There were times when I wasn’t even sure the Rabbit R1 actually existed. The AI-powered device designed by Teenage Engineering came out of nowhere to become one of the biggest stories at CES, promising a level of fun and fantasy far better than some of the AI companies the most serious. CEO Jesse Lyu practically promised the world this $199 device.
Well, say this for Rabbit: it’s real. Last night, I headed to the swanky TWA Hotel in New York, along with a few hundred journalists, designers and excited R1 buyers. After a few hours of photo booths, specialty cocktails, and an exciting talk and demonstration from Lyu – in which he almost constantly referenced and made fun of the Humane AI Pin – we all received our R1s home. I’ve been using mine ever since and have some thoughts. And a few questions.
From a hardware standpoint, the R1 screams “a bit of an Android phone.” Here are the main features: It measures about three inches high and wide and half an inch thick. It weighs 115 grams, about two-thirds that of the iPhone 15. It has a 2.88-inch display, runs on a 2.3GHz MediaTek MT6765 processor, and has 128GB of storage and four GB of RAM. It has a speaker on the back, two mics on the top, and a SIM card slot on the side right next to the USB-C charging port. It only comes in one color, a hue the Rabbit calls “leuchtorange”, but is often known as “brilliant orange” or “luminous orange”. It’s definitely orange, and it’s definitely bright.
At this point, the best way I can describe the R1 is like a Picasso painting of a smartphone: it has most of the same parts, but arranged very differently. Instead of being placed on the top or back, the R1’s camera sits in a cutout on the right side of the device, where it can rotate its lens to face you and towards you.
The R1 is like a Picasso painting of a smartphone
After spending a few hours playing with the device, I have to say: it’s pretty nice. Not luxurious, or even particularly high-end, just silly and fun. Where Humane’s AI Pin looks like a carefully sculpted metal gem, the R1 looks like an old-school MP3 player crossed with a fidget spinner. The wheel spins a little stiff for my liking but smooth enough, the screen is a little blurry but fine, and the main action button is satisfying to tap on.
When I first received the device and connected it to Wi-Fi, it immediately asked me to create an account on Rabbithole, the R1’s web portal. I did so, scanned a QR code with the R1 to sync it and immediately did a software update. I spent that time connecting to the only four external services the R1 currently connects to: Spotify, Uber, DoorDash, and Midjourney.
Once I was finally up and running, I started chatting with the R1. So far, he’s doing a solid job with basic AI questions: he gave me a lot of good information about this week’s NFL Draft, found a few restaurants near me, and knew when Herbert Hoover was president. This is all pretty basic with ChatGPT, and there is some lag in retrieving responses, but I much prefer the interface of the Humane AI Pin – because there’s a screen and you can see the thing working so that the AI delays are not felt. so endless.
Because there’s a screen, the AI delays don’t seem so endless
However, almost immediately I started encountering things that the R1 just couldn’t do. It can’t send emails or create spreadsheets, although Lyu has been giving demonstrations for months. Rabbithole is also woefully unfinished, to the point where I was trying to type on my phone and it was instead moving a cursor about half a second after each tap. It’s a good reminder that the whole thing runs on a virtual machine storing all your apps and credentials, which still gives me pause on security.
Oh, and here’s my favorite thing about the R1 so far: I connected it to my Spotify account, which is a feature I’m particularly excited about. I asked for “Beyoncé’s new album” and the machine enthusiastically went and found me “Crazy in Love” – a lullaby version, by an artist called “Rockabye Baby!” So close and yet so far. It also can’t seem to find my playlists or skip tracks. When I said “Play The 1975” it worked really well and quickly. (By the way, the speaker is really poor Android phone quality. You’re going to want to use that Bluetooth connection.)
The R1’s Vision feature, which uses the camera to identify elements in the scene around you, seems to work fine as long as all you want is a list of objects in the scene. The device can’t take a photo or video and doesn’t seem to be able to do much else with what it can see.
When you’re doing nothing, the screen shows the time and that bouncing bunny head logo. When you press and hold the side button to issue a command, the time and battery fade and the rabbit’s ears perk up as if listening. It’s very charming! The overall interface is simple and text-based, but it’s strange in places: it’s not always obvious how to go back, for example, and you only see one or two lines of text at a time. times at the bottom of the screen. , even if there is a whole paragraph of response to read.
Rabbit’s roadmap is ambitious: Lyu has spent the last few months talking about everything the R1’s so-called “big action model” can do, including learning apps and using them for you . At last night’s event, he talked about opening the device’s USB-C port to allow the use of accessories, keyboards and more. This all happens…eventually. Supposedly. For now, the R1’s feature set is much simpler. You can use the device to listen to music, get answers to questions, translate speeches, take notes, call an Uber, and more.
This means that there are still an awful lot of things the R1 can’t do and I still have a lot left to test. (By the way, if you want to know, let me know!) I’m particularly curious about its battery life, its ability to work with a bad connection, if it heats up over time, and how it handles more complex tasks. than just searching for information and ordering chicken nuggets. But so far, this thing seems to be trying to look less like a smartphone killer and more like the start of a useful companion. That’s probably as ambitious as it makes sense right now – although Lyu and the folks at Rabbit have a lot of big promises to keep and little time to do it.
Photography by David Pierce / The Verge