Are you looking at the link you posted? A 36% (quoting your number) single-core increase over the 2018 model would mean a score jump from 1098 to 1493. The real number is 1715 (a 56% increase instead). You may argue that's just incremental too, but what would your threshold be?
And let's be honest — synthetic benchmarks are bullshit. In this thread, you have a number of different people describing their experience of how much the perceived performance gains were, and how they didn't feel incremental. You are bending over backwards to try and dismiss those, and I don't get why. My perception, between having a maxed out 16" Intel MBP and getting an M1 mini at the time, was nothing short of "holy shit, this thing smokes my $4000 machine". Call it incremental; call it whatever feels right to you, but I know what it felt like. My sample size of 1 analysis is: it was not incremental at all.
And let's be honest — synthetic benchmarks are bullshit. In this thread, you have a number of different people describing their experience of how much the perceived performance gains were, and how they didn't feel incremental. You are bending over backwards to try and dismiss those, and I don't get why. My perception, between having a maxed out 16" Intel MBP and getting an M1 mini at the time, was nothing short of "holy shit, this thing smokes my $4000 machine". Call it incremental; call it whatever feels right to you, but I know what it felt like. My sample size of 1 analysis is: it was not incremental at all.
(An aside: M1 to M2? definitely incremental.)