Over the past couple of years one trend that has seemingly engulfed the whole world is Artificial Intelligence. This has in turn powered a hardware revolution of sorts. AI (Artificial Intelligence) is slowly making its way into hardware. Companies have taken to powering their devices with AI, giving them an edge over their rivals.
The traditional bigwigs have increased are at the core of the push to revolutionize hardware. Apple introduced the $3500 Apple Vision Pro in February. Meta launched the stylish Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses last October. Nvidia are constantly releasing newer, faster GPUs and Samsung introduced Samsung Ballie to the world and marketed the S24 series as the first AI-powered phones. All these major developments happened within a time-span of six months. This signals the ever-growing pace of technology.
The market is growing and for a consumer that is good news. This means consumers gets offered a wider range of products to choose from. The traditional FAANG (Five Best Performing) companies are constantly developing new products, and correctly so.
It goes without saying, with every new product launch, more and more startups and people are motivated to get into the game.
The Humane AI pin and Rabbit r1
These two gadgets have been on the spotlight over the past few weeks. Moreover, the two incorporate AI into their hardware, making them among the first.
The Humane AI pin is a small square wearable device that has an in-built projector display, voice and gesture control features and a decent camera. All this does not come cheap as the gadget goes for $700 and a $24 monthly subscription fee.
The Rabbit r1 is a small orange handheld device that operates on an all-new AI model called the Rabbit Large Action Model. It has a 2.88-inch touchscreen and recognizes voice commands. It costs $199 with no additional monthly fees.
This April, the two companies shipped a couple of their products to early users and reviewers. The most popular among them was a YouTube tech reviewer whose channel goes by the name MKBHD. His review was honest and revealed the true nature of both devices.
There was a bunch of problems with the gadgets mainly around overheating, battery power issues, charging time, response time and the AI responses being blatantly wrong. Many of the early users seconded the opinion.
All in all, hats off to the two companies, taking a product from visualization of a concept to market is not easy. Unfortunately, none of the products are worth investing into at this point. The massive failures cannot simply be fixed by a software update but rather a whole system overhaul. Let us face it, the only companies who are producing quality hardware worth buying are the large companies with billions and trillions of dollars in market cap.
The question remains is the new era of hardware in tech simply a passing fade? Only time will tell.
