Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of single-day battery life. I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the show we're talking about AI gadgets. Not really any particular AI gadget, but really the shapes and sizes of AI gadgets. We have a lot of different products out there all attempting to be the next idea about the kind of gadget that you might have. Maybe it's a necklace that you wear. Maybe it's a pin. Maybe it's a thing that goes in your pocket that isn't your phone but looks kind of like your phone. So, what we're going to do in the show is we're going to put all of those in a pot and we're going to rank them to see what is the best idea about AI gadgets. Not the best AI gadget, but the best idea about AI gadgets. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 seconds on the Verge for Monday, July 13th, 2026. Apple's public betas just dropped, which means you can now go test all of the various OS 27s for your many Apple devices. Public betas are usually stable enough to not, you know, completely destroy your device, but they are still betas, so proceed with caution until things actually ship this fall. But more than most years, I would give it a whirl. Siri AI is a huge improvement, and I like a bunch of the changes to liquid glass and all of the other UI stuff, too. And maybe most importantly, they fixed the corner radii on the Mac. Our long national nightmare is finally over. Meanwhile, it's been a complicated few days at OpenAI. First, the CEO of Apps, Fiji Simo, left the company for health reasons. And then Apple sued OpenAI over what it called, quote, a pattern of theft of Apple's trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple. Yesesh. The case names IO, which is Jony Ive's hardware startup that OpenAI bought, and a couple of OpenAI executives. Apparently, more than 400 ex-Apple people now work at OpenAI. And Apple's allegation is that OpenAI basically built a system for those people to bring confidential information with them. This is a big accusation and presumably just the beginning of a very long legal process, but these companies were very close. ChatGPT was part of Siri. It's now very hard to imagine that happening ever again. And finally, The Verge's Victoria Song reviewed the new Oura Ring 5, and it's good, but it's complicated. The ring is good. It's smaller, big deal. It has the same sensors, but it still requires a subscription. It's still expensive, and you can get all the features on the old one. Really, it just depends on how that ring feels on your finger. You can read more about all of this at theverge.com. That is 90 seconds on the Verge for Monday, July 13th. All right, let's talk AI gadgets. Joining me now, my rank friends. I think of you as my rank friends. The Verge's Allison Johnson. Hi, Allison.
And The Verge's Victoria Song. Hi, V.
We're here to get yelled at by the internet again. This is what we do from time to time. We put things in order and then everyone gets mad at us about the order in which we put those things.
Listen, the iPad does not belong. I'm glad that Allison is leading the charge because I got some heat for starting that take. And you're welcome to take that heat, Allison.
I still get emails about this and I still feel incredibly vindicated by the audience response to where the iPad belongs in the Apple rankings. But what we're going to do today is we're going to rank AI gadgets. And I don't mean specific individual gadgets because by and large most of them are not very good. But I think what has happened is that we've seen kind of a full run of a bunch of ideas about what shape an AI gadget might take. Like what is the main thing through which you are going to interface with some AI tool or another. And so we've seen a bunch of shapes. And essentially what I want to do is I want to rank shapes today. Here are the eight that we're going to do in no particular order. We're going to rank these from one to eight. I have pendants, which are, you know, a thing on a string that you wear around your neck. I have pins, which I define relatively broadly as just like a thing you stick somewhere on your body, right? Like the Humane AI Pin is the most common example, but you could put it anywhere. It is a thing you stick onto you in some way. Glasses, obviously. Rectangles, specifically like the Rabbit R1 is probably the best known rectangle, but it is a thing that is sort of the shape of a phone, but is very deliberately not a smartphone. It is not intended to replace your smartphone. It does not do lots of things that smartphones do, but it is fundamentally a rectangle with a screen on it. We have headphones, we have rings, we have smartphones, and we have watches. Those are the eight. I don't think I've missed any. And I think pins we can define a little more broadly to include a couple of other like wacky wearable types that we've seen out there. But I think this is actually pretty much the run of the whole series of AI gadgets that we've seen so far. So let's start at the bottom as we always do. I found the bottom of this list much easier to make than the top of this list, which I thought was very interesting. Allison, you go first. What did you have number eight on the list?
I'm going to go with pin. I just can't get behind a pin, you know? It's a vibe. Like, I don't think I'm ever going to be a pin person. Like, I don't wear brooches. It just feels like the amount of stuff you have to put into it, like a battery and like a wireless antenna and a camera. It's so heavy. And I think the Humane AI Pin proved out that none of that works. So I'm going with pin.
It does feel like arguably in a weird way out of all of these, the most ostentatious thing you could do is like just stick something right over, you know, right where you would put a name tag and just declare to the world that I am recording you from my chest. Like it's a tough sell. V, did you have this here, too?
It's in the bottom for sure. Like if we're talking like a Humane AI Pin, oh yeah, super, super throw that down there. That's a bottom-ass AI gadget. But if you're talking about something more like the Plaud Pin, which is a much more sleek device, that's a pin. Or if we're talking about like the Bee tracker, which could be worn as a pin. It's a lot less obtrusive and it's not like doing something that it's pretty discreet. You're not wearing it all the time and it's kind of useful, but yeah, I mean it's not a... I could see it being eight just because it's not a particularly useful clothing item. It's easy to lose. You're 100% going to stick it in the wash by accident.
Brooches are making a comeback at fashion week and on the red carpet, but I think the average person a brooch is not an everyday you're going to wear this a lot of the time.
No, doesn't really go with my like athleisure, you know, leggings everyday kind of look.
