Best models 14b and smaller as of today?

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Or has this niche been abandoned?</p> <p>Most companies and model producers have seem to abandoned this niche(7B, 9B, 14B etc) which was the

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Around 3B please thank you</p> </div><!-- SC_ON --> &#32; submitted by &#32; <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Conscious_Nobody9571">

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>when Qwen announced a 27B model you guys went wild but i also saw people hoping for a 70/120B model. whats the ideal model size you guys would

<table> <tr><td> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1sfl35g/whats_the_point_of_smaller_models/"> <img alt="What’s the point of smaller models?"

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Currently using glm 4.7 flash, it’s very meh </p> <p>Heard omnicoder or Crow 9b are good, are they any better?</p> <p>Or Qwen3.5 27b?</p>

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Tomorrow, I am getting delivery of a 13&quot; M5 macbook air with 32gb RAM and 1T SSD. Currently, I have pro subscriptions to Gemini, Perplexity

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Hey, </p> <p>Tldr: use local models like qwen 3.5 quantized with proprietary models for fire and forget work. Local model doing the grunt work.

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Hi. What do you think is the smallest Open model, as of Spring 2026, that can match/beat OpenAI GPT 4o Mini in the broadest sense possible?</p>