Business owners are worried about safety at a busy intersection where trucks `thunder` through town, but there are no plans to make it safe. Read...

Health NZ awarded an unadvertised $2m contract to a company co-founded by a senior adviser. Read...

After months of speculation, including by yours truly, the U.S. Department of Justice has doubled down on its recommendation that Google be forced to divest itself of Chrome in punishment for operating an illegal monopoly. Personally, I can’t wait. How we got here It was over six months ago that the DOJ won its four-year suit against Google, which was found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta found that Google had intentionally created and maintained an illegal monopoly by using agreements that forced its business partners to use Chrome and Google Search. Google’s own Android operating system, in conjunction with its search agreements with Apple for the iPhone and iPad, cemented its unassailable position as the mobile web boomed. Initially there were a lot of options on the table. The Department of Justice considered forcing Google to sell off or otherwise get rid of Chrome, Google Search, Android, or some combination of all three. Google appealed — indeed, might still be appealing, considering the slow pace of these big intersections between business and law. There was also a big question mark over whether any of this would matter: August 2024 was before a business-friendly Donald Trump won a second presidential term, and before Google “donated” a million dollars to him and sent CEO Sundar Pichai to the inauguration. Pichai visited the president-elect at his Mar-A-Lago residence before Trump assumed office, and the company has also abandoned its diversity and inclusion staffing goals to align with Trump’s directives, in the explicit hope of preserving contracts with the U.S. federal government. Google All of these would be questionable moves for a company in the middle of the biggest antitrust case since AT&T in the 1980s. In 2025, it appears to be standard practice — Google wouldn’t be the only company that saw its legal troubles disappear after donating to a politician. But it hardly matters. The DOJ, now firmly under the thumb of the Trump regime, is still insisting that Google get rid of Chrome, but not Search or Android. Google’s attempts to curry favor seem to have failed, as the Republican-controlled Congress is also looking to get a few good licks in. We’re probably still months away from this getting a final, definitive resolution and the approval of a federal judge, with Google no doubt exhausting every official and unofficial avenue to stop it. It isn’t the triple disaster that the big G was dreading, but the Chrome browser is still an essential part of the company’s strategy. Proceeding under the assumption that Google will indeed be forced to give up Chrome, there are a lot of ways that I think this will be a positive for users like you and me. Google doesn’t deserve to keep Chrome Judge Mehta declared that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” That was already blindingly obvious to anyone who looked at a search market analysis. Google holds a 90 percent share today, with the closest alternative being Bing at under 4 percent, and that’s almost certainly due to Microsoft aggressively shoving it into every corner of Windows. Other competitors like Baidu and Yandex operate in regions where Google does not, China and Russia, respectively. But there’s an important distinction between a monopoly and an illegal monopoly, as determined by the Sherman Antitrust Act. If you sell the only EVA space suit for turtles, than you have a monopoly on turtle space suits…but that’s not illegal. Google, it has been determined, intentionally engineered and maintained its monopoly state. It used corporate partnerships and its status as the owner/maintainer of Chrome and Android to make it effectively impossible for a competitor to gain ground, and hid or destroyed evidence to make it harder for investigators and litigants to prove it. Michael Crider/Foundry All of this was in aid of keeping Google the de facto search on the internet, an invincible juggernaut of digital advertising, one of the most valuable and powerful technology companies on the planet. That’s what finally pushed it over the edge here. And it’s worth pointing out that these moves helped Google obtain a 65 percent share of the browser market and 70 percent of the mobile OS market, too. Again, none of this is shocking, and it’s not even necessarily concerning from the perspective of an individual user. It’s all but impossible to use the modern internet without interacting with companies like Google, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, and Microsoft, and having your personal info sold to a thousand different data brokers. But speaking as a computer and smartphone user, not a commenter on public policy and the governance of America’s technology sector, I have plenty of reason