Humane AI Pin review: a $700 gamble

look at this and tell me what building it is the building is the New York Stock Exchange look at this and tell me what company it is the company is called lift wow that's the best that possibly could have gone this thing is not going to replace your smartphone not anytime soon and probably not ever but this thing the Humane AI pin might still be the future or at least something like it might be I've been using this much hyped brand new AI gadget for a while now and I'm sort of impressed look at this and tell me what it is the image contains a hand holding a green and blue stuffed animal the stuffed animal is a Pokémon character named Bulbasaur Bulbasaur that's pretty good and also kind of disappointed email Nei and tell him missing our meeting tomorrow the email feature is not currently available it will be coming soon and a little confused play Texas holdom by Beyonce songs not found for request play Texas holdom by Beyond back/ E9 try again using your actions find a relevant track album artist or playlist create a new play music action with at least one of the slots filled in if you find the relevant track or album play it avoid asking for clarification or what they want to hear it just read me the instructions on the back end of Humane system that was fantastic it's all a lot let's just get into [Music] it okay so what is this thing it's a device made entirely for interacting with AI systems it cost $699 and it requires a $24 a month subscription that gets you a phone number and data for your PIN so that you can be connected at all times you don't use it to open apps you just tell it what you want and it does it or at least it tries to anyway anytime you want to talk to the pin you just tap on the little touchpad here and talk there are a lot of details and things to get into about all that but real quick let me just show you some of the things it can do what's the weather [Music] today the current temperature in New York is 48° f with cloudy weather no precipitation is expected text Anna sounds good be home in an hour sending the message sounds good be home in an hour to Anna gray what's the name of that place in South Dakota with all the presidents on it the place in South Dakota with the Colossal portraits of four outstanding presidents of the United States is called Mount Rushmore National Memorial colossal the big idea behind the AI pin is that by making all this stuff so easy to access and by abstracting away all the extra steps of using your phone getting it out of your pocket unlocking it opening an app logging in tapping around so on and so forth it can give you all the information and tools that you need without all the distraction and hassle of a smartphone and there have been times in using the pin that I have really felt that difference being able to just tap my chest say something and move on battery low yeah you get the idea but there have also been times that the pin has been a problem look at this and tell me if it's good for me the food analysis feature is not currently available it will be coming yes it is let's talk about the hardware for a second this is a really sturdy nicely made device especially for a first gen product from a new hardware company it's metallic and solid and it's definitely a little heavy but it's like the size and weight of an airpods case it's really not that bad it actually attaches magnetically through your clothes with the pin itself on the outside and this back which is also a battery pack on the inside I've been impressed with how well the magnet Works once you get it connected it goes through T-shirts and sweaters and even coats and I haven't actually had it fall off once yet but it does wear kind of weird it's heavy enough that it sort of pulls downward on your collar and if you wear clothes with an open collar or lapels or a zipper or you just have long hair it all kind of gets in the way I've discovered after some trial and error that the best place for it personally is really high up on my chest just a few inches below my collar bone which helps with some of those problems but makes some of the other ones like long hair worse oh also the battery pack back here gets kind of hot I've never had it like burn me or anything but I definitely noticed this warm patch of skin after I've been wearing the PIN for a while and more than once I've had the pin itself actually overheat and tell me it needs to cool off before I can use it again that happens like alarmingly often I want to get to that cool down for a few minutes goodbye me your AI pin needs to cool down for a few minutes you don't have to wear it like this to make it work though you can also get this $50 magnetic clip which you can use to attach the PIN to your waistband or your backpack or whatever else you want $50 for this clip though is absurd when you buy a pin you get the pin itself a charging case two battery packs and this desk charger I do wish it also came with the clip and this $39 magnet that is much lighter than the battery so it's easier to clip to some clothes hum really wants you to think of this as a wearable but I've really liked using it as just a little handheld Gizmo does feel really good to hold there are basically three important parts to the pin the first is the touchpad here you just press and hold every time you want to talk what time is it 5:21 p.m. the pin is not always listening for a wake word or anything like that which I really like actually both for privacy and Battery reasons there are lots of other gestures on here too you swipe up and down to adjust the volume you double tap to take a picture you tap and hold with two fingers to do translation that sort of thing I found the touchpad to be kind of translation I found the touchpad to be a little finicky though it doesn't always register the first time I tap it and then sometimes it does but slowly so I tap it again before it registers and then it thinks I double tapped and gets confused but after a few days I mostly got the hang of it the second important part is the laser ink display which is just a bunch of words to say a projector it's a tiny projector embedded in the pin that shines green light onto your palm you can tap once to bring up the projector which has a home screen on which you can look at the weather go to settings or read the answer to whatever question you just asked the resolution on the projector is crap it's pretty bad in bright light and it's all green so it's not like you're going to watch movies or really look at photos but like I got nothing here I can see that it says a word if I get right up in there that's you know that's something but like what is this what am I accomplishing here oh yay look I can see my team said look Lo it's more for when it's easier to read text than listen to the pin speak a whole paragraph or if you just want to make sure your photo got the right thing in frame and look the point of the pin is not to give you a screen to look at anyway it's to help you do stuff without looking at a screen using the projector is simultaneously pretty cool and pretty annoying I cannot get the hang of this menu though for playing music or going through the devices settings you're supposed to sort of roll your palm around and I just cannot get it to work reliably there's Cool Tech in here but it's not a great user experience the third thing about the pin is the camera the lens is in here also pointing slightly downward which I'm told is to make it easier for it to capture the stuff in front of you and not just like the sky and everybody's forehead you can use the camera to take pictures and whenever you