Particle-1 vs Gemini 4 Argon
Particle-1 took 7 min 13 s and $0.056 at list price, Gemini 4 Argon took 13 min 43 s and $0.68 at list price. Gemini 4 Argon took 1.9× as long and cost 12× as much.
Particle-1
Particle AI · $0.50/M out · 17 HN pts
Gemini 4 Argon
Google · $10.00/M out · 2,036 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 dedicated to the repair and restoration of vintage synthesizers. We are engineers, musicians, and collectors who believe these instruments are not museum pieces but tools meant to be played, heard, and trusted on stage or in the studio. Our bench has seen everything from stubborn Moogs and fragile ARP boards to polysynths with corroded traces and keyboards that have traveled too many miles. We approach each repair with patience, documentation, and respect for the original design, while making sensible updates only where reliability demands them. Because we are a small team, you work directly with the person handling your instrument, from the first diagnosis to the final calibration. We also advise on maintenance, source hard-to-find parts, and help you decide when a repair is worthwhile. Patchbay exists to keep old synthesizers making new music.
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.
Specs and numbers
| Particle-1 | Gemini 4 Argon | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Particle AI | |
| Made in | — | US |
| Released | 28 Oct 2026 | 13 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.05 | $2.00 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $0.50 | $10.00 |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | closed |
| Hacker News points | 17 | 2,036 |
| Time for the six prompts | 7 min 13 s | 13 min 43 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.056 | $0.68 |
Particle-1 was cheaper: $0.62 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Particle-1 was faster: 6 min 29 s less in total, and faster on each 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%; Particle-1 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Gemini 4 Argon's game passed 5 of 5 checks; Particle-1 was not in it.





