We have seen a bunch of attempts to make AI gadgets that actually work and can do tasks. The last attempt at making an actual AI device, the Humane AI Pin, was very unsuccessful. The Humane AI pin couldn’t do anything more than answer some basic questions and display them on your hands through a projector. The Rabbit R1 has been launched recently and some of the first reviews have come out. 

Let’s go ahead and see if the Rabbit R1 really lives up to its hype or not.

What’s Rabbit R1?

Rabbit R1 is created by an American design company known as “Teenage Engineering.”. They first showcased the Rabbit R1 as a game changer for the AI gadget industry and they claimed it could change mobile computing forever. The product was first showcased at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year in a bright orange colour.

The design language of the product is pretty simple, mostly like a Pager or a small rectangular clock with a small display, scroll wheel, speaker, and a flipping camera. The poppy orange colour of the device makes it unique and eye-catching. You’ll surely grab the attention of people if you use this device in public.

Rabbit R1 Review: Better Than Humane AI Pin?

The Rabbit R1 gets a lot of things right. For starters, the R1 has a pretty low price tag of 200 USD, which is the total cost of the device. Plus, you don’t need to pay any subscription fee as compared to the Humane AI Pin, which charges you 24 USD just to not make it a useless metal brick. But there are a lot of other things to consider about the product as well. 

The R1 comes with a very small battery that hardly lasts more than 4 hours. In all cases, you need a device that can run at least a day without charging, which can’t be said for the R1. It needs to be charged at least twice a day and to charge it, you need at least 45 minutes. The battery backup is very bad for such a low-end device.

The gadget comes with a small 2.8-inch touchscreen display just for namesake, as the touch display can only be used for typing on the keyboard. The reason behind this strange functionality is that Rabbit doesn’t want the R1 to become anywhere close to a smartphone. To scroll on the screen, you have to use the scrolling wheel, which is not that great of an experience.

Plus, there is no haptic feedback from the device. To jump between menus, there is a button that also acts as the power button. The R1 has a low-powered Mediatek chipset, which is present in cheap budget smartphones like the Moto G8 Power. The speaker is a small one with low clarity and just gets the basic job done for you.

Suggested: Viral Humane AI Pin: Best AI Device?

Rabbit R1 Is Mediocre At AI Tasks?

Popular tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee tested the Rabbit R1 and concluded that for the price, it’s a good attempt. But for the actual tasks, it’s not that great of an AI assistant. He tested the Rabbit R1 by asking it several questions and the device mostly answered the questions with 90% accuracy. But when he used the image input method, things started to change. 

The device couldn’t identify the plant in an image and gave jargon results. This shows that AI gadgets need a lot of improvement and are not yet ready to be used as mainline products. Instead, they can be of assistance with small and redundant tasks only for now. But the attempt has been deemed to be much better than that of Humane’s AI Pin.

The Humane AI Pin is nothing but a gadget made for looting the common public and also charging them with unnecessary subscription fees. But the first attempt by Rabbit to make an AI gadget is pretty good so far. It will be interesting to see what’s in the box for us when the next generation of the R1 comes out. 

To Summarise

The Rabbit R1 is a good attempt by Teenage Engineering to make a personal AI gadget. But there are several areas to improve the device, which will be possible through software. For updates not possible through software, the next version of R1 will be there to do that in the hardware department. But the device is much better than Humane’s AI Pin, which proved to be a gimmicky AI device. 

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