Marques Brownlee is one of the most respected and influential tech reviewers on YouTube, with over 17 million subscribers hanging on his every word about the latest gadgets and gizmos. So when he labels a new product as “the worst” he’s ever looked at, it’s sure to turn heads.

The device drawing Brownlee’s ire is the Humane AI Pin, a futuristic wearable that projects an artificial intelligence interface onto your hand. Meant to one day replace the smartphone, this tiny gizmo packs a lot of ambition into its compact frame. But as Brownlee’s scathing review makes clear, the execution leaves much to be desired.

What is the AI Pin?

Released just last week by startup Humane, the AI Pin takes the form of a circular disk about the size of a smartwatch face. You pin it to your shirt or jacket, and it uses miniaturized projection technology to beam information onto your palm in crisp green lettering and images.

The idea is that you interact with the AI using just your voice and hands – asking it questions, giving it tasks, even having back-and-forth conversations just like you would with voice assistants like Siri or Alexa. Except now that disembodied voice has a physical form projected onto your hand, with text and visuals to illustrate its responses.

Hands-on disaster

In theory, it all sounds incredibly futuristic and convenient. One tiny gadget that puts AI capabilities quite literally at your fingertips. However, according to most hands-on reviews from major tech publications, the AI Pin is more of a swing and a miss in its current initial state.

Tom’s Guide summed up the general sentiment well with their headline reading “Humane AI Pin review roundup — this is a disaster.” Ouch.

Poor battery, bad projector

MKBHD’s video review hits on many of the same pain points. He calls out the AI Pin’s terrible battery life that struggles to last even a few hours with active use. The green projector isn’t bright enough to easily view content outdoors or in well-lit rooms. Image and video quality from the on-board camera are laughably poor.

But his biggest gripe is with the core AI interaction experience. Brownlee says that voice queries are often met with sluggish responses prone to mistakes, a consequence of the still imperfect generative AI models that power the experience. “It’s bad at almost everything it does,” he laments.

A respect for ambition

In the midst of all the criticism, Brownlee does offer a couple of positive thoughts. He appreciates the ability to easily record voice notes by just speaking to your wrist. And he sees potential for the first-person video capabilities, despite the currently rough quality.

The popular YouTuber sums it up by saying “As a brand new product and a team trying to make something new — that I respect, I respect the attempt.”

Not ready for primetime

But respect for ambition can only go so far. Brownlee’s ultimate verdict is that while intriguing, the AI Pin is simply not ready for mainstream consumption yet. He states it has a “long way to go” before it becomes properly usable. His advice: “Never buy a product based on the future promise of updates to it.”

For a gadget aiming to pioneer the next era of ambient AI and usher in our hands-free future, that’s a brutal reality check. Humane and their AI Pin may have lofty goals, but according to most reviews, their $699 debut (plus a $24 monthly subscription) product doesn’t live up to the hype. Not yet, anyway.