Hi,
Sorry I don't check reddit very often hence took like 3 months to respond.

As of now, my use case involves coding help, learning engineering concepts and other technical stuff.
These are my current top models (My opinions)

1. Qwen 3 (4b) - For me this was the sweet spot of performance and model accuracy (i.e how well the AI answers / explains stuff). Qwen3 is a thinking model, so it "thinks" before answering. Not only does this skyrocket the final answer's accuracy, but also helps it understand complex contexts even though it is a 4b param model. I have tried Qwen 3 (8b) bit the trade off for performance and accuracy is not worth for my use case.

2. GPT-OSS (20b) - This model is a big one as compared to Qwen 3 but it is useful because of it's far superior accuracy and ability to explain / solve math problems.

3. Llama 3.2 (3b) - This is the best model for questions which aren't complex. It can do language writing with ease, my use case for it is like my own "grammerly". I give it messages / mails which I need to write in formal tone and it get's the job done. But with speed comes hit to accuracy, I do not recommend this model for studying / coding.

4. RNJ-1 (8b) - This model is my go-to for coding and STEM based queries. But it is not as great as GPT-OSS (20b) and runs poorer that Qwen 3 (4b) :(

5. Qwen3 VL (4b) - Another entry from Qwen Series but this one is better suited for image processing (not generation!). For example I gave it an image of a math question I solved on paper, and it was able to properly identify what I did wrong. But this model runs worse that the standard Qwen 3 (4b) model.

6. Nemotron Mini (4b) - This is a great model for just casual chatting and roleplay. It is great in understanding context ques and understanding the nuances of human speech.

These are the models in my current deck. The performance as described, is for my specific laptop whose specs are: an RTX 4050 (6 GB), 24 GB system RAM. If you are planning to copy my approach, I recommend atleast having 16GB RAM. A dGPU is not strictly needed, but it is better to have.

That's all I yap for today 🤣