my take: better at findings bugs, worse in conversation and design.

and that finding bugs stuff was exactly the thing where it was neutered...

Yes. It is great for analysis, debugging, and understanding larger segments of code. I'll use it sparingly since it won't be on subscription, but there are cases where it will make sense to use it.

I received absolutely nothing worth paying for.

I hit the safety filters with almost every meaningful task I tried to test it against, and these all happened to be benign tasks that Opus 4.8 does reasonably well.

I prototyped some rather complex internal library with it, taking advantage of the free period. It was cool while it lasted, but I wouldn't pay for it. I'd be able to do the same thing with cheaper models and more time + involvement from me. I'd work a bit longer, but would also have more insights about how the project works. It would have cost ~160$ for one day. Hard to justify using it as a daily driver. I did appreciate its concision + willingness to go an extra mile to make sure things work, but all of this could potentially be ported to smaller models with the right training setup I assume.