Hey there, tech lovers! I’ve always been a sucker for new gadgets, especially ones that promise to make life easier with AI. So when I heard about the Rabbit R1 AI Companion, I knew I had to get my hands on one and see what the buzz was all about. The Rabbit R1 launched in 2024 with a lot of hype $199, no subscription, and a promise to simplify your daily tasks using something called a Large Action Model (LAM). But after spending a few weeks with it in early 2025, I’ve got a lot to say about whether it lives up to its promises or if it’s just another shiny toy that’ll end up in a drawer. I’ll break down its design, features, performance, and more in this detailed review, all in simple English so you can decide if the Rabbit R1 is worth your money. Let’s dive in!
First Impressions: A Cute Little Gadget
The moment I unboxed the Rabbit R1, I couldn’t help but smile. It’s adorable! The device comes in a bright Luminous Orange color, and at 3×3 inches and just 115 grams, it’s about half the size of my phone. It’s designed by Teenage Engineering, a company known for making cool retro-inspired tech like synthesizers, and you can tell they put a lot of thought into the look. It reminds me of a Tamagotchi or an old-school Walkman there’s a playful, nostalgic vibe to it that I absolutely love. The plastic body feels a bit cheap, but it’s sturdy enough, and the glossy finish makes it a bit slippery in my hand. It’s got a 2.88-inch touchscreen on the left side, a scroll wheel for navigation, a push-to-talk button on the side, and a rotating 8MP camera they call the “Rabbit Eye.” It also has a USB-C port for charging and a SIM card slot for 4G LTE, which is handy since it needs an internet connection to work.
I charged it up (it comes with a 1,000mAh battery) and turned it on. The screen lit up with a cute animated rabbit bouncing around, its ears perking up like it’s ready to listen. It’s powered by Rabbit OS, which uses a Large Action Model to understand what you want and take actions for you like ordering food or playing music without you needing to open a bunch of apps. The idea is to make your life easier by cutting out distractions, and I was excited to see how it would handle my daily tasks.
Setting It Up: A Bit of a Hassle
Setting up the Rabbit R1 wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped. You need to connect it to Wi-Fi or pop in a SIM card for data, which is fine, but the initial setup took longer than expected. I had to go to Rabbit’s website, called Rabbithole, to link my accounts for services like Spotify, Uber, and DoorDash. This is where the R1’s magic is supposed to happen it logs into your accounts and does stuff for you based on voice commands. But getting everything connected was a bit clunky. The website is straightforward, but I had to manually log into each service, and there were only a few options available at first. I also noticed that the R1 struggled to hold onto my Wi-Fi connection during setup it kept saying “establishing connection,” which got annoying fast.
Once I got it set up, I played around with the controls. The scroll wheel is how you navigate the menus, and the push-to-talk button lets you give voice commands. You can also double-press the button to turn on the camera for vision-based tasks, like identifying objects. The screen supports touch, but only when the keyboard pops up for typing otherwise, you’re stuck using the scroll wheel, which feels a bit outdated. I kept wishing for a “back” button because navigating the menus was a pain. If you dive too deep into a submenu, you have to scroll all the way back up to get out, and sometimes a long press of the button just turns the device off instead. It’s a small thing, but it made me miss the ease of my phone’s touchscreen.
Performance: Promising, But Not Quite There
The Rabbit R1’s big selling point is its Large Action Model (LAM), which is supposed to understand your intentions and take actions for you. For example, you can say, “Play my favorite playlist on Spotify,” and it should do it without you needing to open the app on your phone. I was really excited to try this out, but the reality was a bit of a letdown.
Let’s start with the good stuff. When it works, the R1 feels like magic. I said, “Play some Taylor Swift on Spotify,” and after a few seconds, it started playing her Evermore album. The rabbit animation on the screen is super cute it bounces around while it’s thinking, and its ears go down when it’s done. I also tried the vision feature by pointing the camera at a bag of chips and asking, “What’s this?” It correctly identified it as a bag of Lay’s and even told me the calorie count, which was pretty impressive. The translation mode is another win I used it to translate a menu from Spanish to English while I was at a restaurant, and it worked perfectly.
But here’s where things started to fall apart. The R1 is painfully inconsistent. I tried asking it to order an Uber to my friend’s house, and it kept saying, “Uber is unavailable, sorry for the inconvenience.” I tried multiple times, even making sure I was logged into Uber on the Rabbithole website, but no luck. The same thing happened with DoorDash I asked it to order a pizza, and it gave me a warning that “DoorDash may take a while to load,” then failed completely. It’s frustrating because these are the main features Rabbit advertised, but they just don’t work reliably.
