How Good is the Rabbit R1 Handheld AI Assistant?

It's another speech-recognizing, AI-powered handheld device 'about half the size of a phone,' writes CNET. (Though the $199 device comes with a keyboard and a tiny 2.8-inch screen.) 'The Rabbit R1 can identify items in its environment. Point it at a plant, and it can tell you what kind it is. Aim it at your lunch, and it can tell you what's in it.

'it also feels a bit like a novelty so far....'

It can call an Uber, order dinner from Doordash, translate conversations, record voice memos, play songs from Spotify and more. Your phone can already do all of those things, but [CEO and founder Jesse] Lyu is promoting the Rabbit R1 as a faster and more natural way to do so... So far, the Rabbit R1 feels fun, fresh and interesting, but also frustrating at times. It intrigues me, but it also hasn't convinced me yet that there's room for another gadget in my life.... Many of the things it can do today feel smartphone-esque, like asking for the weather or playing songs on Spotify...

Visual search is the most interesting feature so far... It's pretty accurate for the most part so far. When I pointed it at my salad during lunch, it was able to tell me most of the ingredients. That's not what I asked. After all, who orders a dish without knowing what's in it? I asked the Rabbit R1 to tell me how many calories were in my lunch. While it couldn't provide the answer I wanted, I was impressed with its response... Overall, Rabbit R1's visual analysis worked pretty well for identifying things like plants and characters from pop culture. When describing my colleague's sneakers, the Rabbit R1 got the brand wrong...

So far, I've used the Rabbit R1 to take voice memos, translate speech from Spanish to English, and answer basic questions about things like weather forecasts. These features work as expected for the most part.

The article points out that Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses 'also have multimodal AI, meaning the eyewear can 'see' what you see and tell you about it,' and 'you can already do something like this on your phone through Google's Gemini assistant on Android phones (or the Gemini section of the Google app for the iPhone).

'It's also very reminiscent of Google Lens, which has been around for years...'

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