Gemma4 26b & E4B are crazy good, and replaced Qwen for me!

A developer running a sophisticated local AI setup with multiple Qwen models encountered persistent routing problems that Gemma 4 completely solved. Their previous system used five specialized Qwen 3.5 models (4B, 30B, 27B, 80B, and 122B variants) distributed across 2 RTX 3090s and a P40 GPU with 128GB RAM, managed by a Qwen 3.5 4B semantic router. Despite detailed prompting and hardcoded keywords like "ultrathink" and "quick," the router frequently misassigned tasks—even simple greetings went to reasoning-heavy 122B models. The 27B model also suffered from excessive "token burn" on basic math problems, while 122B models had slow generation speeds and occasional tool-call failures.

Switching to Google's Gemma 4 models transformed the system. Replacing the problematic Qwen 3.5 4B router with Gemma 4 E4B instantly resolved all routing inaccuracies, with perfect model selection matching the developer's intended choices. The new setup eliminated the need for manual model switching and hardcoded keywords that plagued the Qwen system. Notably, Gemma 4 E4B operates effectively even with thinking disabled, providing lightning-fast routing decisions while maintaining accuracy. This improvement allowed the developer to completely replace both ChatGPT and Claude for coding tasks, demonstrating Gemma 4's superior performance in complex, multi-model orchestration scenarios where previous state-of-the-art models struggled.