The Rabbit R1 ($199) is a novel AI device that’s meant to change the way we interact with the hardware we always carry with us—our phones. More to the point, Rabbit thinks the R1 can actually replace them. It relies on a Large Action Model of AI to “get things done” in a way that Rabbit believes existing devices can’t quite manage. The result is a pocketable piece of hardware that falls into impulse purchase territory. However, its capabilities are severely limited at launch and its performance falls far behind existing digital assistants. Given the advanced powers of Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant, there’s no need to spend money on the Rabbit R1 right now.Design: Teenage DreamLet’s talk hardware. There’s something to be said for industrial design. Rabbit tapped Teenage Engineering to design the R1 and it certainly has a unique appeal. The R1, which only comes in bright orange, measures 3.0 by 3.0 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.06 ounces. It’s about half the size and weight of an iPhone 15 Pro Max, though noticeably thicker. It’s much larger than the $699 Humane AI Pin (1.87 by 1.75 inches), another AI-based companion that you wear rather than carry. The R1 looks more like a toy than it does a serious, modern AI-driven device. In this case, though, that’s precisely the point.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
Almost everything about the design makes sense in a basic way. The R1 is made mostly of plastic and it has a hard, glossy finish that’s somewhat slippery. It’s comfortable to hold and use but not to put in your pocket due to the hard edges. A 2.88-inch display (no resolution is provided) aligns with the left side of the device. This leaves room for the scroll wheel and the rotating Vision Camera on the right side. A gray control button lines up with the scroll wheel on the right edge. It has a satisfying action. Two microphones are on the R1’s top edge, while a USB-C port and SIM card tray integrate into the left edge. You can see the camera, scroll wheel, and a large speaker grille on the rear of the R1. In comparison, the Humane AI Pin is pendant-sized and it clips magnetically to your clothes. Its has just a small touch surface for gestures, though it also includes a camera and a micro projector that beams the UI onto your hand.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
Things don’t always work. The action button—the R1’s most important control—can be unresponsive at times. The scroll wheel doesn’t behave like other scroll wheels you may have used. Rather than click distinctly with equivalent on-screen movements per click, the wheel flows freely and you have to really rotate it to get the selector to move accordingly. This is slightly infuriating because it’s both slow and inconsistent. The USB-C port is the worst offender, though. I’ve never encountered such a finicky port. It works with only about half the USB-C cables I tested, and even then, you have to seat the cable just right for the device to charge.
Battery life is a problem. The R1 has a 1,000mAh battery, which is about one-fifth the capacity of many modern smartphones. In testing, battery life varied wildly. It lasted as few as 4.5 hours and as many as 11 hours per charge—with little or almost no use. I often checked on it and found that it was dead. Rabbit has not confirmed this, but network management appears to be the issue. A strong and consistently available Wi-Fi network (like at home or work) leads to maximum battery life, while weak and inconsistent networks (like when you’re out and away from Wi-Fi) mean the battery will die quickly. Rabbit released a firmware update that it says addresses the problem and we can report that standby time is somewhat improved.The small screen is reminiscent of smartphones from days past. Rabbit specifically wants to wean people away from their smartphones (and their screens), hence the smaller display. It’s mostly monochromatic, though orange is present throughout the UI to accent selections and such. I find it bright enough to use indoors but it’s hardly visible outdoors. Further, the glass is prone to collecting smudges and fingerprints that sometimes mar the experience. The Humane Pin’s projector similarly works well indoors but not as well outdoors.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
Rounding out the specs, the R1 pairs a MediaTek Helio P35 processor with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. This is not a modern, speedy neural processing chip. It’s several years old and meant for affordable phones. This means the majority of the AI calculations take place in the cloud rather than on-device. The R1 has dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and LTE 4G. Connecting it to Wi-Fi is a serious pain because you have to key in the login details on the diminutive display. The touch response of the keyboard, which only shows up when you rotate the device 90 degrees clockwise, is wonky at best. I put a data-only SIM card into the R1 and it connected instantly and without any input from me (a relief, to say the least). A SIM card, of course, means you can use the device outside and away from Wi-Fi. Performance on cell networks was noticeably slower than when using Wi-Fi. Simple data plans can cost as little as $10 per month. The Humane AI Pin demands owners subscribe to a $25-per-month service plan.In terms of extras, you get a cassette-style carrying case in the box that doubles as a stand, but nothing else. There’s no USB-C cable, no user guide, nada. Software: Down the Rabbit HoleThere’s no app associated with the R1—the whole point of the device is to pull us out of apps, after all—but there is a web interface called the Rabbit Hole (yes, Rabbit went there). It’s a necessary part of the setup process and lets you manage your account and the device. The device itself runs rabbit OS, which could be based in Android.