I also noticed that the R1 is slow to respond to even simple requests. I asked for the weather in Mumbai, and it took almost 30 seconds to tell me my phone can do that in a second. Sometimes it didn’t even know what time zone I was in, which made me question how “smart” this AI really is. The battery life is another big issue. The 1,000mAh battery drained fast I went from 90% to 60% in just two hours of light use. If I was out and about with a weak Wi-Fi signal, it died even faster, sometimes in less than 4 hours. Rabbit has rolled out some firmware updates to improve battery life, and I did notice a slight improvement after the latest one, but it’s still nowhere near the “all-day” battery life they promised.
The LAM Playground: A Glimmer of Hope
One of the biggest updates to the Rabbit R1 came in late 2024 with the introduction of the LAM Playground. This feature lets you teach the R1 to interact with websites and apps beyond the preloaded ones like Spotify and Uber. For example, you can train it to add items to your Amazon cart or book a stay on Airbnb. I was excited to try this out because it’s what the R1 was supposed to do from the start—act like a personal assistant that can handle tasks for you.
I updated my R1 (which it does automatically when connected to power) and went to the Rabbithole website to try the LAM Playground. I decided to teach it to order groceries from a local store’s website. The process was a bit tedious you have to show the R1 how to navigate the site step by step, like adding items to the cart and checking out. But once I taught it, I could say, “Order some apples and milk,” and it would do it for me. It worked about 70% of the time, which is better than nothing, but it still failed a few times, saying it couldn’t find the items I wanted.
The LAM Playground is a step in the right direction, but it’s clear this is still a work in progress. Rabbit calls it a “playground” for a reason it’s more of a testing ground than a polished feature. I like that they’re trying to make the R1 more useful, but it’s not seamless yet. Plus, I couldn’t help but think that my phone could already do this with a few taps, and without the hassle of teaching an AI how to do it.
Privacy and Security: A Few Concerns
One thing that gave me pause about the Rabbit R1 is privacy. Since it’s always connected to the cloud, everything you say or do like your voice commands, photos, and app logins gets sent to Rabbit’s servers. They say it’s secure, and the Rabbithole portal lets you manage your data and even clear it if you want. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was handing over a lot of personal info to a company I don’t fully trust yet. There have been no major security breaches reported with Rabbit, but given how other AI tools have been misused in the past, I’d be cautious about using the R1 for sensitive tasks.
Who Is This For?
After using the Rabbit R1 for a few weeks, I’m still not sure who it’s meant for. It’s marketed as a companion to your phone, not a replacement, but it doesn’t do enough to justify carrying an extra device. If you’re a tech enthusiast who loves experimenting with new gadgets, you might enjoy playing around with it especially with the LAM Playground. But if you’re looking for a reliable assistant to handle your daily tasks, you’ll probably be disappointed. My phone can already do everything the R1 does, and it does it faster and more reliably. The R1 feels like a beta product something that’s not quite ready for the average user.
Final Thoughts: A Fun Idea, But Needs Work
The Rabbit R1 AI Companion is a gadget with a lot of potential, but it’s not there yet. I love its cute design and the idea of an AI that can take actions for me, like ordering food or playing music. When it works, it feels like the future like I have a little robot assistant in my pocket. The LAM Playground update shows that Rabbit is trying to improve, and I respect that they’ve been rolling out software updates to fix some of the early issues.
But the reality is that the R1 is too inconsistent to be useful. It struggles with basic tasks like ordering an Uber or checking the weather, the battery life is terrible, and the navigation is clunky. At $199 with no subscription, it’s not a huge investment, but it still feels like a waste of money when my phone can do all of this and more. I’ve seen some posts on X where people called it “non-functional” and even “a lie,” and while I wouldn’t go that far, I can see why they’re frustrated. Rabbit’s CEO, Jesse Lyu, has said from the start that this is just the beginning, and they need users to help improve the product. But I don’t think it’s fair to charge people $199 to beta-test a device that’s not ready.
Would I recommend the Rabbit R1? Not right now. If you’re curious about AI gadgets and don’t mind a work-in-progress, it might be worth a try. But for most people, I’d say wait for the Rabbit R2 or at least wait until Rabbit irons out the kinks. For now, this AI companion is more of a gimmick than a game-changer. I’ll keep an eye on Rabbit’s updates, and maybe in a year or two, the R1 will live up to its promises. Until then, I’m sticking with my phone.
