Never owned an 8 bit, but a friend of mine had a C64, which we got a lot of fun out of.
It seemed like a massive step up from his Atari 2600.
Yes there was quite a leap from Atari 2600 to Commodore 64. Maybe it is time you got one now with Datasette

i still play on mine i got from my dad in 1992 and i have all the Tapes and most of them still work after 20 years