Brand New Computer seems quite Slow

Primary problem: The 5400rpm HDD. Those drives are significantly slower at system startup and application/file opening times than an SSD equipped laptops or smartphones. Worse, they are so slow that they can only barely keep up with a clean install of MacOS Catalina and may freeze up with beachballs if too many 3rd party applications are installed I consider them unusable.

Solution: Buy an external USB 3 SSD and reinstall/restore MacOS onto that, or alternatively return the computer and order a model with an SSD. The 1TB Fusion is adequate for most users but still earns occasional complaints and should probably be skipped to be safe.

Secondary problem: The quad-core i3 with 8GB is a sweet system for basic internet/email/iWork/iLife type users but may lag on demanding tasks (3D rendering/games, video editing, audio compositions, Adobe Cloud, etc). For the advanced stuff you probably want at least 16GB RAM with a 6-core i5 or better.

Bloat: The opposite of lean. References applications that use more RAM than strictly necessary. For example, Google Chrome.

Sadly You likely want to return it if you've had it less than 14 days & avoid these 3 things...

1: No i3 or i5 two core.

2: No 5400 RPM drive or Fusion Drive, today's bloat requires an SSD big as you can afford.

3: No 8GB of RAM, that is too little for today's bloat get 16GB or more.

PS. on the 27" iMacs you can add your own RAM at a reasonable price.

It embarrasses me that Apple is selling these low end models.