I'm on the ultra plan and have been using argon for all sorts of things, like designing and critiquing recipes/weighing different cooking techniques against each other (I have a custom DB based on "The Flavor Bible" which it consults for ingredient pairings and several custom skills), creating custom 3D-printable models in Fusion 360, creative writing, auditing and improving my massive homelab and various custom apps and infrastructure, explaining complex scientific topics, helping me rehab my shoulder and knees, etc. and it has been the best model for all of these tasks out of all the models I've tried (and I've tried basically all of them).

I don't really know if it's the best for coding, or for generating SVGs of pelicans, or doing homework, or whether or not it knows if I should drive or walk to the car wash. I don't use it for anything like that and I don't really see the point. But for general knowledge, spatial reasoning, and just apparent intelligence, it seems to be knocking it out of the park with what I use it for.

Yeah, usage goes fast, but honestly I've gotten things done in these last two days which I've previously just straight-up given up on with other models due to not getting the output that I want. To me that's worth it. Time is money as they say.

Anyone else having similar experiences? Unique use cases where it seems to be doing particularly well?

Excited to see what the pro/flash versions are like.

Looks like we have confirmation. Argon is not a Pro model as it is listed separate from Pro. Not only that, Argon is listed as being a higher tier above Pro. Is 4.0 Pro going to be released then?

https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/18648722?hl=en&ref_topic=13194540

I'm on the Student AI Pro tier with 5TB of storage and decided to try Gemini 4 Argon in the web client.

So far, I actually prefer it to GPT-6 Sol High for finding and analyzing information. It surfaced more relevant sources, inferred what I was trying to accomplish better, and gave me more useful answers for practical real-world questions, whereas GPT often leans toward more theoretical responses.

The downside is that I burned through the usage allowance incredibly quickly.

I only had four chats with around 2–3 messages each using Medium reasoning, and that was enough to exhaust my hourly allowance and use about 5% of the weekly one. Now I've been dropped down to 3.5 Flash-Lite.

For comparison, I've never managed to hit the usage limits on OpenAI, even though I use High reasoning for basically everything.

Really disappointing, because I was otherwise very impressed with Argon.

(post is GPT 6 reworded because of the stupid filter on this sub)

EDIT:

Questions asked:

1. Analysis on a macro-economic theory
2. Compare two USB-C AMP/DAC dongles
3. Compare Jetbrains AI tools
4. Upgrade the custom ROM of an old phone

This isn't exactly a groundbreaking use case but it's something I never imagined I could do.

I've always wanted my Google Pixel to display the day of the week and the month in the status bar. The existing apps that do this on the Play Store never looked native on a Pixel device, or were buggy/poorly rated.

Now that Argon released, I decided to give it a try.

I have zero coding or development experience and was able to get this running on my pixel in about 3-4 hours (most of which was learning how to even install and use Antigravity).

I'm not sure others will care but I just wanted to share this because if you're intimidated by using Antigravity or trying to develop your own app, it's absolutely doable!

I'm too raged to even articulate this properly, but seeing this really put things into perspective.

OpenCode can offer this level of access through API billing, but Google can't even give Pro subscribers minimal usage?

Instead, the pitch is essentially: "Hey, Pro subscribers get Gemini 4 Argon... Web only"

I tested out Argon on my sibling's AI Pro account and OMG the usage limits are horrendous. Simply asking "Compare haiku 5.5 with 3.8 flash" used up 8% of her quota. How am I getting more usage out of Opus 5.5 on Claude Pro when it's 2x more expensive? And once the 50% discount ends on Nov 30, these limits are going straight down the drain.

I only loved 3.7 Flash because of the blazing speed. 3.8 Flash doenst meaningfully improve for my use case. When DeepSeek v4.1 Flash dropped, I switched over immediately since it's cheaper and faster (but oh boy does it think a lot!).

I just want a Gemini 4 Flash running at 300 tps at Sonnet 5.5 level intelligence with actually usable limits. Argon's quota is an absolute joke.

Still praying for Pro users

Honestly, I get that with limited resources they can't offer the models like they used to. In a situation like this, they have no choice but to kick out the freeriders. The problem is that right now, Google is screwing over Pro users too. With these kinds of limits and performance, I'd rather just use Claude.

Year ago I could chat with gemini for 2 hour straight and maybe 10% of limit was used, and now i tried the argon. Asked for any information about the strategy of pro plan being for 3 bucks a month on discount and next tier being 100, and got biggest bullshit ever, started talking about a 3.5 PRO, alr I asked a followup question about his 3.5 pro rolling out. Told me that 3.5 is being in "cooming soon phase" but it is internally still hosted by google on their tpu. Then i looked at my limits and 30% are gone. 2 QUESTIONS AND 30% GOOGLE??

Wtf google. That's 7 basic prompts across 3 chats.

All asking Argon (medium) questions like, create me a diet plan, here's my height and weight, find coffee beans that match this taste profile in my area, and recommend me mods for a popular video game that I play.

Asking a single, straightforward question eats 5% of your session allowance on the Pro plan. Meanwhile, over on Claude, running the exact same prompt on Opus uses less than 1%.

