Those who have never known anything better are okay with much less. For example, anyone who used Fable when it came out are saying that it is very difficult to go back to lesser models now. Even our strongest aren't good enough in comparison.
I used fable, and directly compared it against sonnet 4.8 and gpt 5.5 on various tasks. It was generally better, but still not perfect. Going back to sonnet/gpt has been perfectly fine.
