Hi! I am around...
Thank you for all the work you have been doing on the M1S.
Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to test recently, but I expect to.
As for the low performance, I really had the feeling that the M1S is slow on graphics, but decent (for its class) on regular CPU work. I had tested with linuxfactory's bookwork image and that was the feeling I got from then.
I don't think the long wait time for armbian-config to open is normal. My first bet would be something related to network access, either there is not a working internet access or some configuration is wrong. My second bet, some sort of reading error on the microSD card. The M1S isn't that sloooow.
I would suggest you check dmesg for a clue after running armbian-config.
Best regards,
Sérgio