Hardware comparison
MacBook Air / Mac mini M4 (24GB) vs MacBook Air/Pro M5 (16GB) for local LLMs
How the two stack up for running open-source LLMs locally — memory, bandwidth, price, and how many of the 69 tracked models each one can run.
Scroll sideways to compare both machines. Keyboard: focus the table, then use the arrow keys. Metric names stay visible.
| Hardware | MacBook Air / Mac mini M4 (24GB) | MacBook Air/Pro M5 (16GB) |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | 24.0 GB (better for this comparison) | 16.0 GB |
| Bandwidth | 120 GB/s | 153 GB/s (better for this comparison) |
| Price (approx) | $1,399Complete system | $1,099 (better for this comparison)Complete system |
| LLMs it runs | 49 of 69 (better for this comparison) | 30 of 69 |
| Best model it runs | Gemma 4 31BQ2_K · estimated 6–9 tok/s | Mistral Small 3.2 24BQ2_K · estimated 10–15 tok/s |
Both prices cover complete systems. Prices are approximate catalog estimates; check current configurations and prices before buying.
The recommended models differ. These estimated speeds are not a like-for-like comparison. Estimates use 4,096 context tokens, llama.cpp and one stream.
The MacBook Air / Mac mini M4 (24GB) runs 19 more of the tracked models (49 vs 30), thanks to its 24.0 GB of memory. The MacBook Air/Pro M5 (16GB) has more memory bandwidth (153 GB/s). Higher bandwidth can help generation speed, but model, quant, architecture and runtime also affect the estimates.