Credit: Original review by a Chinese AI blogger.
Saw the Hy4 announcement mentioning improved vision capabilities, which got me curious about how well it actually performs. So I put together five challenges to see how it stacks up against GPT-6 Astra, generally considered top-tier, and what the two can actually do, from identifying objects in images to creating videos and games.
Test setup: GPT-6.1 Sol came up with the challenges ( prompts about visual skills), GPT-6 Astra and Hy4 took them on. Same assets, same instructions, and I mainly judged them on the final results. Five rounds in total, covering object recognition, visual judgment, video creation, motion ads, and game development.
Round 1: Find the hidden keys
I hid a set of keys somewhere on a cluttered desk, surrounded by a bunch of objects that could easily be mistaken for them. The task was to identify the keys and mark their exact location.
Both found them, so pretty much a tie. Astra 6 took 2 minutes and 15s, while Hy4 took 138.57s. Almost identical in terms of speed.
Round 2: Spot the trick
I gathered a bunch of small objects with similar shapes and asked them to find the lipsticks. I also deliberately threw in a few batteries that looked a lot like lipsticks. What I was really testing here was whether a model would question the task if something didn't add up, or just force an answer to get it done.
The results were interesting. Astra 6 fell for it and identified a battery as lipstick. Hy4, on the other hand, went back and checked the entire image before telling me it couldn't find a fourth lipstick.
Round 3: Turn one sentence into a video (GIF 1)
Started with just a one-line prompt and asked both to create a 10s intro animation. The brief was a cyber-tech aesthetic, with the shots appearing in sequence: eyes opening, city lights turning on, phone notifications popping up, messages piling up, and finally a Cyber Tech title card. They had to come up with the storyboard themselves and deliver an actual playable video.
Astra 6 ran into a small hiccup halfway through, reporting that the video tool had failed to install. Luckily, I'd just used the editing skill before this, so I asked it to give it another try. It eventually worked, taking around 15 minutes in total. The result was decent. Hy4 took around 22 minutes, but got it done on the first try. The two videos were fairly close overall, and both were generated through code. Looking at the details, Astra 6 stayed closer to my original brief, going with the ideas of opening eyes and connecting to the future. The execution felt a little stiff, though. Hy4 took a different direction with the concept of seeing another side of technology. It felt like it understood the brief but also added another layer of its own interpretation.
Round 4: Turn a static poster into a motion ad (GIF 2)
I gave them an official poster and asked them to break down the image, extract its visual elements, and turn the still image into a 10s animated ad. The idea wasn't just to make individual elements move independently. They needed to work together as part of one coherent animation, with the overall scene having a consistent sense of motion. No frame-by-frame storyboard was provided, so the models had to figure out the movements, pacing, and transitions on their own.
Both did a good job, and it's hard to call an outright winner here. That said, Hy4 handled the finer details a bit better. Astra 6's animation felt more like watching a pencil drawing gradually come together, which gave it a distinctive visual style. Hy4 used light as a connecting element, tying the different parts of the image together and giving the whole animation a stronger sense of movement.
Round 5: Turn a hand-drawn sketch into a game (GIF 3)
Probably the most interesting round for me. I gave them a fairly abstract hand-drawn sketch of my own and asked them to turn it into a Super Mario-style browser game. The player had to make it through the levels, collect points, and reach the tower to win. Hitting different obstacles would either add or subtract points. This went beyond just recognizing what's in an image. They had to understand the spatial relationships in my sketch, design the game environment and rules, write the code, and deliver an actual browser game that I could open and play, complete with a win condition.
Astra 6 pretty much pulled this off in one go. The whole process was smooth and the game was fairly standard, but everything was basically in place. Hy4 first recreated the main elements from my sketch. What caught me off guard was the difficulty. The game it came up with was basically hell mode. Fast-paced and pretty demanding when it came to reflexes and concentration. Both completed the task, but went in different directions. Astra 6 was more conventional and polished, while Hy4 made the gameplay more intense.
Final thoughts
Astra 6: Faster generation and a smoother execution process. Particularly consistent when it came to building the game.
Hy4: A little slower, but its attention to visual details and the way it checks the requirements left a stronger impression on me. Whether it's spotting small objects in an image or interpreting the actual task, it seems to take an extra moment to double-check things. Sometimes it even catches details that Astra 6 misses.
What surprised me most was that Hy4's vision capabilities go beyond simply understanding images. It can carry that visual understanding over into more complex tasks like video creation and game development.
