What can MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max run for vision?

Build: MacBook Pro M4 Max 64GB

Memory: 64 GB unified memory
Runner: MLX-LM (Apple Metal)
AnyChatCodingAgentsReasoningVisionLong contextCreative

Runs comfortably
25 models

Ranked by fit for vision use case + predicted speed. Click a row for VRAM breakdown.

#1Gemma 4 E4B (Effective 4B)
4B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 7.1 GBHeadroom: 48.9 GB
ollama run gemma4:e4b
123
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
2.00 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#2Gemma 3 4B
4B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 7.1 GBHeadroom: 48.9 GB
ollama run gemma3:4b
123
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
2.00 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#3Gemma 4 E2B (Effective 2B)
2B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 3.8 GBHeadroom: 52.2 GB
ollama run gemma4:e2b
246
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
2.20 GB
KV cache
1.00 GB
Activations
0.12 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#4Phi-3.5 Vision
4.2B
phi
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 5.2 GBHeadroom: 50.8 GB
206
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
2.50 GB
KV cache
2.10 GB
Activations
0.13 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#5Qwen 2.5-VL 7B
7B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 8.6 GBHeadroom: 47.4 GB
124
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#6Moondream 2
1.9B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 2.0 GBHeadroom: 54.0 GB
455
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.20 GB
KV cache
0.24 GB
Activations
0.06 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#7Qwen 2-VL 7B
7B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 8.8 GBHeadroom: 47.2 GB
124
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.60 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.24 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#8LLaVA 1.6 Mistral 7B
7B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 8.7 GBHeadroom: 47.3 GB
124
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.50 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#9LLaVA-OneVision 7B
7B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 8.7 GBHeadroom: 47.3 GB
124
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.50 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#10Qwen 2.5-VL 3B
3B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 4.1 GBHeadroom: 51.9 GB
288
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
2.00 GB
KV cache
1.50 GB
Activations
0.11 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#11MiniCPM-V 2.6 8B
8B
minicpm
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.8 GBHeadroom: 46.2 GB
108
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
5.00 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.26 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
#12Molmo 7B-D
8B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 4,096VRAM: 8.0 GBHeadroom: 48.0 GB
108
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
5.20 GB
KV cache
2.00 GB
Activations
0.26 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →

Runs with tradeoffs
2 models

Tight VRAM, partial CPU offload, or context-limited.

Molmo 72B
72B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 52.6 GBHeadroom: 3.4 GB
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.4 GB headroom left for context growth
12
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
41.00 GB
KV cache
9.00 GB
Activations
2.05 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →
Qwen 2.5-VL 72B
72B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: AWQ-INT4Context: 2,048VRAM: 53.6 GBHeadroom: 2.4 GB
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.4 GB headroom left for context growth
7
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
42.00 GB
KV cache
9.00 GB
Activations
2.10 GB
Runtime
0.50 GB
Model details →

What if you upgraded?

Hypothetical scenarios. We re-ran the compatibility engine for each.

Move up an Apple memory tier

Varies by configuration. Check Apple's current pricing

On Apple Silicon, more unified memory is the only path forward — VRAM and system RAM are the same pool.

Won't run
top 5 popular models

Need more memory than you have. Shown for orientation.

DeepSeek V4 Pro (1.6T MoE)
1600B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Needs ~1024 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 56 GB available after OS overhead.

—
Qwen 3 235B-A22B
235B
qwen
Commercial OK

Needs ~160 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 56 GB available after OS overhead.

—
DeepSeek R1 (671B reasoning)
671B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Needs ~420 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 56 GB available after OS overhead.

—
Llama 4 Scout
109B
llama
Commercial OK

Needs ~80 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 56 GB available after OS overhead.

—
DeepSeek V4 Flash (284B MoE)
284B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Needs ~192 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 56 GB available after OS overhead.

—
Cloud GPU rental

Not enough VRAM for these models? Rent a GPU by the hour

The models above need more memory than 64 GB unified memory. You can rent a GPU with enough VRAM by the hour to run one of them, or to test it before you buy hardware. For daily use, owning a card usually costs less over time.

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Rent on RunPod

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Rent on Vast.ai

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How to read these numbers

Measured here
Measured here - RunLocalAI ran this exact combo on owner hardware with public evidence.

Source-backed
Source-backed / community - a reproduced public source supports the speed, but it is not labeled as owner-measured.

Extrapolated
Extrapolated - predicted from a measured benchmark on similar-bandwidth hardware.

Estimated
Estimated - formula based on VRAM bandwidth and model architecture; not a benchmark row.

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