Every other Google model I have tried felt very weak compared to qwen models. I dont have a ton of use case for multimodal though, so its very possible this is a fantastic multimodal model.
Hard disagree, Qwen multimodal is way better than google's, but Gemma 31b runs laps around Qwen 27B in complex engineering tasks. Maybe Qwen is better at slopcoding web framework CRUD, but for embedded dev there's no comparison.
E4B is decent at instruction following. It managed to produce a deliverable on par with the lowest tier of paid models. Even higher tiers often just ignore all rules when they feel like it.
I wish it was an 8BA1B MoE model with the newer acceleration 1B or maybe even a tailor-made sub-1B slapped on top. That would make it an awesome local model for the average laptop.
I am not overly impressed with the smaller gemma models. And gemma 3 was a bit of a mixed bag, great at some things, bad at most others