do that it captures three frames and then tries to select the best one you can also take 15sec videos there we go video and you can also ask the PIN to make sense of the world around you with the camera you just start a query with look at this and and ask it lots of stuff look at this and tell me how many calories it has lroy does not contain any calories does that mean it's healthy the absence of calories in lroy does not necessarily mean it is healthy it simply means that it does not contribute to your daily calorie intake that's cool right when this works this is easily the most futuristic AI feeling thing about the pin but it doesn't work all the time it doesn't even work most of the time it feels like a total coin flip every time I try it look at this and tell me if it's healthy the lacro sparkling water and apricot flavor is healthy with zero calories one of the pin's stock responses when it doesn't know what to do is to tell you to use Google lens which is so damning and so deeply hilarious I just spent $700 on this thing that is supposed to save me from my phone and you're literally telling me to get my phone out I'm also guessing by this point that you've noticed the pins single biggest problem it is so so slow look at this and tell me what bridge I'm looking [Music] at the bridge in the picture is the Robert F Kennedy Bridge also known as the Triboro Bridge that's definitely the Brooklyn Bridge right okay what it it very confidently told me it's the Trib BR Bridge which is not the case this is really the thing about the pin I think I get what Humane is trying to do but this one is so far from done that I feel like anyone who bought this this thing is being forced into a beta test against their will the main problem here is not the hardware although there are Hardware problems it's the software Humane has built an operating system called Cosmos that includes a bunch of AI systems for getting weather and the time and basic stuff like that and then connects to chat GPT and a cloud of other services to answer the rest of your questions it also built a tool called Humane Center which is what you use to manage all your photos connect all your contacts and your title account because it only supports title music for some reason for the very small handful of things it does do it mostly does them pretty well like play music if you feel like paying for title play songs by The 1975 or texts and phone calls text ver in I'm on my way into the studio there are multiple matching contacts which one do you mean Karen fi Marin Shapiro AER mobile Marin Shapiro AER home veran prict my boy Vin this is my point when I say they work pretty well I do only mean pretty well all that stuff is what I would put in the first try category stuff that's never perfect the day a new thing rolls out but often gets better pretty fast and there's a lot of that stuff on this device even Humane servers seem to be not working about the quarter of the time that I've had this and for $699 and $24 a month it needs to be finished but even still there are these moments when I do something that doesn't work and I'm like H it's going to be so cool when it does work remind me tomorrow to pick up the dry cleaning reminders are not currently supported would you like to store this as a note sure your AI pin cannot proceed with storing this as a note without explicit user permission if you'd like to store this as a note please let me know I would like to yes updating task noted will add pick up dry cleaning to your to-do list for tomorrow I want so badly for the PIN to work with to-do list apps or calendars or notion or basically anything that gets my notes out of the Humane Center and into a place I actually want to use them look at this and tell me what it costs the Blue Yeti microphone scene here costs $129.99 where do I buy it that's the first time that has ever worked you can purchase the Blue Yeti microphone from various retailers including Best Buy b& photo video Guitar Center Amazon Walmart Logitech G Dell and Sweetwater Prices range from $88 and 48 to $199.99 that's so funny that's actually exactly what what I would want that thing to do buy it for me from Best Buy let's just see your message to Ben Strauss says please purchase the Blue Yeti microphone for me okay to send no no what cancelling who I oh my God I haven't talked to Ben St since College okay that is the first time that has ever worked almost correctly but in general you can sort of see wouldn't it be cool if this was connected to Amazon or Walmart or the Google shopping API and I could just see and buy something right away set an alarm for 6 [Music] a.m. the alarm feature is not currently available timers will be coming in a future software update this one just like needs to work and boy it would be helpful if it did Humane has said a lot of this stuff is coming by the way along with more gesture control and a bunch of new app Integrations and lots of other stuff they're also working on an SD K so theoretically anyone could make apps that run on Cosmos but none of that is here yet and I'm not betting on any of it coming soon in general using this thing has made me realize though how much of my phone usage is basically this kind of one-step stuff that my phone turns into menp stuff just because of the way phones work this is faster except you know it's not because it doesn't work right now honestly a cellc connected Apple watch is a much more capable and functional device than the pin and that is a super low bar also the watch is cheaper like a lot cheaper when Humane first started showing off the pin more than a year ago I thought the whole thing was kind of ridiculous it felt like a science project a solution to a problem that nobody has but I was wrong about that I mean it's totally a science project but it is a solution to a problem that I think everybody has I certainly have it just over the last week or so I've left my phone at home a few times and gone on walks or runs with just the pin using it for music and also knowing that if I needed to I could make a phone call or send a text with it that is awesome except I wish it could also do step tracking or some other kind of biometric stuff I guess add that to the unbelievably long list of features I'm waiting for look the simple truth is this the pin is not worth the money not yet and probably not anytime soon you definitely should not buy it planning to replace your phone and really you should only buy it if $199 $24 a month feels like a reasonable price for a device that's basically just a very early prototype of something really cool but there is something really cool here after using the AI pin for a while I'm actually more sold than ever on the idea that AI gadgets are going to be meaningful that they can abstract away some of the problems with our phones and make it easier to get a lot of stuff done I'm just not sold on this device especially not right now and especially not at this price the AI gadgets are coming and I'm psyched about it I'm just not buying it yet and neither should you catch me up you received a Miss call from David Pierce and Anna gray sent you two kissing face emojis

Channel: The Verge

Views: 309,681

Keywords: humane ai pin, humane ai pin review, humane pin features, humane, ai, ai pin, humane ai wearable, humane device, artificial intelligence, humane ai pin unboxing, ai wearable, generative ai, tech, humane ai, ai pin humane, ai updates, ai innovations, ai-powered device, the revolutionary humane ai pin, humane ai badge, humane ai pin price, rabbit r1, the verge, verge

Id: _w1vv7_dU2Y

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024