Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I’m Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.
Ask Jerry
Ask Jerry is a column where we answer your burning Android/tech questions with the help of long-time Android Central editor Jerry Hildenbrand.
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Is Gemini Advanced worth $20 a month?
Charles asks:
Is buying Gemini Advanced worth the price? I like that it comes with Google One storage, but it’s double the price of my current 2TB plan and I’m wondering if the AI features are worth it.
Thanks in advance.
Heya Charles! That’s a great question and one I have asked myself several times. An extra $10 a month (the “Premium” Google One plan is $10 per month and the “AI Premium” plan is $20) isn’t a lot of money but every penny counts. It needs to be worth it before anyone should just buy into it.
The answer isn’t going to be the same for everyone, of course. Some people benefit from Gemini Advanced features like Gemini in Gmail or the extra tokens for analyzing a ton of data, but I think most people — myself included — aren’t going to see $10 worth of benefit.
I don’t know your exact needs, so let’s take a look at what Gemini Advanced has to offer.
More capable AI models. Gemini Advanced uses the latest, and presumably best, AI training before it trickles down to the free tier of Gemini. It could mean you get better and more relevant responses to any query, whether it’s conversational or something more intricate like data mining a document.
Priority access to new features. You’ll get to try out the new AI tools before free users have access to them. This could be both a blessing and a curse.
A 1 million token context window. Gemini can analyze bigger and more complex documents with a larger token window. This is one of those things you would know you need, so if you ask about it, you probably don’t. If you ever tried to feed Gemini a document and it told you it was too large, more tokens would help.
NotebookLM Plus. This is probably the best feature of the Premium AI plan, and if you are a student or need to keep track of information so it’s organized in a meaningful way, Notebook LM is perfect. The Plus version gives you features like more sources, better sharing, and enhanced privacy from Google’s cyber-eyes. I wish this was offered as a stand-alone option.
Gemini in Gmail, Docs, and Google Meet. If you want Gemini to help you write better emails or build better presentations, this could be worth it. It also enhances your video quality in Google Meet so everyone can see if you dusted your bookshelf or not.
Listing what is offered is the easy part. Deciding if you need or want any of it is a little harder. As mentioned, I think Notebook LM Plus is almost worth the extra costs and is the only reason I would even consider paying for Gemini Advanced.
However, I asked around the office, and my colleagues agreed with me. The value just isn’t there, especially when most of the features will trickle down to the free tier in time.
Without knowing your exact needs, I would suggest you look into how much you use AI right now, then decide if any of these features would make you use it more. Best of all, you can try it free for a month to help you decide, and you totally should. That’s what I did before I decided that I didn’t need to pay the extra cost, and I have no regrets.