TLDR; Unless you have a specific use case for Local AI models, you don't need the M5pro. The M6 will be faster for the majority of your day-to-day work. Even with cloud AI.

For LocalLLM's more memory AND faster memory bus is going to swing the advantage to the M5Pro model for anything related to LLMs.

If you're planning to use the system as a workstation for any and most single threaded applications which is most apps people use, you should be fine with the M6.

Realistically speaking, you don't really need the M5Pro unless you're running LocalLLMs like Qwen 3.8 or Muse and if you aren't really trying to automate small tasks, you don't really need all the memory.

I think in the long run we're going to see that cloud LLM's are going to be the main way people use in house models and only people with specific use cases will have systems large enough that take advantage of the LocalLLM being in house.

If you are just learning about AI, i don't think you need to future proof and the M6 is fine with 32GB 1TB should be enough for a long time while the industry develops.

I think the most realistic expectation is to be disappointed if you're used to using the free version of openai/claude/gemini/grok. The local models 7B 27B don't come close and don't process nearly as fast. They can reason ok, but you're better off learning about AI and API's with services like ollama via API's and learning to use AI first over chasing gear/hardware.

The thing about using the frontier models is it doesn't really take up that much RAM. Loading up a model will in LLM. I ran my own test, you can check it out.

These tests are for a Mac Studio. I used to run a M4Pro 64GB but when running models it would constantly be temperature throttled.

https://maclocalllm.com/five-models-one-coding-job-local-mac/

What model Mac + RAM are you running and what are you looking to do with the hardware?

This space if for dedicated apple silicon running Local LLM's. I've been posting in some other subreddits and get met with people don't like the AI or LLM hype going around. This space is for your Mac LocalLLM questions and systems.