Humane AI Pin review summary: An undercooked flop that’s ahead of its time
The Humane AI Pin is a fascinating little device for gadget fans. If you missed the November 2023 reveal, it’s a small wearable computer with a built-in AI assistant, camera, and a small projector that shoots the user interface into your hand. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty terrible, as evidenced by the first online reviews that have arrived in recent days.
It’s rare that tech reviews, both from traditional media and YouTubers, are so unanimous in their criticism of a much-hyped product. “The worst product I have ever reviewed… for now,” concluded Marques Brownlee. Ouch. Meanwhile, Engadget called it “the solution to none of the technology problems,” while The Verge simply said the AI Pin “wasn’t even close.”
Naturally, these damning statements create additional fascination for a $699 device that also requires a $24 per month subscription. Yet few reviews find the AI Pin completely unfounded. Many praise the hardware design, which is made from solid aluminum and snaps onto your chest thanks to a magnetic ‘battery booster’ that fits into your clothes. The few times it worked seamlessly, it also gave reviewers a taste of a refreshingly screen-free future.
But beyond the specific features – many of which don’t seem to work reliably enough yet – the broad conclusions about AI gadgets are what’s most interesting about these Humane AI Pin reviews. Basically, our phones aren’t going anywhere for a long time, and, like Bloomberg’s review concluded: “the AI device revolution will not kill the smartphone”. We haven’t tested the Rabbit R1 yet, but we probably won’t for a while.
This doesn’t mean the Humane AI Pin isn’t a fascinating (if deeply flawed) device today. Here are all the thoughts from around the internet on the boldest tech launch since the Apple Vision Pro…
Humane AI Pin: The Most Important Reviews
Marques Brownlee: “The worst product I’ve ever reviewed…for now”
Despite the scathing headline, Marques Brownlee’s account of his time at the AI Pin is generally fair and balanced. Unfortunately, aside from the design, he simply couldn’t find many positives. “The build of this thing is actually impressive,” he says of the solid, aluminum gadget. Unfortunately, it’s also “bad at almost everything it does.”
That list includes answering your voice queries, where it’s either painfully slow (since most requests go to the cloud) or “just goes wrong all the time.” Battery life was also strangely inconsistent and the device was often worryingly warm. But the fundamental problem, a theme in most reviews, is that everything the AI Pin does, a “modern smartphone does better and faster.” Without connecting to your smartphone or offering apps, the AI Pin is strangely adrift.
The good
- Solid build quality
- The translation function is promising
- Impressive technology
The bad
- Too slow in giving answers
- Poor, inconsistent battery life
- Overheating problems
- Always wrong
- No apps
Mrwhosetheboss: “It’s not good”
Tech YouTuber Arun Maini, aka Mrwhosetheboss, was clearly conflicted in his review between the “little hints of something magical” he could see in the Humane AI Pin and the unworkable reality of using it. “Right now, the Human Pin is an incredibly bad proposition,” he concluded.
As other reviews noted, it all goes downhill after you see the hardware. The price (which amounts to $1,700 over two years, if you include the plan, accessories, and taxes), slow responses to voice requests, lack of integration with existing phone apps, and unwieldy projector interface were all black marks.
As Maini notes, it would certainly be a wiser setup if the AI Pin connected to your phone – like the best smartwatches – rather than acting as a standalone device. All of this led him to the conclusion that he “can’t see any angle from which it makes sense.”
The good
- The construction is top class
- No wake words needed
- The vision function is satisfactory
The bad
- Too expensive
- Requests take too long
- Don’t talk to existing apps
- Projector not bright enough
CNET: “Futuristic but frustrating”
CNET’s hands-on review of the AI Pin includes a nice nod to the Star Trek Communicator badge that the pin was apparently inspired by, but that’s one of the few moments of levity in a review that warns that you should “absolutely not” consider getting it to buy in its current form.
The video is more of a tour of the AI Pin’s features – including its built-in camera for taking photos and 15-second videos – than a real deep dive into living with it. But there are many useful real-world examples of how wearables can be used, including the promising translation feature and uncut recordings of how long it often takes to respond.
There are also some well-known conclusions; overheating, the laser display isn’t bright enough in daylight, disappointing AI features and the hand tracking interface is frustrating and worse than on a VR headset. In short, it’s frustrating and CNET said there are times when the AI Pin has driven him crazy.
The good
- Sleek design
- Well thought-out accessories
- Decent battery life
The bad
- Overheating problems
- Too frustrating for daily use
- Can’t connect to your phone
- AI is unreliable
The Verge: ‘Not even close’
Frequent bursts of hysterical laughter are usually not a good sign for a tech review – and sure enough, The Verge found that the AI Pin’s promise is completely undermined by its unreliability and its “biggest problem – it’s so, so slow.”
Wait 13 seconds for the Brooklyn Bridge and other unintentionally hilarious blunders to be misidentified. The Verge was actually still “a little impressed” with the AI Pin’s technology, including the fact that it doesn’t require a wake word and promises a world where you can leave your phone at home sometimes.
It also concluded that the Pin “might still be the future, or something like that”, with the camera-based descriptions of real-world objects being “easily the most futuristic thing about the device”. But it’s also a “$700 gamble” and the damning conclusion is that a cellular-connected Apple Watch is a much more capable and functional device, while being a lot cheaper.
The good
- Sturdy and beautifully made
- No wake word needed
The bad
- Many features are not yet available
- Very slow to respond
- Doesn’t always work
Bloomberg: “The design and interface are fatally flawed”
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is an Apple reporter who notes that Humane’s co-founders are former Apple employees who worked on the iPhone and iPad, which gave them an edge when it came to investments. But despite the promising backstory, he concludes that the AI Pin’s “fundamental design and interface are fatally flawed.”
Gurman’s conclusion is that the bugs and slow response times are not the AI Pin’s biggest problem. Instead, the voice controls and laser projection system make it “a non-starter for most people.” He notes that the hype about smart speakers and voice assistants has waned because they don’t provide a “practical user interface.”
So while Gurman, like most early reviews, concludes that Humane deserves credit for creating something new and building a system that “merges data from different AI engines,” the concept is ultimately doomed to failure and “never to go to work.”
What next with the Humane AI pin?
Understandably, Humane has defended its new gadget against the wave of scathing reviews. Ken Kocienda, the company’s head of Product Engineering and the inventor of the iPhone’s autocorrect, posted long statement on X (formerly Twitter) about why he is a “happy AI Pin user” and why his “intuition tells me we are on the right track”.
Kocienda admits that the AI Pin can be “frustrating at times”, but apparently no more so than a laptop or smartphone. That’s not the conclusion from the initial internet reviews from multiple sources, but the Humane creator also blames the social media landscape for encouraging “hot takes” and encouraging people to “jump on the bandwagon of skepticism ‘.
So what next for the AI Pin? Humane does have one roadmap for new features, with timers, gesture unlocking, photo sharing via SMS and more in software version 1.2, scheduled for “Summer.” Other features like song sharing, visual shopping, and an SDK for apps are also in the pipeline, but have no date yet.
As it stands, the current consensus on the Humane AI Pin is that it is simply too ambitious for its form factor and current technology – including the problem that AI tends to ‘hallucinate’ or confidently give incorrect answers. For now, the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and Rabbit R1 seem promising examples of AI gadgets, but we’ll keep an eye on AI Pin to see if it can overcome its inauspicious start.