Gemini 4 Argon vs MiniMax M3
Gemini 4 Argon took 13 min 43 s and $0.68 at list price, MiniMax M3 took 33 min 3 s and $0.21 at list price. MiniMax M3 took 2.4× as long, and Gemini 4 Argon cost 3.2× as much.
Gemini 4 Argon
Google · $10.00/M out · 2,036 HN pts
MiniMax M3
MiniMax · $1.20/M out · 144 HN pts
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
In a quiet industrial building overlooking the Maas, the air smells of warm dust, solder flux, and ozone. This is Patchbay, a three-person workshop in Rotterdam dedicated to keeping the golden age of electronic music alive. We don’t view vintage synthesizers as museum pieces to be locked behind glass. To us, a Roland Jupiter-8 or an ARP Odyssey is a living, breathing instrument meant to be played, gigged, and pushed to its sonic limits.
Between the three of us, we have spent decades deciphering faded schematics, hunting down obsolete transistors, and cleaning decades of club grime from beneath weighted keys. Rotterdam is a city built on raw electronics and relentless rhythms, and we take pride in keeping its hardware running. Whether you bring us a touring workhorse with a dead voice chip or a garage-find modular rig that hasn’t powered on since 1984, we are here to make it sing again.
Patchbay began in a cluttered apartment in Rotterdam, where three friends spent weekends coaxing old synthesizers back to life. What started as a shared obsession quickly outgrew the living room. In 2016, we opened our first proper workshop in a converted warehouse on the south side of the city, and we have been soldering, calibrating, and listening closely ever since.
We are a small team of three. Niels handles the analog work, coaxing warm tones from aging oscillators and reluctant filters. Marijn focuses on digital systems and the occasional stubborn MIDI quirk. Sanna manages restorations, sourcing rare components and keeping long projects on track. Between us, we have decades of experience with the machines that shaped electronic music.
Every synth that passes through our doors carries decades of sound inside it. Our job is to make sure that story continues.
Specs and numbers
| Gemini 4 Argon | MiniMax M3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | MiniMax | |
| Made in | US | China |
| Released | 13 Oct 2026 | 31 May 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $2.00 | $0.30 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $10.00 | $1.20 |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | 2,036 | 144 |
| Time for the six prompts | 13 min 43 s | 33 min 3 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.68 | $0.21 |
MiniMax M3 was cheaper: $0.47 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Gemini 4 Argon was faster: 19 min 20 s less in total, and faster on 5 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, both Breakout games play.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Gemini 4 Argon's rebuild matched the screenshot at 69%; MiniMax M3 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Gemini 4 Argon's game passed 5 of 5 checks; MiniMax M3 was not in it.