> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://spyglass.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The AI Device No-Taste-Test - URL: https://spyglass.org/the-ai-device-no-taste-test/ - Published: 2024-05-04T10:14:59.000Z - Updated: 2024-05-04T18:47:15.000Z - Description: Humane and Meta and Rabbit, oh my! - Author: M.G. Siegler - Tags: ai, humane, meta, rabbit, tech, #nodate [ The AI Gadget That Can Make Your Life Better ...and Two That Definitely Won’t ![](https://s.wsj.net/img/meta/wsj_favicon.svg) Wall Street Journal Joanna Stern ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/af/ca/afcaa655-46e2-45b8-889a-2881de5cce69/content/images/2024/05/im-955924-1.jpg) ](https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/the-ai-gadget-that-can-make-your-life-betterand-two-that-definitely-wont-c51f49f0?ref=spyglass.org) Given the hype – and ridicule – around three new AI gadgets: [Humane's AI Pin](https://spyglass.org/humane-ai-pin-brutal-review/), [Meta's Ray-Ban Smartglasses](https://spyglass.org/hey-meta-ai-glasses/), and [Rabbit's R1](https://spyglass.org/rabbit-r1-thoughts/), Joanna Stern smartly decided to try them all together in a sort of taste-test. Or no-taste-test, as it were. > The Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI Pin are more science project than finished product. In my weeks of testing them, I often wondered: What did I do to deserve this? The error messages. The delayed response times. The always-dead batteries. My 2-year-old heard the Humane pin say “Input passcode” so many times he started running around the house yelling it. > > Meanwhile, Meta has made a simple, smartly priced gadget that should be the envy of other tech giants. She's perhaps being a bit too kind to Meta here, as in her video review, Meta seems fairly unreliable as well – [as it clearly was for *The New York Times* a few weeks back in beta](https://spyglass.org/hey-meta-ai-glasses/) – but I think the key takeaway is also that Meta is the only one that doesn't drastically over-promise what it says its device can do. And in [the current shitty state of this world](https://spyglass.org/rabbit-r1-mkbhd-rant/), you get credit just for that! On the other hand, to be fair to the AI Pin and the R1, only one of these products was (co)created by a trillion dollar company. The other two, of course, are startups. Albeit very [well-capitalized startups](https://spyglass.org/the-ai-startup-investment-guide/), so you don't have to feel so badly for them. After all, they did this to themselves, with the immense build-up of hype leading up to their respective launches. Humane's, in my view, was more overt and more of an obvious own-goal. Rabbit's was more organic – well, as organic as one can be launching on stage at CES, which is only slightly better than [launching on stage at TED](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ&ref=spyglass.org) – but its cheaper price led far more to pre-order the device. Which is not a good thing in hindsight! The smartest – quite literally – thing Meta may have done though is simply make their device tether to a smartphone. They're not trying to reinvent the wheel, let alone the smartphone here – something which, incredibly, Humane is (or was) trying to do. [This is obviously – *obviously* – how these early gadgets should be set up to work](https://spyglass.org/ai-consumer-hardware/). Maybe in 2034 you won't need to carry around your smartphone – maybe, though I'd be we all still are – but it's 2024\. We're all going to have our smartphones with us anyway. Use it.[1](#footnote) > "Getting an answer from Humane and Rabbit can take so long there should be hold music..." --- 1 Yes, yes, easier said than executed when you don't fully control said smartphone, which can restrict vital API/connection access. But again, Meta is making it work.