AI Model Reviews
The definitive "Good, Bad, and What Now" guide to the latest LLMs. No fluff, just specs and verdicts.
Gemini 2.0 Ultra
Multimodal KingThe Good
- •Can watch and understand entire movies in seconds
- •Native audio/video generation is seamless
- •Deep integration with Google Workspace
The Bad
- •Text-only reasoning slightly behind GPT-5
- •Safety filters can be overzealous
The What Now?!
If your workflow involves video, audio, or huge documents, Gemini 2.0 is the only choice. It eats context for breakfast.
GPT-5 (Preview)
Game ChangerThe Good
- •True multi-step reasoning agents work out of the box
- •Hallucination rate near zero for factual queries
- •Multimodal understanding is flawless
The Bad
- •Extremely expensive
- •Rate limits are strict during preview
The What Now?!
It's here, and it's terrifyingly good. GPT-5 doesn't just chat; it thinks. It solves problems we didn't know AI could solve.
Llama 4 (400B)
Open Source KingThe Good
- •Open weights - run it anywhere
- •Performance rivals GPT-4o
- •Massive ecosystem support
The Bad
- •Requires significant VRAM to run locally
- •License restrictions for massive commercial use
The What Now?!
The definition of open source power. If you have the hardware (or cloud budget), this is the model to beat for privacy-conscious applications.
GPT-4.5 Turbo
Best ValueThe Good
- •Incredibly fast for a frontier model
- •Significantly cheaper than GPT-4o
- • improved instruction following
The Bad
- •Slightly more prone to refusal than Claude
- •Reasoning depth slightly below Claude 3.7
The What Now?!
The workhorse model of 2025. Fast, smart enough for 95% of tasks, and affordable.
Claude 3.7 Opus
Editor's ChoiceThe Good
- •Unmatched reasoning capabilities
- •Nuanced creative writing that feels human
- •Zero-shot coding performance beats GPT-4o
The Bad
- •Expensive compared to turbo models
- •Slower inference time
The What Now?!
The new king of reasoning. If you need complex analysis or creative writing, this is the one. For chat, it might be overkill.
DeepSeek-V3
Best ValueThe Good
- •Absurdly cheap API pricing (1/10th of western models)
- •Incredible coding performance comparable to Claude
- •Open weights available for self-hosting
The Bad
- •Data privacy concerns for some western enterprises
- •API stability can fluctuate during peak China hours
- •Less robust safety filters than OpenAI (pro or con?)
The What Now?!
The market disruptor. It proved that state-of-the-art intelligence doesn't have to cost a fortune. Ideal for high-volume batch processing or coding agents where cost is the bottleneck.
Qwen 2.5 72B
Best Coding Open SourceThe Good
- •Incredible coding abilities (beats Llama 3.1 in many benchmarks)
- •Strong multilingual support, especially Asian languages
- •Apache 2.0 license allows broad commercial use
The Bad
- •Heavier censorship on politically sensitive topics (China-origin)
- •Requires significant VRAM to run locally (2x A100s preferred)
- •Brand familiarity is lower in Western enterprise
The What Now?!
The sleeper hit of 2024. Qwen 2.5 consistently outperforms Llama 3 70B in coding and math. If you are self-hosting for a dev tool or code agent, this is likely the model you want, despite the geopolitical caveats.
Phi-3.5 Mini
Best on EdgeThe Good
- •Runs on a modern phone or laptop CPU
- •Massive 128k context in a tiny package
- •Surprisingly good at reasoning for its size
The Bad
- •Knowledge base is small (hallucinates facts easily)
- •Struggles with complex instruction following
- •Not a replacement for GPT-4 class models
The What Now?!
The edge computing king. If you need to summarize a long document locally on a user's device without sending data to the cloud, Phi-3.5 is a miracle of engineering. Perfect for privacy-first apps.
Grok-2
Best for NewsThe Good
- •Real-time access to X (Twitter) data for breaking news
- •Less restrictive 'woke' safety filters than competitors
- •Flux integration generates stunning images natively
The Bad
- •Expensive API compared to Llama/DeepSeek
- •Personality can be divisively snarky ('fun mode')
- •Ecosystem/tooling support is still immature
The What Now?!
The wildcard. If you need real-time sentiment analysis of breaking news or a model that isn't afraid to be edgy, Grok is your best bet. For standard enterprise workflows, it's still playing catch-up.
Mistral Large 2
Best for ToolsThe Good
- •Exceptional function calling and JSON mode capabilities
- •Strong multilingual support (European languages)
- •Can be fine-tuned or hosted privately
The Bad
- •Smaller ecosystem than OpenAI/Google
- •Slightly expensive compared to Llama 3 70B
- •General knowledge slightly lags behind GPT-4o
The What Now?!
