{"slug": "claude-opus-5-review-this-model-is-brilliant-but-annoying", "title": "Claude Opus 5 review: this model is brilliant (but annoying)", "summary": "Claude Opus 5, Anthropic's latest model, shows brilliant reasoning but suffers from a neurotic personality and verbosity that frustrated the reviewer during real coding sessions, including refusing to handle a merge conflict. In the reviewer's 7-model How I AI benchmark, Opus 5 scored well but did not top the leaderboard, leading to a verdict that it will not replace the reviewer's primary model despite excelling in one specific use case.", "body_md": "I’m tired of new models. Every week there’s a new benchmark, a new frontier intelligence claim, a new thing to test. But here we are, because Opus 5 just dropped and I’ve had real hands-on time with it, so you’re getting the honest version.\n\nThis is my full Opus 5 review: personality analysis, live benchmark results from my 7-model How I AI eval, and an actual verdict on whether I’m swapping it in. Spoiler: the answer surprised me.\n\n**Listen or watch on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts**\n\n### What you’ll learn:\n\nWhy I think we’ve hit an intelligence overhang and what that means for which model variables actually matter now\n\nHow Opus 5’s “neurotic” personality showed up in real coding sessions, including a merge conflict it refused to touch\n\nWhat I learned from asking both Opus 5 and GPT‑5.6 Sol “who’s smarter, you or me?”\n\nWhere Opus 5, GPT‑5.6 Sol, Sonnet 5, and Gemini 3.1 Pro actually landed on the HIA benchmark leaderboard\n\nThe one use case where Opus 5 earned straight 5s from me\n\nMy actual plan for using Opus 5 going forward\n\n### In this episode, I cover:\n\n([00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfre9hN0HCs)) Opus 5 is here\n\n([03:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfre9hN0HCs&t=195s)) First impressions\n\n([06:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfre9hN0HCs&t=372s)) Opus 5 vs. GPT‑5.6 Sol personality comparison\n\n([14:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfre9hN0HCs&t=879s)) Claude Slop: the verbosity problem and why it makes my blood boil\n\n([16:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfre9hN0HCs&t=1015s)) How the How I AI benchmark works (7 models, 6 tasks, blind scoring)\n\n([18:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfre9hN0HCs&t=1110s)) Live benchmark results: the leaderboard reveal\n\n([23:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfre9hN0HCs&t=1405s)) My verdict and how I’ll actually use Opus 5\n\n### Tools referenced:\n\n• Claude Opus 5:\n\n• Anthropic blog: [https://www.anthropic.com/news](https://www.anthropic.com/news)\n\n• GPT‑5.6 Sol: [https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/](https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/)\n\n• Sonnet 5: [https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5)\n\n• Gemini 3.1 Pro: [https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/pro/](https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/pro/)\n\n### Where to find Claire Vo:\n\nChatPRD: [https://www.chatprd.ai/](https://www.chatprd.ai/)\n\nWebsite: [https://clairevo.com/](https://clairevo.com/)\n\nLinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/)\n\nProduction and marketing by [https://penname.co/](https://penname.co/). For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-opus-5-review-this-model-is-brilliant-but-annoying", "canonical_source": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/claude-opus-5-review-this-model-is", "published_at": "2026-07-24 17:15:25+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-24 17:44:02.374449+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Claude Opus 5", "Anthropic", "GPT-5.6 Sol", "OpenAI", "Sonnet 5", "Gemini 3.1 Pro", "Google DeepMind", "Claire Vo"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-opus-5-review-this-model-is-brilliant-but-annoying", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-opus-5-review-this-model-is-brilliant-but-annoying.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-opus-5-review-this-model-is-brilliant-but-annoying.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-opus-5-review-this-model-is-brilliant-but-annoying.jsonld"}}