys a pretty solid windows or linux laptop. If you're not locked in to mac, a comparably priced laptop with intel 12 gen CPU, 16GB RAM and a RTX 3050, which is arguably a lot more versatile machine.
I think I would like Mac's more if they weren't so absurdly overpriced (approx. 25%+ over US prices) here in Europe.
In France the Mac mini starts at 581 euros before tax. That's $627, which is about 5% higher than the US price.