- Author, Zoe Kleinman
- Role, Technology Editor
I’ve just spent the last few days with the latest gadget announced for smartphone use: the Rabbit R1.
I wanted to see if I could imagine this wearable, artificial intelligence (AI) digital assistant one day becoming what my phone is today — something I can’t live without.
You can see the thinking behind it: millions of people have played with AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
Given the success with software, it seems like the next big step for the tech giants is to do the same with hardware and find ways to physically embed AI tools.
Microsoft is doing it with laptops, while Apple will reportedly follow suit with the next iPhone.
But there are also those trying to invent a whole new category of gadgets – and that’s where the R1 comes into play.
Rabbit says his new device is “an intuitive companion” that can “handle everyday digital tasks”.
A wearable AI-powered assistant that can help you with your daily activities, get you off your phone and back into the real world… you can see how that could potentially be a useful gadget.
The problem, however, is that a number of similar products have already been launched – and the reality falls far short of the hype.
Take the Humane pin: a brooch-like, AI-powered device.
American tech critic Marques Brownlee, who has 18 million followers on YouTube, captured the mood when he described it as the worst product he had ever reviewed
The R1 is now available in the UK and Europe. Is it going better? I will tell you his – and my – statements later.
But first let’s take a closer look.
Just ask things
So let’s start with what’s good about it.
The Rabbit R1 is a nice piece of hardware, in an era when nothing is tangible anymore, a luminous orange square with a large screen that you certainly won’t lose in your handbag.
It has a button, a scroll wheel, and a camera that you can see moving from front to back, making a satisfying sound.
And it’s affordable: £159, without subscription.
But what should you do with it?
Well, actually you can ask things. It’s quite limited in terms of everything else at the moment.
There’s no social media, messaging, shopping, health or banking – at least not for a while. You can log into Spotify or Apple Music accounts, but you’ll want a larger speaker than the built-in one.
And randomly you can also use Midjourney, the AI image generator. That’s about it.
The Rabbit R1 successfully told me the time and weather forecast, gave me correct directions to my son’s school (after I told him my location), and quickly translated a conversation from English to German.
It listed the top 20 chess players of 2024 when my partner asked who was the best, based on a list on chess.com. But it did better than the Amazon Echo in this area: Alexa chose Garry Kasparov, who retired from regular competitive chess in 2005.
We asked it about some well-known conspiracy theories, but it didn’t address them, and when I asked who would win the next British general election, the answer came from that day’s YouGov poll.
So yes – it’s good to get things from the internet. But so am I.
Is this a flower?
It gave me pictures of where I work – the BBC Scotland building in Glasgow – but it really struggled to tell me where to go for coffee.
The first time I asked it said, “Give me a moment” and shut down after 112 seconds of silence.
I tried again and this time it returned fairly quickly, but of the five options it listed, two of the coffee shops were 2.5 miles away, one was closed, and one I couldn’t find on Google at all.
The nearest point was 2.1 kilometers away. In reality, the building is flanked by many options, with two major coffee chains within a few minutes’ walk.
He could use the camera to describe his surroundings – sometimes – but he hallucinated a lot.
It told me that a vase of white peonies in my bedroom contained yellow chrysanthemums, and confidently identified a plate of papadoms as tortilla chips.
Image source, BBC/Rabbit Inc
When I turned the camera on myself, I was described as an “older woman” (deep breath), and when my son made his most dramatic, angry face, he was described as a boy with “a friendly expression” (deep breath) . .
In the first hour we used more than 20% of the battery life.
Meanwhile, all your activity is stored in an account in the cloud called your Rabbithole, and you can’t access it on the device itself.
My Rabbithole (stop snickering at the back) is currently full of random photos of me and my surroundings, and some equally random Magic Camera versions of those photos.
The verdict is in
Ultimately, I’ve come to think that while it was fun to try this device, it doesn’t do anything I can’t already do, either with my phone or my own eyes, and often more slowly.
And I promised to tell you what Marques Brownlee had to say about the R1: “barely reviewable” was the title of his video about it.
The company itself admits that it is a work in progress.
“Because we are an early start-up, it is never about winning or losing; it’s all about survival,” says Rabbit founder Jesse Lyu.
“In some ways I’m glad that we’re getting the pushback and doubts now, because it pushes us to make a better and better product.”
And don’t expect the R1’s unflattering reviews to stop efforts to integrate AI into hardware.
“I expect to see many more devices in this genre over the next 18 months,” says smartphone industry watcher Ben Wood of CCS Insight.
“Still, I’m betting that the smartphone will surpass all of these quirky products in the near future – but with many of the AI-powered innovations promised on standalone devices.”
That prediction seems like a good one to me.
My phone does everything R1 can do and more, and does it quickly and intuitively.
If anything, this ‘smartphone killer’ has made me appreciate the device it’s trying to target even more.