Mac mini (M4, 16 GB) — Local LLM Performance
Mac mini (M4, 16 GB) is a Mini PC running macOS, with 16 GB unified memory.
Specifications
| Memory for models | 16 GB unified |
| Memory bandwidth | 120 GB/s |
| Memory upgradeable | No — soldered, decided at purchase |
| Chip | Apple M4 |
| Architecture | ARM, 3nm TSMC |
| Form factor | Mini PC |
| Operating system | macOS |
| Released | 2024 |
| Llama 3.1 8B Q4_K_M | 7.7–16 tok/s |
| Price | $599 (checked 2026-07-06) |
Worth knowing before you buy
- The cheapest credible always-on local-AI box, but 16 GB caps it at small and mid-size models.
- Memory is soldered; upgrading means replacing the machine.
Models on the Mac mini M4 16 GB
- Yi 1.5 Family — Yes, but it is tight
- VibeThinker — Yes — comfortably
- Aya 3B (Tiny Aya) — Yes — comfortably
- StarCoder 2 — Yes
- SmolLM3 — Yes — comfortably
- SmolLM2 — Yes — comfortably
- Qwen3-Coder — Yes
- Qwen3.8 — Yes, but it is tight
- Qwen 3.6 — Yes, but it is tight
- Qwen 3.5 — Yes, but it is tight
- Qwen 3 — Yes, but it is tight
- Qwen 2.5 VL — Yes
- Qwen 2.5 Family — Yes, but it is tight
- Phi-4 Mini — Yes — comfortably
- Phi-4 Family — Yes, but it is tight
- Phi 3.5 Family — Yes — comfortably
- OLMo 2 — Yes, but it is tight
- Mistral Small 3.1 — Yes
- Mistral Small 3.2 — Yes
- Mistral Family — Yes, but it is tight
- Ministral — Yes
- Ministral 3 — Yes
- Magistral Small — Yes
- Llama 3.2 Vision — Yes
- Llama 3.2 Family — Yes
- Llama 3.1 Family — Yes
- InternLM 3 — Yes
- IBM Granite 4.1 — Yes
- Granite 3.0 — Yes
- GPT-OSS — Yes
- GLM-6 — Yes, but it is tight
- GLM-5 / GLM-5.1 — Yes, but it is tight
- GLM-4.7 / GLM-Z1 — Yes, but it is tight
- Gemma 4 — Yes, but it is tight
- Gemma 3n — Yes
- Gemma 3 — Yes, but it is tight
- Gemma 2 Family — Yes, but it is tight
- Falcon 3 — Yes
- EXAONE 3.5 — Yes
- Devstral — Yes, but it is tight
- DeepSeek R1 — Yes
- Cosmos 3 — Yes, but it is tight
- Cogito v1 — Yes, but it is tight
- Codestral — Yes
- Bonsai 27B — Yes, but it is tight
- BitNet b1.58 — Yes — comfortably
- Aya Expanse — Yes
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