At one point, I wasn’t sure if the Rabbit R1 even existed. This Teenage Engineering-designed, AI-powered device came out of nowhere and was one of the most talked-about devices at CES, and it felt fun and quirky, way better than any other AI company out there. CEO Jesse Lyu literally promised the world with his $199 device.
Well, let me tell you, Rabbit, this is true. Last night I went to the posh TWA Hotel in New York City with a few hundred reporters, creatives, and especially enthusiastic R1 buyers. After a few hours of photo booths, specialty cocktails, and an inspiring keynote and demo from Lyu (in which he mentioned and teased the Humane AI Pin almost constantly), we all went home with an R1. I’ve been using my R1 since then, and I have some thoughts. And some questions.
From a hardware perspective, the R1 looks like a “decent Android phone.” Here are its main specs: It’s about 3 inches tall and wide, and 0.5 inches thick. It weighs 115 grams, about two-thirds the weight of an iPhone 15. It has a 2.88-inch screen, a 2.3GHz MediaTek MT6765 processor, 128GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM. There’s a speaker on the back, two microphones on top, and a SIM card slot right next to the USB-C charging port on the side. It only comes in one color, which Rabbit calls “Leucht Orange,” but is more commonly known as “Brilliant Orange” or “Luminous Orange.” It’s definitely orange, and it’s definitely glowing.
For now, the best way to describe the R1 is that it’s like a Picasso of smartphones: it’s made up of mostly the same parts, but with a completely different layout: instead of on the top or back, the R1’s camera is placed in a cutout space on the right side of the device, and the lens can be rotated to face it towards you, or away from you.
The R1 is a smartphone that looks like a Picasso painting.
After playing with the device for a few hours, I have to say: it’s pretty good. Not luxurious or particularly high-end, just silly and fun. Whereas the Humane’s AI Pin feels like a carefully sculpted piece of metal jewelry, the R1 feels like a cross between an old-fashioned MP3 player and a fidget spinner. The wheel is a little stiff for my taste, but it spins smoothly enough. The screen is a little blurry, but that’s ok. The main action button is satisfying to press.
When I first got the device and connected it to Wi-Fi, I was immediately prompted to sign up for an account on Rabbithole, the R1’s web portal. I did that, scanned a QR code with the R1 to sync, and quickly ran a software update, all while logging in to just four of the external services the R1 currently connects to: Spotify, Uber, DoorDash, and Midjourney.
I finally booted it up and started chatting with R1. So far it’s done a great job answering my basic AI questions. It gave me a lot of useful information about this week’s NFL Draft, found some nearby restaurants, and even told me when Herbert Hoover was president. This is all basic ChatGPT functionality, and while there is certainly a delay when getting answers, I like the interface a lot more than the Humane AI Pin because it has a screen and I can see what it’s doing, so the AI delay doesn’t seem as long.
Because of the screen, the AI delay doesn’t feel as long.
But I soon started running into things I couldn’t do with R1. I couldn’t send emails or create spreadsheets, things Lyu had been demoing for months. Rabbithole was also woefully unfinished; whenever I tried to tap on my phone, the cursor would just move for about half a second. This was a reminder that everything runs on a virtual machine, with all my apps and credentials stored there, but it still raised security concerns.
Oh, and my favorite thing that’s happened to the R1 so far is that it connected to my Spotify account, a feature I’m especially excited about. I asked, “New Beyoncé album,” and the device excitedly tracked down “Crazy in Love,” a lullaby version by an artist called “Rockabye Baby!” So close, yet so far away. It can’t seem to find my playlists or skip tracks. I said, “Play The 1975,” though, and it worked right away with no issues. (The speaker is about as bad as an Android phone, by the way; I recommend using a Bluetooth connection.)
The R1’s Vision feature uses the camera to identify objects in the scene around you, and seems to work fine as long as you just want a list of objects in the scene — the device can’t take photos or videos, and doesn’t seem to be able to do much else with what it sees.
When you’re not doing anything, the screen displays the time and a bouncing rabbit head logo. Press and hold the side button to give a command, and the time and battery display disappears and the rabbit’s ears perk up as if to listen. It’s charming. The overall interface is simple and text-based, though it does have some quirks here and there. For example, it’s not always clear how to go back, and when you need to read an entire paragraph of an answer, you’re only shown one or two lines of text at a time at the bottom of the screen.
Rabbit’s roadmap is ambitious. Lyu has been talking for months about what the so-called “large action model” of the R1 can do, how to learn and use apps, and more. At last night’s event, he even talked about opening up the device’s USB-C port to allow for accessories, keyboards, and the like. All of this will come eventually, that’s what he’s been told. For now, the R1’s feature set is much simpler. You can use the device to play music, get answers to questions, translate speech, take notes, hail an Uber, and more.
That means there’s still a lot the R1 can’t do, and a lot we need to test (and by the way, if you know anything about it, let me know!). I’m especially interested in battery life, how it behaves when it has a poor connection, whether it heats up over time, how it handles tasks more complicated than searching for information or ordering chicken nuggets, and so on. But so far, the device seems more like it’s trying to be the start of a useful companion, rather than a smartphone killer. At this point, it probably won’t get any more ambitious than that. However, Lyu and the folks at Rabbit have a lot of big promises they need to eventually deliver on, and they don’t have much time to do so.
Photo: David Pearce/The Verge