to take issue with Google’s handling of Chrome in particular. Chrome seems to have become fundamentally worse as a browser over the last few years. It’s always been a RAM hog compared to alternatives, but the speed that won so much praise when Google debuted it way back in 2008 seems to have slipped away — though that might also be because the web is just a lot heavier these days. Joel Lee / Foundry Google’s more deliberate choices aren’t without problems. It seems to have hamstrung ad-blocking extensions with the latest standard update, something that’s only just recently come into effect for most users. Google says that the Manifest V3 update is to improve performance, security, and privacy…but developers disagree, strongly. The creator of the popular uBlock Origin refused to hobble his extension, and created a “Lite” version rather than comply. I won’t say that Google is lying…but the idea that one of the biggest advertising companies on the planet intentionally made a software design choice that makes blocking advertising harder on the biggest browser would hardly be surprising. After all, it’s been more than ten years since Google released Chrome for Android, and it still doesn’t support third-party extensions, something that both the desktop version and other Android browsers can do. I wonder why…when one of the first extensions most users load up is some kind of ad blocker. Google has made plenty of other choices that give users like me reason to complain, like mismanaging YouTube, making Google Search worse and worse, and pushing questionably necessary “AI” into all aspects of its business. Its hoarding (and sharing) of personal data is a cornerstone of today’s web advertising. In short, the idea of Google being divorced from Chrome and the browser market isn’t one that brings a tear to my eye, no matter how we get there. We’re in for some chaos That being said, I’d be a fool if I didn’t foresee a lot of problems coming out of a breakup. Chrome isn’t just Chrome, and hasn’t been for a long time. Whatever its sins, Google has done tons of open source browser development via the Chromium project. Chromium now forms the code base of most of its Chrome’s alternatives, including Microsoft’s Edge, Opera, and my own new browser bestie, Vivaldi. In fact, of the browsers with more than 1 percent of the market, only Firefox and Apple’s Safari are not based on Chromium. Chromium is also the basis of ChromeOS, Google’s alternative to Windows. While it’s nowhere near as successful as Android, Chromebooks form a substantial chunk of the market, particularly for entry-level machines and large-volume sales to schools and other big, centralized organizations. ChromeOS is still well behind MacOS, even Linux (and I think the Steam Deck is a big part of that), but without it a lot of people would be trying to run Windows on laptops that really can’t handle it. CC Photo Labs / Shutterstock.com So yeah, if Chrome and Chromium disappeared tomorrow, we’d be in for a big shakeup in the browser space and beyond. Exactly what’s going to happen to Chromium (and by extension, ChromeOS and Chromebooks) might be the biggest variable in this situation. It seems unlikely that Google will continue to pour millions and millions of dollars into the development of an open source platform for which it is no longer the primary benefactor. Maybe it’ll switch Chromebooks over to Android for a safe haven, and let some other company take over Chromium. That would still hurt a lot for Google, and cause headaches for every other browser developer. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world…and we’d see some competition that’s been sorely lacking in this space for over a decade. But which company would be the first in line to take over Chrome? That’s not hard to guess. A big chance for Microsoft Microsoft not only has a lot of history as both a backbone of the internet and a browser developer, it has the deep pockets necessary to take over a business as big and unwieldy as Chrome. And I’m betting Microsoft would absolutely leap at the chance to do it — after all, it’s been not-quite-forcing Windows users to deal with Edge for years. Imagine the branding coup that would be “Microsoft Chrome” pre-installed on every new Windows laptop. If nothing else, it would save Microsoft the trouble of faking those Bing search results and support pages. Speaking of Bing, Microsoft would be in a position to use (or abuse, depending on whom you ask) Chrome to grow Bing search, using some of the same techniques that Google has with a browser in its back pocket. Microsoft, Universal Pictures If you’re thinking, “Hey, are you saying Microsoft would try to do the same thing that got Google in so much trouble for creating a monopoly?” Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And Microsoft is hardly a newcomer when it comes to monopoly abuse, or even being naughty with browser integration. But with a tiny fraction of the search and browser market in 2025, Microsoft has a certain license to try and make up for the advantage Google has been enjoying for the better part of two decades. It would be, if not exactly fair, then at least somewhat balanced. As much as I’d love for an independent like Opera or Firefox to come out on top of this, that just isn’t the world we live in. And Microsoft would certainly take a gamble on regulatory trouble 20 years from now, if it meant getting a big chunk of Google’s browser, search, and advertising business today. Microsoft could certainly use an edge at the moment. It’s in no danger of being dethroned as the desktop operating system leader…but that lead is looking a lot shakier than it used to. Not only are the peasants revolting when it comes to being forced onto Windows 11, Linux is gaining as a realistic alternative thanks to support from Valve’s SteamOS. That would hit Windows right in its comfy spot as the de facto home of PC gaming, to say nothing of a broader shift towards mobile hardware and OS-agnostic web tools. Microsoft is merely the most likely candidate for a new owner of Chrome, according to my reckoning. Other tech giants — Apple, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, you know, all the other companies that would love to make those same monopoly swings — could win a bidding war. Or Google could simply shut down Chrome, if that’s an option, and take a big hit to its bottom line simply to deny its competition that opportunity. If that happens, some other browser (very likely a continuation or fork of Chromium) will take its place. And that’s fine by me. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Solid build quality with ergonomic stand, tripod mount Good image quality for the price Easy-to-read menu system with plenty of options 120Hz refresh rate with adaptive sync Cons Lackluster cable management Only one HDMI and one DisplayPort No USB ports Our Verdict The Acer Vero B247Y G looks boring at a glance, but it delivers good image quality and motion clarity for about $150. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Acer Vero B247Y G Retailer Price CDW $139.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Shoppers looking for a 24-inch 1080p monitor may be tempted by budget options that dip below $100. If you extend your budget to about $150, however, you can afford a more capable display like the Vero B247Y G. Though still basic, it delivers extras like an ergonomic stand and a 120Hz refresh rate, which makes it a good choice for both productivity and entertainment, including PC games. Acer Vero B247Y G specs and features The Acer Vero B247Y G’s basic specifications are nothing to get excited about. It’s a simple 24-inch, 1080p widescreen monitor with an IPS LCD panel. Dozens of competitors provide similar specifications, and quite a few are less expensive. Display size: 23.8-inch 16:9 widescreen Native resolution: 1920×1080 Panel type: 8-bit IPS LCD Refresh rate: 120Hz Adaptive sync: Adaptive Sync HDR: No Ports: 1x VGA, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort, 1x 3.5mm audio-in, 1x 3.5mm audio-out VESA mount: 100x100mm Audio: 2x 2-watt speakers Price: $154.99 MSRP ($139.99 typical retail) However, the Vero B247Y G offers a few extras. It has a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and supports Adaptive Sync. Budget gaming monitors offer this but monitors that target office and productivity usually skip it. The monitor also has a VGA port, which again speaks to its target demographic: This is a monitor Acer expects will be used alongside older, less capable PCs. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best monitors for comparison. Acer Vero B247Y G design It’s hard to imagine how the Acer Vero B247Y G could look more generic. The panel is surrounded by slim bezels, while the rear of the display and stand are clad in matte-black plastic. Nothing about the monitor stands out. Of course, that’s the point. The Vero B247Y G is meant for a basic home or small business office, so it’s not supposed to stand out. While it doesn’t look like much, the Vero B247Y G provides good build quality for the price. The monitor’s plastics feel reasonably thick and sturdy, which makes the monitor seem more premium than expected. Foundry Cable management is a bit of miss, as the monitor only provides a plastic clip. It more-or-less does the job, but it’s thin and the cables can bind up if you frequently adjust the monitor’s position. Speaking of which, the included ergonomic stand is a big perk. It easily clips onto the monitor with a quick-release mechanism. The stand adjusts for height, tilt, swivel, and pivot. While this isn’t unheard of for a monitor priced around $150 or less, it’s far from guaranteed. The stand’s support for pivot into portrait mode is especially uncommon. A 100x100mm VESA mount is also available for use with third-party monitor stands and arms. The last design trait worth mention is the 1/4-inch tripod mount on the top of the stand. It can be used to attach all