GPT-6 Astra in Practice: Tests, Use Cases, and Feedback

tetumemo argues the real centerpiece of OpenAI DevDay 2026 is dots, an Astra-powered always-on agent with its own cloud PC and browser, access to 4,000+ apps, and proactive work, alongside GPT-6.1 Sol at about one-fifth the price.

Viticci notes that the Ultrafast tier of GPT-6 Astra is now also available in ChatGPT Work and Remote for iOS, though menus and icons differ across versions.

Using the same prompt, the author finds Sol 6.1 produces better lighting and textures than Astra while using only 3% of quota, and suspects Sol 6 was just a setup.

OpenAI announced more than 20 updates at DevDay 2026, including GPT-6.1 Sol at a fifth of Astra's price, an Ultrafast tier with up to 8x faster token generation, always-on agent dots, and a $500/month Pro 500 plan.

A Japanese post says the new model beats Opus 5.5 on business workflow evaluations at about a third of the cost, but is seen as a recovery move after the unpopular GPT-6 Sol released a week earlier.

GPT-6.1 Sol is positioned for cost efficiency, with OpenAI saying it comes close to flagship Astra, matches it on coding and computer use, costs five times less via API, and is available in ChatGPT and Codex.

BridgeBench results show GPT-6.1 Sol scoring 3 points higher than GPT-6 Sol but 82 points behind GPT-6 Astra, which the benchmark suggests may indicate benchmaxing on the lab's own tests.

A free roundup of over 20 Dev Day 2026 announcements, including the always-on dots agent and GPT-6.1 Sol with near-Astra performance at one-fifth the price, plus hands-on impressions of Ultrafast.

A UK user reports that OpenAI's email promised Dots access and $2,500 in credits but Dots is unavailable in the UK and no credits appeared, while the 20x plan became 10x and other models effectively lost half their quota.

Gergely Orosz notes that OpenAI has finally launched dots in response to Grok Bot, which runs on Grok 4.6, while dots is powered by GPT-6 Astra.

Announced in a single post the day before DevDay, subscription usage was cut in half at the same price, and the author says Anthropic's Opus 5.5 is a better deal.

The author says Sol performs clearly worse than Astra and even Kimi on Three.js 3D scenes, and the token savings OpenAI claims did not show up.