(Credit: Rabbit)
Once you create a login, the Rabbit Hole has three main functions: journal, connections, and settings. The first contains a running list of select interactions with the R1. If you use the camera to identify an object, for example, the image and description will appear in your journal. So, too, will conversations you translate, notes you take, or audio recordings you make. It does not keep a tally of all your queries, such as when you ask for the circumference of the moon, but the automatic transcription of voice recordings is quite good. The journal would be more useful to me if it captured everything. You can delete individual entries in the journal if you wish (for the sake of privacy).The connections tool allows you to connect your Rabbit account and the R1 with several apps and services including DoorDash, Midjourney, Spotify, and Uber. These connections correlate with the R1’s only real actionable powers, which I cover later. Last, the settings screen lets you update your user profile and mark the device as lost or disassociate it from your account. It’s a bare-bones set of tools. It would be more helpful if you could tap into and control all the device’s settings from the Rabbit Hole because using the scroll wheel to navigate the interface is frustrating.How Does the Rabbit R1 Work?First, a quick explainer. The basis for the R1’s AI smarts is a Large Action Model (LAM), not a Large Language Model (LLM). Rabbit describes LAM as “A new type of foundation model that understands human intentions on computers. With LAM, rabbit OS understands what you say and gets things done.” Rabbit has taught its system to act on requests or queries using web-based actions, meaning Rabbit’s back-end servers are actively interacting with websites to accomplish tasks. It’s doing this without APIs, which is how apps often talk to one another. The best example is Spotify. Once you’ve logged into your Spotify account via the Rabbit Hole, the R1 can access it and play your music with a quick voice request. Spotify isn’t running on the R1, though: It’s running in the cloud. If you open Spotify on your computer or phone, you’ll see that your account is active and if you play or pause the music, the R1 responds as the current playback device. In this case, the R1 takes an action but it’s not actually using an app.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
At launch, the R1 only supports four of these types of actions, with Uber, DoorDash, and Midjourney being the others. You can use the R1 to request an Uber ride, use DoorDash to get food delivery, or use Midjourney to create generative AI images. This means you can’t use Apple Music, Lyft, Seamless, or ChatGPT (or any other apps or services you might prefer). You’re stuck with these initial four, which is not a whole lot.In testing, the R1 does what Rabbit claims. It can access these services and start music, order a car, and so on. The lack of choice here is frustrating. Although I use Spotify for music, I prefer other services for hiring a car or ordering takeout. Rabbit says it will add more apps over time but hasn’t specified which apps or a timeframe for bringing them to the platform. Of course, I can already do all of these things on my phone and do them with the apps I want.What else can the R1 actually do? It can perform basic web searches such as tell you how many feet are in a mile or how large the sun is. It can identify things such as cars, headphones, and animals. It excels at taking notes with a recording and summarized bullet points. And the real-time conversational translation feature is a potential game changer. Rabbit says it’s working to improve travel queries and also plans to add reservations, ticketing, and navigation over time.Using the Rabbit R1Unlike Alexa, Assistant, or Siri, you can’t summon the R1’s AI with a spoken voice query. There’s no saying, “Hey Siri, set a timer for 10:00 a.m.” If the device has been sitting for a while, the screen will be asleep. You have to press the gray button to wake it, then press and hold the button to speak your query. The ears of the on-screen rabbit perk up to indicate that it is listening, which is cute. Just like our phone assistants, you can ask the R1 any basic knowledge question. It performs all the searches online—including the time. You can see the clock on the home screen, but the device still pings the internet if you ask. It takes several seconds for this and every other query, whereas Alexa, Google, or Siri will answer the same question instantly. The R1 can do math and calculations, as well as answer two-part questions; it speaks the results aloud while also displaying text on the screen.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
But sometimes it gets things wrong. It gave me bad answers for the height of the Empire State Building (1,776 feet versus the correct 1,454 feet) as well as the average distance to the moon (93 million miles versus the correct 238,900 miles). What’s curious is the incorrect answers are the height of One World Trade and the distance between the Earth and the Sun, respectively. How did it mix those up? It also couldn’t consistently get the weather right. About half the time I asked for the weather, the R1 gave me the weather for some other random location in the US, including Arizona and Illinois (I tested the device in New Jersey). Rabbit says the recently released software update should fix this.If you want to perform a vision search, double-press the gray button quickly. That fires up the camera, which you then aim at your subject. Press and hold the button again and say, “What am I holding?” or “What is this?” The vision searches are generally detailed in their results. For example, when I held up a pair of sunglasses, the R1 described them correctly as having oversized lenses and a metal frame. When I tasked it to identify my car, it was able to provide a general description of the vehicle first and then after a few more seconds also correctly name the brand and the model. Google Assistant can perform visual searches like this (and also get the answer right), but Siri can’t.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
Playing music through the R1 just isn’t worth it. Sure, it can play any song or playlist from Spotify that you want to hear, but the speaker is crummy and the only playback controls are to pause the music or advance to the next track by scrolling down. You have to dive into the settings to change the volume, which takes several steps, and, more importantly, time. You’re much better off playing music through your phone, which you can command with your voice and use to more easily control the volume and track selection.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The same is true of certain types of searches. For example, I asked the R1 for some hotel recommendations in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. It rattled off the names of about 10 different hotels along with their average prices but left me with nothing actionable. There were no links to click, no photos to look at, and no information on nearby attractions. Moreover, unless I was prepared with pen and paper, I couldn’t even get the list of hotels without writing them down. And the results vanish off the R1’s screen as fast as it reads them, which is pretty much useless. Perhaps this is where the planned-for travel features will make things better.Adjusting the settings or performing any other sort of change to the R1’s behavior is onerous thanks to the scroll-wheel-driven menu system. The screen supports touch input, but only when the keyboard appears. To do anything else, you have to scroll a selector around the screen and then press the button to dive into submenus. When you are done, you then have to scroll up and back your way out to the main menu. It’s simply no fun, especially since we’re conditioned to using touch screens. The device sorely needs a universal back or home button. A long press-and-hold of the control button sometimes gets you out of a jam, but it might just as likely turn the device off.Verdict: A Bad Hare DayIn a world where nearly everyone has an advanced digital assistant in their pocket, a dedicated AI-based companion needs to stand above the pack. Instead, the Rabbit R1 is far, far behind. It sometimes gets basic facts wrong, can get confused about your location, doesn’t provide you with actionable search results, and is much slower than Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. It doesn’t support wake words either and requires a walkie-talkie-style button to work. And battery life is both frustratingly short and inconsistent. If you’re looking for a usable on-device personal assistant, take your smartphone out of your pocket and use the one you already have.
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