sorts of peripherals, such as cameras or ring lights. I’m not aware of any price-competitive alternative with a tripod mount, and while it’s certainly a niche feature, it will rocket the Vero B247Y G to the top of some shopping lists. Acer Vero B247Y G connectivity The Acer Vero B247Y G’s connectivity is extremely basic. It has one VGA port, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. The HDMI and DisplayPort connections support the monitor’s full refresh rate and resolution, but the VGA port is limited to 1080p at 75Hz. VGA’s presence might seem old-fashioned, but it’s still common on budget monitors that target office and productivity use, since older PCs are common in these settings. However, providing VGA means the monitor is effectively limited to two video inputs when it’s paired with newer PCs that don’t support VGA. The audio connectivity is also a bit unique, as the monitor includes both a 3.5mm audio input and an audio output. I assume the audio input is included because the monitor has a VGA input. HDMI and DisplayPort can carry audio, but VGA can’t. USB connectivity is absent and arguably the monitor’s most significant downside. While it’s true that many budget monitors skip USB-A ports, it remains sorely missed. The lack of USB-A also means the monitor doesn’t have a KVM switch function, which is found on a fair number of budget and mid-range productivity monitors. A 1/4-inch tripod mount on the top of the Vero B247Y G’s stand can be used to attach all sorts of peripherals, such as cameras or ring lights. Acer Vero B247Y G menu and features I was pleasantly surprised by the Acer Vero B247Y G’s on-screen menu system. It’s controlled by a quick, responsive joystick. The on-screen menu system includes clear feature descriptions and uses relatively large, easy-to-read text. This is an area where many budget monitors fall short, as they often have tiny, confusing menu systems. The range of image quality adjustment is quite limited, but it’s fine for the price. There’s a wide variety of preset modes and adjustments for adaptive sync and response times, among other things. It covers the basics. Foundry I did notice one oddity. The monitor has a Max Brightness setting that must be turned on to reach the full monitor brightness; the monitor ships with this setting turned off, which restricts its brightness to about 115 nits. I expect this has to do with energy consumption certifications. A pair of 2-watt speakers round out the monitor’s features. They’re thin and tinny but do provide enough volume for basic use, like video calls or podcasts. Still, external speakers or a headset is highly recommended.  Acer Vero B247Y G SDR image quality The Acer Vero B247Y G is a budget monitor, so expectations about its image quality should be kept in check. However, while it’s obviously no threat to more expensive monitors, the Vero B247 G scores well overall. Foundry I measured a maximum sustained SDR brightness of 305 nits, which is great for a budget display. The Gigabyte M27QA ICE is the only similar, recently reviewed monitor that’s brighter, but it’s also starting the creep outside of budget territory at a price of $279.99 The Vero B247Y G’s brightness, along with the monitor’s matte coat, will make the monitor easy to view in most rooms. A higher level of brightness is only required in very bright, sunlit rooms, or in a very bright office. But you’ll typically need to up your budget to $300 or more if you want an LCD monitor that reaches above 400 nits. Foundry The Vero B247 G’s contrast is surprisingly good. I measured a maximum contrast ratio of 1530:1 which, as the graph shows, is much better than usual for an IPS LCD monitor. This level of contrast helps the monitor deliver a deeper, more immersive image. It doesn’t make much difference in office productivity, but it’s appreciated when viewing photos, videos, and games. Foundry Color gamut, on the other hand, is a minor weakness. The Vero B247 G spanned 99 percent of sRGB, 84 percent of DCI-P3, and 77 percent of AdobeRGB. These results aren’t bad, and they’re good enough to provide a vivid and colorful image. They’re also in line with some budget competitors, such as the Pixio Wave. Still, it’s possible to find similar monitors with superior color, such as the KTC H24T09P. Foundry Color accuracy is a bit of a wash. While these numbers appear to differ greatly on the graph, in truth, numbers clustered this tightly tend to look rather similar, and the Vero B247 G lands right in the middle of the pack. Though its color accuracy is far from the best monitor, which can achieve an average error of around 0.5 (lower is better), the overall color accuracy is solid. It’s a similar story with the monitor’s gamma and color temperature. I measured a gamma curve of 2.3, which is slightly off the target of 2.2. This means the image looks a tad darker than it should. I also measured a color temperature of 6600K, only a hair off the target of 6500K. This technically means the image is a