The European champion. If you need strict data sovereignty or precise tool use without the 'black box' vibes of OpenAI, Mistral Large 2 is a serious contender. It punches above its weight in reasoning.
Gemma 2 27B
Best Mid-SizeThe Good
- •Perfect 'Goldilocks' size (runs on single A10/3090)
- •Outperforms Llama 3 70B in some logic tasks
- •Apache-style friendly license
The Bad
- •Small 8k context window is limiting for RAG
- •Aggressive safety tuning out of the box
- •Heavier inference than 8B models
The What Now?!
The best 'Mid-Weight' fighter. If you have one decent GPU (like a 3090 or 4090) and want the smartest possible model that fits in VRAM, this is it. It hits the sweet spot between the dumb 8B models and the massive 70B models.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Coding KingThe Good
- •Unbeatable coding performance
- •Faster than Opus
- •Much cheaper than GPT-4o
The Bad
- •None really, it's excellent
The What Now?!
The current favorite for developers. Fast, smart, and affordable.
GPT-4o
Editor's ChoiceThe Good
- •Incredibly fast
- •Native audio/vision capabilities
- •50% cheaper than Turbo
The Bad
- •Reasoning sometimes feels rushed compared to Claude 3 Opus
The What Now?!
The current king of speed/intelligence balance.
Llama 3 (70B)
The Good
- •GPT-4 class performance for free
- •Extremely dense knowledge
- •improved tokenizer
The Bad
- •8k context limit at launch
The What Now?!
The current open source champion. Runs on dual 3090s.
Command R+
Best for RAGThe Good
- •Optimized specifically for RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
- •Best-in-class citation and source grounding
- •Strong tool use for enterprise workflows
The Bad
- •Not great at creative writing or 'chatty' personas
- •More expensive than open alternatives like Llama 3
- •Slower than groq-hosted options
The What Now?!
The boring, reliable enterprise choice. If you are building a system that reads PDFs and answers questions without making things up, Command R+ is built exactly for that. It cares about citations more than poetry.
Claude 3 Opus
The Good
- •Surpassed GPT-4 in reasoning
- •Beautiful prose style
- •Wait-free context recall
The Bad
- •Very expensive
- •Slow
The What Now?!
The premium choice for coding and creative writing in early 2024.
Gemini 1.5 Pro
The Good
- •1 Million token context window
- •Video understanding
- •Deep ecosystem integration
The Bad
- •Slow initial processing
- •Occasionally prone to refusal
The What Now?!
The only choice for massive document analysis.
Mixtral 8x7B
The Good
- •First open MoE that worked well
- •GPT-3.5 killer
- •Fast inference
The Bad
- •Complex to host locally
The What Now?!
Proved that Mixture of Experts was the future for open models.
GPT-4 Turbo
LegacyThe Good
- •The reliable workhorse that defined the generation
- •Massive ecosystem support and tooling
- •Still highly capable for complex reasoning
The Bad
- •Significantly more expensive than GPT-4o or DeepSeek
- •Slower inference speed
- •Knowledge cutoff is getting stale
The What Now?!
The former king, now retired to the hall of fame. While still powerful, there is almost no reason to use it over GPT-4o today unless you have a legacy prompt that breaks on newer models.
GPT-4 Turbo
The Good
- •128k context window
- •Much faster than GPT-4
- •Cheaper pricing
The Bad
- •Sometimes 'lazy' compared to original GPT-4
- •Coding performance can be inconsistent
The What Now?!
The standard for most of 2024 until GPT-4o arrived.
Mistral 7B
The Good
- •Punched way above its weight class
- •Runs on a laptop
- •Apache 2.0 license
The Bad
- •Prone to hallucination due to size
The What Now?!
The best small model of 2023.
Llama 2 (70B)
The Good
- •First truly capable open model
- •Commercially usable license
- •Massive community support
The Bad
- •Small context window (4k)
- •Chatty/Repetitive compared to GPT-4
The What Now?!
The model that spawned a thousand finetunes.
Claude 2
The Good
- •Huge 100k context window (first of its kind)
- •Great creative writing style
- •Harmless and safe
The Bad
- •Slow
- •Refuses prompts too often
The What Now?!
The first real competitor to GPT-4 for long documents.
GPT-4 (Original)
The Good
- •First model to show true reasoning
- •Massive leap over GPT-3.5
- •Highly reliable instruction following
The Bad
- •Extremely slow
- •Very expensive
The What Now?!
The OG smart model. It changed the world, but later Turbo versions made it faster and cheaper.
GPT-3.5 Turbo
The Good
- •Insanely cheap and fast
- •Good enough for 80% of tasks
- •Industry standard API
The Bad
- •Hallucinates frequently
- •Poor reasoning on complex tasks
The What Now?!
The model that started the chat revolution. Still great for simple tasks, but obsolete for heavy lifting.