Astra seems to be really slow. Maybe it intends to read more context. But from my experience it is definitely slower than 5.6 sol when handling same tasks.
Gemini is known for good at creative writing in the Chinese writing community.
It's a bit ironic though. Google has probably the most and best code base among all tech companies but its Gemini is bad at coding. Google has no access to Chinese market but its model is incredibly good at writing in Chinese.