Being an academic means being open minded because when researching something, the outcome may be different from what you expected. In such cases do you concede that your initial theory was wrong or do you stubbornly continue to believe that you were right and keep trying to prove yourself correct?
TBH, smaller models run pretty well on consumer grade hardware and are good enough for minor tasks like chewing through docs, analysing bank statements or interpreting images. At least the use cases I use it for.
But mobilek shiny. Me like shiny.