Apparently the ud-q4_k_xl version of qwen 3.8 27b is quite better than the q3 and not much larger. At least per r/localllama. (I'm also trying to find a good local model).
Here's the link btw (also for my own reference):
https://huggingface.co/unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF/blob/main/Qw...
Thank you, will give it a try. To be honest only gemma 4s do well in my re test.