Random Reviews AI Showdown (2 of 5): five subscriptions, one wallet.
ChatGPT Plus: My $20-a-Month Generalist
Two and a half years in, it's the AI I reach for when I don't know what I need yet.
What it is, what I paid
ChatGPT Plus is OpenAI's $20/month tier: higher limits, broader model access, priority when traffic is heavy, faster responses. I've subscribed since March 2024, my longest-running AI subscription by a wide margin. In my stack, Claude is the workhorse and Google is the bundle bonus. ChatGPT is the generalist, which turns out to be the one I open most days.
How I actually used it
I had ChatGPT sort my last 20 chats into themes. What came back: news and general knowledge questions, building things, cybersecurity research, education and career questions, product research, and everyday troubleshooting. Including, memorably, a sprinkler that wouldn't stop.
The pattern across all of it: I bring it questions and half-formed ideas, and it turns them into something useful. It's my research assistant and resident handyman. Quick questions on the phone, photos of broken things, health questions I want a second opinion on.
The most consistent thing I do with it doesn't show up in chat history at all: almost every day, I get a voice briefing. World news, national news, the markets, and I can jump in with questions while it talks. It's genuinely good, with one quirk I've noticed: as the days pile up, the briefings get thinner on detail until I push for more. Like it's rationing itself.
And the meta detail: Random Reviews itself runs on ChatGPT's site hosting, which means this review is hosted by its own subject. Make of that what you will.
What's great
Breadth. Of the AI subscriptions I pay for, Plus does the most kinds of things. Voice mode is genuinely good, the kind of feature you assume is a gimmick until you're talking through a problem hands-free. Image generation is right there in the same app. The health features have grown real teeth too, with enough integrations now that health questions are a regular use case instead of a novelty. It isn't the deepest at any one thing, but nothing else I pay for covers this much ground.
What annoyed me
It can be wordy. Ask a simple question, get a dissertation. And some answers play it safe to the point of generic. That's the whole complaint list, which for a daily driver is pretty short.
Verdict: ★★★★
Four stars. In my stack, Claude is the workhorse, ChatGPT is the generalist I reach for most days, Google is the bundle bonus, Grok is the budget generalist, and Muse is the agent. Ask me again next month, though. The fascinating thing about keeping this many AI subscriptions is that the rankings never sit still.