I think you're probably right comparing to the M4 Pro would make more sense but keep in mind you don't really need much compute, it's just that the M4 Pro has memory bandwidth more similar to the AI Max 395+ while the "normal" M4 doesn't.
Every large AI model is heavy memory bandwidth constrained to the point my 9800X3D (with the extra L3 cache) and 128 GB/s memory attached is only 60% utilized running a 32 GB model in CPU only mode (no NPU, iGPU, or GPU offload enabled). Really small AI models can start to be compute bound but, at that point, you don't really need the 32 GB of memory anymore and probably just want a normal GPU.
Every large AI model is heavy memory bandwidth constrained to the point my 9800X3D (with the extra L3 cache) and 128 GB/s memory attached is only 60% utilized running a 32 GB model in CPU only mode (no NPU, iGPU, or GPU offload enabled). Really small AI models can start to be compute bound but, at that point, you don't really need the 32 GB of memory anymore and probably just want a normal GPU.