bit cooler than preferred, but I found the difference hard to appreciate in real-world use. The monitor’s 1080p resolution works out to 92 pixels per inch across the 23.8-inch panel. That’s not particularly sharp for a monitor in 2025. The image is crisp at a glance, but small fonts and high-contrast edges can reveal some aliasing or pixelation, while video can look a bit soft. This is typical for a budget monitor, however; it’s difficult to find a feature-comparable 1440p display. Overall, the Acer Vero B247Y G has good image quality for a monitor in its price bracket. It does best in brightness and contrast, where it outperforms many similar monitors. While the monitor’s budget price means shoppers should keep expectations in check, it’s generally a vivid, sharp monitor that looks good in a wide range of content. Acer Vero B247Y G HDR image quality The Acer Vero B247Y G doesn’t support HDR. That’s preferable for a budget monitor, as displays in this price bracket lack the image quality to make HDR pop. Some budget monitors technically support HDR, but the quality of the HDR image makes it pointless. Acer Vero B247Y G motion performance The Acer Vero B247Y G has a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and supports Adaptive Sync (including FreeSync and G-Sync) for smooth frame pacing. These features aren’t hard to come by even among budget monitors, but monitors meant for office use tend to skip them, so these features give the Vero B247Y G an edge. Motion clarity is decent. Fast-moving objects present with good clarity, though some small details remain easy to miss. Scrolling through text also reveals better clarity, which makes it easier to flip through documents, and generally makes the monitor feel more responsive than competitors stuck at 60- to 75Hz. And wait — there’s more! The Vero B247Y G also has Acer VRB, a black frame insertion feature. It inserts blank frames between real frames which, due to a trick of human perception, improves motion clarity. While it does lead to a “double image” effect and reduces brightness, it’s successful in improving clarity, which can be useful in competitive games. Keep in mind, however, that VRB doesn’t work alongside Adaptive Sync (you can’t have both turned on at the same time). The Vero B247Y G’s combination of a 120Hz refresh rate, Adaptive Sync, and black frame insertion is odd for an office monitor. These features are more likely to be found in a gaming monitor, and their inclusion makes the Vero a good choice if you need one budget monitor that can handle both productivity and gaming. Should you buy the Acer Vero B247Y G? The Acer Vero B247Y G is a good choice for shoppers looking to buy a capable, versatile monitor for a home office or small business. Its retail price of $154.99, sometimes discounted to $139.99, is towards the high end for a 24-inch 1080p monitor. However, it’s justified by the monitor’s build quality, ergonomic stand, image quality, and improved refresh rate. In fact, I’d really urge most shoppers to buy the Vero B247Y G over the least expensive 1080p alternatives. It’s possible to buy a 24-inch 1080p monitor for as little as $80, but pricing that low forces a monitor to compromise on build and image quality. The Vero monitor’s slightly higher pricing helps it avoid mistakes and allows it to offer extra features, like a 120Hz refresh rate and Adaptive Sync, that competitors may lack. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Exclusive access to the Operator agent Full access to GPT-4o and all reasoning models Full access to o1 pro mode Increased rate limits for Deep Research, Sora, Advanced Voice, and other features Cons Far cheaper to subscribe individually to alternative AI tools à la carte Dall-E (image generation) and Sora (video generation) just aren’t that good Operator’s usefulness is still limited and impractical Our Verdict While ChatGPT Pro’s exclusive Operator agent is novel and fun to play with, it doesn’t provide enough practical value yet. The best part of ChatGPT Pro is the boost to rate limits, especially for Deep Research. If you aren’t making heavy use of Deep Research, then ChatGPT Plus offers better bang for your buck. Or you might be better off cobbling together a bunch of other premium AI services to suit your specific needs. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: ChatGPT Pro Retailer Price OpenAI $200 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pro — the highest tier of access for individuals — is far from cheap. It costs $200 per month and, unlike most competitors, OpenAI doesn’t offer any discounts for an annual subscription. The company also avoids limited-time sales. That’s a hefty price to swallow. At $200 per month, it’s more than twice the price of Adobe Creative Cloud’s Business Plan. It’s enough to finance the monthly payment on a Hyundai Ioniq 5 lease. It’d even make a huge dent in paying down student loans or credit card debt. So, is ChatGPT Pro worth it? To find out, I spent $200 of my own money and used ChatGPT Pro’s features for a month so you don’t have to. What you get with ChatGPT Pro What exactly do you get with ChatGPT Pro that you can’t get in the free version? Or even the much cheaper ChatGPT Plus plan that only costs $20 per month? The short answer is, every single feature OpenAI has to offer — and that list continues to grow quite quickly. The longer answer is that ChatGPT Pro provides access to all OpenAI LLMs (including GPT-4o, GPT-4.5o, o3-mini, o3-mini-high, and o1) along with all the latest features like Operator and Deep Research. On top of that, ChatGPT Pro includes full access to the company’s AI models for media generation, which includes Dall-E for image generation and Sora for video generation. Pro users get priority video generation and, in the case of Sora, access to better resolutions (up to 1080p) and extended durations (up to 20 seconds). ChatGPT Free vs. Plus vs. Pro If you’re still feeling a bit confused about what you get with the different ChatGPT plans, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. Here’s a quick chart I whipped up to help you visualize the differences: Matt Smith / Foundry, made with Claude As the chart shows, upgrading from ChatGPT Free to ChatGPT Plus unlocks access to multiple features, while upgrading from ChatGPT Plus to ChatGPT Pro only unlocks one wholly exclusive feature: Operator. However, I want to draw your attention to the last feature listed in the comparison, which is rate limits. OpenAI regularly changes the rate limits for ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, and they aren’t always documented. ChatGPT Free Generally, though, the rate limit for ChatGPT Free is extremely low. You can exhaust resources with just a few conversations, forcing you to wait hours before you can ask another question. ChatGPT Free’s rate limits for more advanced features (like the o3 reasoning model and Dall-E image generation) are so low that they border on useless. ChatGPT Plus ChatGPT Plus is much more generous. While OpenAI’s LLMs still have firm rate limits in this tier, they’re high enough that most people won’t hit them with typical usage. The rate limits for other advanced features (like Dall-E, Sora, and Deep Research) are still tight, though. ChatGPT Pro ChatGPT Pro’s rate limits are much higher. Certain advanced features are still kind of limited (e.g., Deep Research is capped at 120 generations per month) but high enough that most people won’t come close to hitting them. I used ChatGPT Pro heavily, racking up more than a dozen full conversations a day, and never hit any rate limits. In other words, the rate limits on ChatGPT Pro will only become an issue if you’re incorporating it into automated workflows — in which case you’re really meant to access OpenAI’s models through its APIs. ChatGPT Pro vs. Claude with Perplexity, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, and Kling OpenAI is the most famous of AI companies, but it’s far from the only one. Its many competitors include DeepSeek, Anthropic, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, Meta, and Google to name a few. Which raises the question: If ChatGPT Pro is so dang expensive, how does it compare to the competition? Well, the $200/month spent on ChatGPT Pro would actually be enough to cover the monthly plans for several different AI alternatives, spreading the cost across multiple. For this review, I tried ChatGPT Pro against five alternative services: Anthropic Claude Pro (AI chatbot) — $20/month Perplexity Pro (web search) — $20/month Midjourney Standard (image generation) — $30/month Kling AI Pro (video generation) — $25/month ElevenLabs Creator (speech-to-text/text-to-speech) — $22/month Total cost — $117/month Choosing a suite of competitive AI services with capabilities similar to ChatGPT Pro certainly looks appealing on paper. The total cost is nearly half the price, a steep discount compared to ChatGPT Pro. Matt Smith / Foundry This à la carte approach arguably provides access to a better selection of AI services, too. Coders generally prefer Claude over ChatGPT while Perplexity is better for web search than ChatGPT’s built-in search, for example. Creatives hugely prefer Midjourney’s image generation model to Dall-E, and Kling AI’s titular video models are often recommended over Sora. ElevenLabs, meanwhile, offers speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities that ChatGPT doesn’t even provide. On the other hand, ChatGPT Pro offers some features that competitive services don’t emulate. Claude doesn’t offer alternatives to Deep Research or Operator. ElevenLabs’ text-to-speech and speech-to-text are useful but not the same as ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice. And while a variety of AI agents exist, no competitor offers a simple, ready-to-use AI agent like OpenAI’s Operator. This comparison between ChatGPT Pro and a suite of alternative services shows an important point: if you’re subscribing to ChatGPT Pro, it’s