Mercury 3 vs Xing 4.0
Mercury 3 took 3 min 53 s and $0.036 at list price, Xing 4.0 took 25 min 32 s and was free at list price. Xing 4.0 took 6.6× as long.
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.
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 repair studio in Rotterdam, tucked between a bike shop and a coffee roastery, where vintage synthesizers come to live another life. We are not a factory and we are not a museum; we are technicians who love the smell of warm solder and the patience that old circuits demand. Between us we have restored everything from early Moog modulars to battered Junos, and we treat each instrument as if it were the first one we ever opened. There is no assembly line here. Every capacitor is tested, every busbar tracked by hand, and every voice board is listened to twice—once on the bench, once through the speakers of the synth that will use it. Patchbay exists because these machines deserve more than a quick fix. They deserve someone who knows their quirks, their failures, and the strange, beautiful sounds that made us fall in love with them in the first place.
Patchbay is a compact, three-person workshop rooted in the dynamic streets of Rotterdam, born from a shared reverence for analog sound. Our team shares an unwavering dedication to vintage synthesizers, viewing each oscillator, filter, and routing cable as a vital piece of sonic history waiting to be restored. Whether diagnosing a failing voltage regulator or carefully retrofitting obsolete components, we take immense pride in bringing classic instruments back to their full potential. In our studio, repairing isn't just a technical service—it is a shared passion among friends who believe the past deserves to keep playing. We meticulously diagnose and revive legacy synths, ensuring the iconic sounds of yesterday continue shaping today’s electronic music. Bring us your dented, broken machines, and let us help you reconnect them with the rich, unmistakable sounds they were always meant to make. Every patch, every knob, every fleeting tone depends on the work we do here.
Specs and numbers
| Mercury 3 | Xing 4.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Inception | XingChen |
| Made in | US | China |
| Released | 16 Oct 2026 | 16 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.10 | free route (list $0/M) |
| Price out, per M tokens | $0.35 | free route (list $0/M) |
| Context | 1,000,000 tokens | 262,144 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | 258 | — |
| Time for the five prompts | 3 min 53 s | 25 min 32 s |
| List price of the five prompts | $0.036 | free |
Xing 4.0 was free at list price; Mercury 3 cost $0.036. Mercury 3 was faster: 21 min 39 s less in total, and faster on each of the 5 prompts.
In the recording, Mercury 3's Breakout game stopped painting; Xing 4.0's plays. Xing 4.0's landing page showed a blank first frame when the still was taken. Xing 4.0 has no logo: doesn’t draw (an SVG file without the SVG namespace, which browsers draw as an empty box).





