MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB vs MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB for Local LLMs

The MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB has about 810% more memory bandwidth (546 vs 60 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 810% faster on the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB. The MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 50 vs 11 of 67 models (128 vs 8 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB but not the MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $0 for the MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB vs $4,399 for the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB. MSRP is a launch list price, not live retail — Amazon prices move; click through for the current price. In the Q4/8K head-to-head below (36 shared models), the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB posts the higher tok/s in 36 rows vs 0. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Vendor	Apple	Apple
VRAM	8 GB	128 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5X	LPDDR5X
Memory bandwidth	60 GB/s	546 GB/s
TDP	20 W	160 W
MSRP (list)	$0	$4,399
Buy	Search Amazon	Search Amazon

MSRP is the launch list price, not live retail. Buy links are Amazon affiliate links — the price after you click is the live price.

Q4 / 8K head-to-head — top 15 of 36 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB tok/s	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB fits	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits	Winner
MiniCPM5-1B	1.08	70.0 est.	Yes	700.2 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3.5-2B	2.0	37.8 est.	Yes	378.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	36.0	2.6 est.	No	252.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B	34.7	2.8 est.	No	252.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	2.5 est.	No	252.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	3.3 est.	No	252.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-BF16	30.0	3.5 est.	No	252.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Ornith-1.0-35B	35.0	2.7 est.	No	252.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	23.6 est.	Yes	236.3 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	5.7 est.	No	210.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	25.2	3.9 est.	No	199.0 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Nanbeige4.2-3B	4.0	19.2 est.	Yes	192.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	18.9 est.	Yes	189.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-BF16	4.0	18.9 est.	Yes	189.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507	4.0	18.9 est.	Yes	189.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB

est. = bandwidth-based estimate; measured = curated real benchmark that overrides the estimate. Fits = weights + KV(8K) + 1 GB overhead ≤ 95% of VRAM.

Fit coverage at Q4 / 8K

	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Catalog models that fit	11 of 67	50 of 67
Largest exclusive fit	—	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)

MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB details → · MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB details →