likely for access to features that are exclusive to ChatGPT Pro (or rate limited in such a way that they’re only useful with ChatGPT Pro). In that case, we need to dive into those exclusive ChatGPT Pro features and evaluate them for value. Are they worth it? Let’s find out. ChatGPT Pro’s reasoning models Let’s start with ChatGPT Pro’s access to OpenAI reasoning models. These models use chain-of-thought reasoning to prompt themselves as they try to work through a problem. This helps the model whenever it’s asked to deal with something that involves logic or requires understanding the real world to reach the correct answer. Reasoning models score well across a wide range of publicly available benchmarks, but they stand out in math, coding, science, and related fields. Matt Smith / Foundry For example, when asked to write code for a particular feature in an app, a reasoning model will often do a better job. It can reason through potential use cases for the feature, as well as the varying approaches to implementation, as it looks for an adequate response. This is more likely to result in code that’s immediately useful without modification. Because of this, reasoning models like OpenAI o1 tend to dominate AI benchmarks focused on math and coding. It’s not all good news for reasoning models, though. They’re slower than conventional AI chatbots, and the more reasoning an AI does, the slower it gets. (ChatGPT o1 can leave you waiting for a minute or longer before it starts to generate a reply.) Reasoning models also tend to have more limited access to files and tools. If you want to use OpenAI o1 to analyze a PDF, for example, you can’t upload it. The best you can do is copy and paste the text into the prompt, which limits the usefulness of reasoning models depending on what you want ChatGPT to do. Reasoning models are great if you want an AI model to help you brainstorm difficult problems or write code that’s more relevant to your software. But if you want to use ChatGPT as a writing or editing assistant, or to analyze files and information, or to answer complex questions, then reasoning models are often less useful than GPT-4.5o. Deep Research is pretty awesome Deep Research is a ChatGPT feature that employs an AI agent to search the web, ingest relevant information, and compile it into a lengthy summary with sources cited. That report can be used for more serious topics (like researching career opportunities in a specific industry) or for more casual pursuits (like compiling a history of cat memes). No matter how you decide to use it, Deep Research’s reports deliver generally useful information and often pick up on details that would be hard to find when searching the web manually. Matt Smith / Foundry Say you want to open a restaurant. You can ask Deep Research to write a report on the restaurant industry for your specific region, and you can even prompt it to find competitors and look for gaps in the market. Deep Research can provide granular recommendations that include underserved niches you can fill, and it can make recommendations down to the neighborhood level, citing specific competitors in said neighborhood to justify its conclusions. The reports aren’t perfect, though. Hallucinations can cause Deep Research to generate incorrect information. And because it searches the web to build its report, it’s susceptible to oft-repeated generalizations, myths, and inaccuracies. Then again, even if you tried compiling that research on your own, you’d likely run into the same issues. So, it’s up to you to decide what to trust and what to filter out. Yes, it has its limits and flaws, but Deep Research is a great feature. The information it compiles is often more detailed than what I could hope to achieve on my own, and it tends to find deeper web sources that I might otherwise miss, skip, or overlook. Deep Research is the best feature currently bundled in ChatGPT Pro, and while competitors are rapidly trying to mimic it, none have matched it yet. Deep Research is available with ChatGPT Plus, but Plus users are limited to 10 queries per month. ChatGPT Pro gives you 120 queries per month (as of March 2025), and that number will likely increase later. Dall-E and Sora sadly disappoint OpenAI’s Dall-E image generator and Sora video generator aren’t exclusive to ChatGPT Pro, but upgrading to Pro makes them more useful. It also exposes some limitations. Dall-E Dall-E is tightly integrated into ChatGPT. The chatbot doesn’t just generate images on request, but also whenever it thinks a visual response is warranted. But Dall-E’s quality is lacking and it hasn’t improved much over the past year, even as competitors like Midjourney continue to make progress. Most competitors also offer advanced features Dall-E lacks, such as storyboarding, detailed image editing, and concurrent jobs. ChatGPT Free has access to Dall-E, but usage rate limits with Free and Plus plans are tight. You’ll need ChatGPT Pro if you want to generate dozens or hundreds of