And before the usual replies roll in saying "you shouldn't use Gemini 4 for simple tasks, just switch to Flash": that is like buying a flagship phone and being told you have to manually go into settings and throttle your CPU down to 10% every time you send a text message, otherwise the phone dies in 20 minutes. Yes, a low power chip gets the job done for a text, but you are paying for a premium experience.

I had (just in case this would happen again) a set of files to test if the limits were being manipulated for the same amount of tokens and "computational effort" Gemini was doing. The first time they started with the 5 hour limit I was able to do the same 20 questions (coding related questions with code from a specific python script I have) with the same set of data and would get, every time I tested this to 92% to 95% of the total for the 5 hours. Note that I tested 4 times in 4 different days to avoid one threshold having an impact on another. So there was at least 24 hours between the tests.

Note that before the 5 hour BS, I was able to do much more without issues.

Then around 2 months ago, I did the tests again and was not able to get to question 16 before the whole limit for 5 hours was consumed. Which means, they lowered the amount or as they call it "The computational effort was heavier". Again, it was the same code, with the same questions.

Then starting 2 days ago, they lowered it even more. I did not even get to 8 questions before the limit was reached.

And to make sure this was not just me, another friend in a different country tested this. Different days, but same code, same questions, same amount of tests. We both got the same results. The threshold for the "limit" has been lowered 3 times now. Just wanted to leave that there for anyone in Pro or Ultra.

Based on my own tests, it’s not as capable as Astra 6 or Opus 5.5 for large tasks and multi-step work. Still, for a day-to-day model, it’s great. Much more intuitive than anything ChatGPT and Claude puts out, and retains the biggest strength of Gemini’s models, which is alignment. That said, the usage limits are atrocious, and undermines a model that would otherwise have had a good chance at bringing Gemini back to relevance. In terms of capability, I would place the current Argon model at around GPT 6 sol, and yet it takes up far more of the usage limit than Astra or Opus on an equivalent plan. Keep in mind ChatGPT plus allows for *unlimited* use of GPT 6 sol on chat.

It sucks because as I said, I do believe Gemini models have much better alignment than any of the other models out there, and Argon seems like it would be genuinely good for those everyday tasks. Unfortunately, right now it exists in the messy middle of too expensive but not capable enough to be practical for any use case.

All I want to say is that I'm glad Google is just building and releasing solid (maybe not the best but it's good enough for 99% of people) models without the utterly insane culture that OpenAI and Anthropic have.

There is no "you should use Argon because during training it almost started thermal nuclear war."

That video of Argon playing cornhole that went around earlier this week. If it was Opus, Anthropic would've shown it throwing a hand grenade.

There's no trolling about Argon eliminating everyone's jobs. I don't see Google gloating about solving math problems.

So yeah, shout-out to Google. Please continue to treat your AI products like AI products and not weapons or the dawn of the singularity.

(I'm sure there's exceptions that people will point out in the comments of Google C-levels saying some stupid shit, but in general what I'm saying is true.)

A couple weeks ago Claude Opus 5.5 made a 14s product film for my bookkeeping app in React + Remotion from one long brief: real UI from the repo, real design tokens, no After Effects. When Argon came out yesterday I gave it the exact same brief on the same repo.

What I noticed: Argon rebuilt noticeably more of the real UI and packs more information into each frame. Opus made fewer, bigger camera moves and holds shots longer, so it feels more like a film than a walkthrough. I lean Opus, but Argon's UI fidelity is genuinely better, and I'm curious what people here think. On the other hand Aragon did some weird linings in the logo.

So the thing is when that gemini 3.x (i don't remember the exact version) was launched, it was a big update too as ppl were really waiting for a new update (the old member must remember)...
That time too using the pro mode (high mode of now) was so limit consuming that just using the pro mode for 2-3 times would finish up your daily limits... but later as we all know how thing have changed, the limits were pretty good these days

So I would say I hope this happens the same for ARGON too, coz for now using argon for 5-6 times uses the limit completely...
This is the message for someone who has never seen this type of limit usage by gemini...

I have both 20x Claude and 20x Codex. When it came to creativity, I preferred Claude over Codex. Now it's easily Argon over both of those combined.

The 20 dollar plan might provide only like 10 messages per session limit, but it's only around 3-4% of weekly. Totally worth it given the stuff it has come up with so far for me. Even before Argon I remember talking to the standard Google AI model that comes up in the browser and even those could come up with some unique stuff.

This surprises me considering their low hallucination rate, 15% compared to other frontier models coming in at around 45%. Usually when I think of low hallucination rate models, I just think of models that refuse to answer any questions or come up with anything because they don't have enough knowledge to answer it properly. With Argon, it's beautiful.

Did anyone notice anything change or adjustments to Argon last night?

Previously, with Argon at high, a single prompt used 5% of my 5 hour cycle limits.

Now, the same prompt uses 16% of my usage limits. No noticeable change or improvement to output too.

Is it me or the 5 hour quota gets filled way too fast? Never had this issue before argon.
100+ prompts usually wont even fill 10%, but today it took around 20 prompts to finish my quota