Gemini 4 Pro / Flash: benchmarks, hands-on tests and leaks

Four top models built the same 3D whale-breaching scene; Kimi K3.1 cost $0.75, Gemini 4 Argon $2.30, GPT-6 Astra $2.00 and Claude Opus 5.5 $3.01.

A user animated their own piano rendition of "Caravan" using Gemini 4 Argon, demoing its audio-video generation.

Four models built the Eiffel Tower from one prompt: Kimi K3.1 at $2.04/8 min, Opus 5.5 at $8.95/10 min, Gemini 4 Argon at $6.10/9 min and GPT-6 Astra at $7.45/8 min, with Kimi judged most accurate.

Google lists Gemini 4 Argon's research impact: counterexamples in plasma physics, five lab-verified enzymes designed in hours, rare-disease genome analysis, and a quantum error-correction kernel with nearly double throughput.

A roundup of Gemini 4 Carbon rumors: an internal experimental branch alongside Argon focused on complex coding and long-running agentic tasks, with reported SWE-bench gains.

A user compares Gemini Argon with Claude, noting more frequent check-ins, fewer YOLO actions, slower trivial responses, but comparable overall competence.

The rumored Gemini Carbon shows up in LMSYS Arena with heavier reasoning and 2–4x slower speed than Argon, reportedly fixing Argon's reliability and long-horizon gaps.

A short post ranks the unreleased Gemini 4 Carbon above Kimi K3.1 Pro and Astra, saying it is waiting for the Carbon moment.

The author compares Kimi K3.1 Pro (max) against Gemini 4 Carbon (high), noting K3.1 Pro's output reminds him of Astra.

On the same prompt Kimi cost $0.75 versus $2.30 for Gemini 4 Argon, with the author calling quality comparable at a fraction of the price.

A post relays Sundar saying Gemini 3.5 Pro was dropped because Argon pretraining had finished by the time the Flash-first playbook was ready for Pro.

On Lech Mazur's extended NYT Connections benchmark, Kimi K3.1 Pro edges below K3 with fewer reasoning tokens, while Gemini 4 Argon (high) still ranks first over GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.