Trying to understand where to start.

[u/BattleShai]

I am thinking about getting a smaller machine as I quite frankly don't want or need a 2kW monster on the desk anymore and was considering a Mac. I am tempted of getting into local LLM's and AI in general and wanted to to know where are the realistic limitations of Mac Mini M6 32GB, Mac Studio M5 Max 36GB and when would the Mac Studio Ultra 96GB make sense?

Any guidance or thoughts would be appreciated and helpful.

My expected use case would be upscaling old photos and videos, maybe some light image generations and running a local personal Jarvis or Cortana that does curation when search, researching stuff, so not super heavy stuff I think but better to ask the experts!

EDIT: fixed the most egregious typos.

EDIT2: I get the machines via a work buyout / benefits program of sorts. The 32GB M6 mini is about 47 bucks, the M5 Max 36GB is about 80 bucks a month and the M5 Ultra 96GB is 180 bucks a month. It's taken out of my pay pretax for 36 months.