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Humane AI Pin review: not even close

AI gadgets might be great. But not today, and not this one.

It’s not heavy (about 55 grams, according to my scale — roughly the same as two AA batteries or the key fob to my car), but it’s definitely solid, made of aluminum and designed to survive falls or even the occasional trip through the washing machine. You don’t have to use it this way — you can hold it in your hand or even talk to it while it’s in its desk charger — but the AI Pin’s built-in microphones are designed to hear you best from that angle; the slightly downward-facing camera sees best from there, and the upward-firing speakers work best in that spot. In reality, I spent an hour in our studio trying desperately to get the AI Pin to translate to Japanese or Korean, while The Verge ’s Victoria Song — who speaks both — sat there talking to it in those languages to absolutely no avail.

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