Claude Sonnet 5: No Hype Full Breakdown & Testing

Claude Sonnet 5 just launched. It's cheaper and faster than Opus, and supposedly almost as good. In this video, I run it head-to-head against Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 4.6 across real coding and knowledge-work builds to see if the cheap one's actually worth switching to. 00:00 Intro 00:36 Firing up SimmonsBench (15 builds, 3 models) 01:02 The benchmarks: where Sonnet 5 lands 04:19 Coding test 1: Designer portfolio site 07:38 Coding test 2: Excalidraw clone 09:28 Coding test 3: 3D nebula galaxy 10:41 Coding test 4: Racing game 11:30 Coding test 5: Low-poly terrain flyover 12:04 Coding verdict: Opus takes it 12:34 Knowledge work tests begin 12:56 Knowledge test 1: Sales QBR deck 14:48 Knowledge test 2: Finishing my essay 17:38 Knowledge test 3: LinkedIn post 19:52 Knowledge test 4: Writing a YouTube hook 22:06 Final verdict + takeaways