images in a session. Sora Unlike Dall-E, Sora video generation isn’t accessed through ChatGPT itself. It’s a separate tool — one that still requires a ChatGPT subscription to use. While ChatGPT Plus users get limited access to Sora, ChatGPT Pro users enjoy enhanced quality (up to 1080p) and longer videos (up to 20 seconds versus Plus’s limit of 5 seconds). Rate limits on ChatGPT Plus are tight, too, so if you’re looking to use Sora as anything more than a toy, you’ll need a ChatGPT Pro subscription. Matt Smith / Foundry Unfortunately, Sora disappoints. It struggles with basic tasks like stable camera pans and fails almost completely with fast action sequences. Competitors like Kling AI can produce better results while other services like Runway and Pika Labs offer specific AI models for different tasks (like character animation or special effects) with more reliable results. Dall-E and Sora are weak spots in the ChatGPT Pro subscription. Professional artists and creators looking to make ChatGPT part of their workflow are likely to find it isn’t up to snuff. Operator falls short of its potential Operator is OpenAI’s advanced reasoning agent for executing simple tasks in a web browser. It’s notable for being the only feature exclusive to the ChatGPT Pro tier subscription (as of March 2025). Like Sora, Operator is a separate tool outside of ChatGPT that still requires a ChatGPT Pro subscription to use. After entering a prompt with your requested action(s), you’ll see a real-time feed of the agent attempting to fulfill your request in a virtual machine. In the video below, you can see OpenAI’s real-world demonstration of Operator: In theory, an AI agent like Operator could function as a virtual assistant that handles everything from online shopping to completing forms or organizing emails. Operator sometimes succeeds with these tasks. Beyond the basics, however, Operator remains quite limited. It can’t bypass security measures like CAPTCHAs, instead prompting you to complete them. It won’t automatically enter payment details either. (The reasons for that are obvious, right? I wouldn’t trust Operator with my credit card details.) Even so, these limitations make Operator a lot less useful. As of now, you still have to help Operator over various hurdles, which defeats the point of an autonomous AI agent. Should you pay up for ChatGPT Pro? As this lengthy review shows, ChatGPT isn’t just an AI chatbot. It’s a bundle of AI tools that each target completely different tasks. That’s actually one of ChatGPT Pro’s greatest weaknesses compared to alternatives. You can cobble together multiple competing AI services that are each optimized for their particular tasks, and it’ll likely cost significantly less. This piecemeal approach does mean managing more subscriptions, but it feels more practical than OpenAI’s strategy of bundling everything into one flat subscription fee. To be fair, ChatGPT Pro does offer some features that you can’t get elsewhere or don’t live up to OpenAI’s quality. Deep Research is especially compelling if you want an AI research assistant at your beck and call. But the other stuff, like OpenAI’s Operator agent, aren’t reliable enough yet to deliver enough value for the price. As of this writing, the best reason to get ChatGPT Pro is to boost usage rate limits. The rate limits with ChatGPT Pro are high enough that they’re virtually non-existent. Competing services, like Anthropic’s Claude or DeepSeek, can get bogged down at peak times and will throttle you even if you’re a paid subscriber. Even so, the exorbitant price of ChatGPT Pro is hard to justify unless you’re hitting its AI services with hundreds of requests every day. And if that’s the case, you might be better off accessing OpenAI’s models directly through its API services (which charge you per millions of tokens instead of a flat monthly fee). For most people, ChatGPT Plus should suffice. Otherwise, if you’re a power user, professional, or enthusiast looking to benefit from the latest AI advancements, I recommend subscribing to multiple different AI services that each target more specific use cases rather than adopting ChatGPT Pro’s all-in-one package approach. Read...

Australian and New Zealand banks are investing billions in ICT, but the challenge remains: how to ensure these funds translate into tangible business value. Read...

Business travel surged in early 2024 as companies reinvested in face-to-face connections, with domestic airfare sales soaring by 70% from late 2023. Read...

Australian and New Zealand banks are investing billions in ICT, but the challenge remains: how to ensure these funds translate into tangible business value. Read...

WTW has launched Radar Vision, an AI-driven monitoring tool for insurers, aimed at enhancing business performance and growth in the insurance sector. Read...

Microsoft has unveiled two new AI agents to boost sales efficiency, allowing teams to focus on closing high-margin deals while improving customer outreach. Read...