I pre-ordered this orange-colored personal assistant in late March, and I have been using it since the last month. So, you can rely on my words in this article.

I was pretty excited to get my hands on this device like many others who booked it in pre-orders but ultimately it was a disappointment. There have been some positives about Rabbit R1, which are rather negligible. The hype was crazy and the coverage these handheld or pocket-pinned devices got was over the roof. None of them delivered what they were promising.

From basic questions to complex problems, they lacked precision. Unreliable is the word that I should use, and it needs a dozen improvements to be able to complement your smartphones.

Here’s what led me to label Rabbit R1 as an unfinished device that needs a ton of work to be able to become part of our lives.

The Battery Is Small and There Is No Optimization

Smartphones that we keep in our pockets these days can optimize battery usage based on the usage pattern. They have decent battery packs that can last a full day.

On the flip side, we have the Rabbit R1, which dies with two hours of constant usage and six hours on standby. It happened to me that I charged it to 100% at night, and it was dead when I woke up in the morning. Like what?!

The company hasn’t disclosed the battery capacity of the R1, though it seems like it’s around 2000mAh.

The device lacks battery optimization because of the constant display with a rabbit face on it, and the rest of it is just a black screen. You can’t turn it off. It’s just hanging in there, waiting for you to press that side-mounted button to register your command.

Another reason for this poor battery life is the display, which is not an OLED. If that was for the OLED display, the R1 could have lasted much longer, even though the display was always on.

The Performance and the AI is Just a Hit-and-Miss

During the launch event CEO Rabbit, Jesse Lyu gave it some tasks to perform, and it took a lot longer than what the audience was expecting and what he was expecting. Anyhow, he pushed the hotel WiFi under the bus for the slow response of the Rabbit R1, and people, including me, bought the excuse.

But it wasn’t true at all: this device is pretty sluggish and takes some time even to perform basic tasks like weather reports, or setting up alarms. I tried this thing with my home WiFi from Xfinity. It has a download speed of up to 1.2Gbps and oh my! The Rabbit R1 tested my patience even on my high-speed WiFi. I remained calm to give it some more tries so that I could write this fair and impartial review for you guys.

Rabbit claims that it can even order food or book a taxi for you. It claims to use a hybrid of the Large Language Model and the Large Action Model. But to be honest, it’s nothing like that as of now. The makers claim to make it better in the future through updates, but you know what? don’t buy stuff based on future promises (Yeah, it’s MKBHD’s opinion with which I agree).

Anyway, if you are one of the persons that are on the list of pre-orders, keep your expectations low.

The Design is Cool

If we keep the software experience aside for a while (which is not fair but OK), the Rabbit R1 is a fine-looking, unorthodox device. I love its design, kudos to Teenage Engineering.

Everything from the color choice to that physical scroller, like the good old Blackberry phones, this is a likable piece of engineering by looks.

I said ‘by looks’ because it still has some flaws when it comes to actually using the device. The physical scroller isn’t properly synced with the screen, and it isn’t responsive. But I think that’s because Rabbit didn’t want it to scroll when it’s on a flat surface (the scroller is a cylinder that comes a bit out from the back of the device).

Speaking of the cameras, it is fine. The quality isn’t that great and why should it be? It is made to only recognize the objects around it and to respond to the queries.

The side-mounted button is in contrast to the color of the body, which is nice, and the speakers are acceptable.

The bottom line is that the device is great with its looks and feels but lacks a lot when it comes to actually delivering what is claimed.

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