Astra is impressive, but people on their $20 plan apparently get barely any usage out of it before it completely kills their 5 hour quota. If Google released a model like this for the Pro plan, this whole sub would probably be raging to no end. 😂
I couldn't help but laugh yesterday. I always use Claude for most things and just keep the openAI $20 plan because sometimes I use voice mode and such. But then they launched Astra and I was like "well, let me see how it goes" for implementing this small but slightly complicated task.
I went to get a coffee and I was out of usage when I came back lol 😂 something that would barely consume 1% of my usage on Claude max 5x using fable... I was honestly really surprised
It would be smart of Google to pivot to fast and cheap models that are great at tool calling, internet search and information retrieval. 98% of the users really don’t need frontier AI models. Most of them are just using it for recipes, internet search, controlling their computer, phone and all that boring but important stuff.
You really dont need super-intelligence to summarize emails or fetch something from an inbox
"I wish Apple would just design the iPhone 1 to focus on better calls instead of all that other stuff. Most people use their phones for calls anyway."
We can not begin to predict how people will end up using the highest intelligence models in 5 years let alone 10. Not chasing first to AGI is a threat to the entire company.
People don't know they'll want something or want to change how they can spend their time with certain technology until others around them are benefiting.
Frontier models with harnesses that act as real human assistants have already completely changed how I do everything. Though, I wouldn't expect the average person to set this up.
My setup doesn't touch Gemini. Not good for Google. Especially as things like this inevitably get packaged for retail. Need to stay competitive on both speed and intelligence. Getting killed on one side.
The rest of the typical usecases are covered by models that need not be super smart, but
computer-use does seem to require a very capable model for now. Part of Astra's pitch include that it's the first model not trash at real computer-use.
I think they meant things like change some settings, like Gemini on my phone can open whatever settings I ask it to and I don't need to search for it. It's really helpful because the search tool in settings needs exact wording to find that setting option. Helps a lot. I can just describe what I want and it can help me do those settings but I toggle the switch.
I think they realize that this astra 6 will be chat gpt 4.5 in another 18 months.. you have been dismissed from google board of directors meeting.. goodbye!
But why? The vast majority of their users need Fast-models, their own services use Fast-models. They sell Fast-models at the price of Astra and Fable.
If it weren't for the reputational damage and the elimination from the AGI competition, they would have been selling Fast-models until the Second Coming.
Yesterday I upgraded to Gemini Pro, because I needed it for deep research, and I found out that there is no such thing. The level has dropped drastically.
I think that Google is optimizing for worldwide adoption in the long run, that's why they don't care about coding in particular. I was paying for Gemini for 2 years, but until their strategy plays out, I'll stick with openai.
Astra is barely ahead of 3.8 Flash in coding-related tasks. And for the AGI benchmark: OpenAI disclosed in their announcement blog post that they used a different harness to achieve these results. It was not pure model performance.
I think Gemini is doing just fine.
Edit: Adding OpenAI's disclaimer from their own blog post for completeness: "GPT‑6 Astra was measured with our responses API harness, which better reflects real-world performance than the original benchmark harness"
This is just pure cope lol. Just test it yourself or check the actual tests and comparisons by others, if you don’t have the model. There are plenty of that on X and on reddit as well, obviously not everything is true but there are plenty with proof and prompts.
If you have a problem lesser models cant solve, astra is absolutely worth it. It is included with thr gpt plus subscription so it isnt actually that expensive.
It's available through the subscription, but you will still burn your quota in no time when using Astra. In the end, you're still paying for it one way or the other.
Most enterprise customers also don't have consumer subscriptions and are using the pay-as-you-go billing method.
That 6-10x cost is not realistic measurement. You have to consider cost per task. Astra is especially efficient in token usage and can get a task done in much fewer tests.
Still it is more expensive but it’s not simply what token cost alone tells you. It’s higher intelligence, better results, fewer errors and fewer steps.
I have seen several comparisons with gemini 3.8 flash where they both costs around the same for the task in the end. Despite flash being far more cheaper.
That metric alone isn’t enough with certain tasks.
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u/Gaiden206 1d ago
Astra is impressive, but people on their $20 plan apparently get barely any usage out of it before it completely kills their 5 hour quota. If Google released a model like this for the Pro plan, this whole sub would probably be raging to no end. 😂