Beam 1.0 vs Claude Haiku 5.5
Beam 1.0 took 2 min 35 s and $0.063 at list price, Claude Haiku 5.5 took 4 min 43 s and $0.035 at list price. Claude Haiku 5.5 took 1.8× as long, and Beam 1.0 cost 1.8× as much.
Beam 1.0
Reflection AI · $1.00/M out
Claude Haiku 5.5
Anthropic · $0.50/M out · 1,071 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.
Patchbay is a three-person studio in Rotterdam devoted to repairing vintage synthesizers and keeping electronic instruments alive. We work with analog and digital keyboards, drum machines, and modular systems, restoring worn circuits, replacing fragile components, and returning each machine to reliable musical use. Our small team combines careful technical work with genuine respect for the instruments that shaped decades of music. Whether an instrument needs a routine service, a difficult diagnosis, or a full restoration, we approach it with patience, clear communication, and attention to detail. We believe these machines are not just equipment; they are tools with history, character, and sound worth preserving. Based in Rotterdam, we serve musicians, collectors, and studios who want their gear maintained properly and played again. At Patchbay, every repair is treated as a collaboration between craft and music, ensuring that classic synthesizers continue to inspire new sounds for years to come.
Patchbay is a three-person studio in Rotterdam, and we spend our days inside vintage synthesizers. We are repair technicians first: we open the cases, replace the leaking capacitors, re-tune the oscillators that have drifted out of pitch, and bring back the filters that went silent decades ago. Our bench is crowded with service manuals, spare chips, and a soldering station that has seen more Moog panels than we can count. We started the studio because we kept meeting musicians whose favourite instruments sat unused in cupboards, not because they were broken beyond saving but because nobody nearby knew how to fix them. We still believe most of these machines can be made to sing again, and we would rather spend an afternoon finding the one bad resistor than see another good synth end up in a skip.
Specs and numbers
| Beam 1.0 | Claude Haiku 5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Reflection AI | Anthropic |
| Made in | US | US |
| Released | 16 Oct 2026 | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.25 | $0.10 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $1.00 | $0.50 |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Weights | open | closed |
| Hacker News points | — | 1,071 |
| Time for the six prompts | 2 min 35 s | 4 min 43 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.063 | $0.035 |
Claude Haiku 5.5 was cheaper: $0.028 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Beam 1.0 was faster: 2 min 8 s less in total, and faster on 3 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, both Breakout games play.





