It could be my use cases, which have always seemed to be outside the wheelhouse of these models, but I find it very hard to downgrade after accessing a more capable model.

Opus 4.8 produces output in 15 minutes that is 3-4 hours of my work away from output that used to take me 40ish hours (a solid week of dedicated effort).

Last year(-ish, maybe it was 18 months, I forget when the jump happened), the frontier models couldn't touch this work. The output looked like a hardworking intern on their first day. Nice formatting, decent volume of words, but no understanding.

So it might work if it turns out to be a substantial leap in capability.

I switched back to Sonnet. It replies faster so I work faster. Also cheaper. But I really like the speed. I have to be more specific with what I want. Also I stop it more often than Opus. These new models will be awesome, but they need to increase the speed.