It's also just a lot of work, right? Like I think the thing that I'm coming around to, V, even for the stuff that you just described, is like I actually don't want to maintain an accessory ecosystem for a device like this. And I think way back to, do you remember that phase where Fitbit was trying to be the sort of innocuous thing that you're describing and they made all these different cases and you could clip it and you could put it lots of different places and it turns out actually what people want to do is put it on and never ever ever think about it again.
Yeah. To me, I think pins, even in the best case, violate the I just want this thing to be simple and kind of out of my way most of the time just by the fact that they're right here on you all of the time.
Yeah, they're on you and it's like if you put it on outerwear and you take your jacket off, like it's just a logistical nightmare if you think about it.
Yeah. That said, I didn't have this last. I had pendants last because I think AI necklaces are just a bad idea and everybody should stop doing it now. Like I just don't get it. Like you look at the Friend of the world and the OMIs and all of these other things. Lots of people have had this idea of what if you wear this giant blocky necklace around your neck that just dangles in front of you and records your meetings and like A, never going to happen in a business context. B, looks bad, just like straightforwardly bad. And C, I think is actually a way more limiting form factor than a lot of the stuff that even a pin can do. So it's like these are the two that I think are clearly the bottom two to me and pendant is worse because it is actually like it can do less stuff just because it's a weird thing around your neck.
It also depends on the look. So I think a lot of the AI pendants that have come out are not designed by people who are very fashionable or stylish.
So I actually hosted a wearable panel recently and I saw an AI pendant that just looked like a piece of jewelry and like a very nice piece of jewelry and that I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Yeah. Turns out if you have women think about jewelry sometimes on your design team, you might get something that doesn't look like an AirTag that glows and is stuck on a shoelace. But we've done this a million times, right? Remember when all the watch makers were making Android Wear watches and it turns out that actually if you buy a really expensive necklace, you'd rather not have to upgrade the firmware in three months. Like I would... these ideas seem like they are compatible. And I feel like over and over and over the tech industry discovers that actually fashion and technology do not want to be the same thing.
It's just very hard because when you're making something at scale and you have to account for everyone's different fashion senses, like a lot, and we'll get into it when we talk about glasses. You end up hewing to the most versatile aka bland and boring design that you can to fit the most amount of people. So like style is very personalized and you know a necklace that like there is a world where I think a pendant would make sense but you know the pin, the Humane Pin would just like weigh down that guy's shirt every single time he wore it. And I was just like, oh my god, that's ridiculous. And a pendant like I have a pendant right now and it's very small and it's very tiny and I don't think about it and it's light and it's easy. You're never going to get a device to look like that. It's always going to be kind of a statement piece and it's always going to be a niche. I think I'm going to agree and say pendant is last over a pin being last because at least with a pin, you could have a reason to wear it and it could be unobtrusive and easy to remove or whatnot. But like a pendant, if the style isn't something that you like or isn't something that's going to go with the outfit, you're just not going to wear it. It's an even bigger niche than a pin would be.
Are these the two that you had as the bottom two? V, also did we all have these as the bottom two?
I did. I did have these two as my bottom two.
All right. So, I think in that case, we're close enough. We'll just let majority rule here. We'll go pendant eight, pin seven. I had no trouble making that decision. These were the bottom two. V, you go next. What did you have number six?
I had rectangle at number six just because like they don't do much and it's another gadget that you have to carry that's at least somewhat sizable and you're like I think about this like little fanny pack that I carry around when I'm just running about and doing stuff. I can fit a phone in there. I can fit a pair of headphones in there easily. And then wearables in general tend to be pretty small or things you wear so it's not taking up space in a little bag I have to carry. A rectangle takes up space and my phone is the main rectangle in my life and it does a lot of stuff so it feels like a little bit of a luxury. And I would put Kindles in there too. Like I love my Kindle and whatnot, but a lot of times if I'm having to go out, I'll just use the Kindle app on my phone to make progress on. And like you know I'm not carrying a big bag. I will just be like, oh, you are a secondary device. You're a device that if I'm going to be on a plane or having a work bag with me, you're not coming in my light and easy travel tiny little fanny pack. I'm just going about and living my best life on the go bag. So, just from like a usage standpoint, am I going to carry this with me everywhere standpoint? I was like rectangle is the least functional to me.
There's room for one rectangle. Yeah.
Pretty much spoken for already.
Yeah, it's spoken for. We can't have any more rectangles in the little fanny packs.
I agree with this. I put rectangle here and it's like I like the idea of a second gadget that you can use. Like when the Rabbit R1 came out, we were all dazzled by, you know, the gadgetiness of it. It just wasn't very useful, which was a real bummer. I like I could see this moving up the ranks if it got more useful if there was like if it could be the voice recorder that I bring to a meeting and it has the advantage of like it's not stuck on your person. So I can see it be a little more, you know, almost like socially acceptable to be like, I'm going to use this for XYZ purpose and then put it away. But that depends on it being useful.
I also had rectangle here, but the only case I had for rectangle is exactly what you just said, that I actually think there are real upsides to a thing that is not your phone. We encounter this all the time at work, right? Like it is different to be in a meeting and put a voice recorder down on the table than it is to put your phone down on the table recording a voice memo. Like it's just a different thing because the first thing is your phone. And there's also like every time you get a phone call, the voice memo stops and everything falls apart. Like there's just a lot of baggage that comes with your phone. And I both mean like literal and emotional baggage that comes with your phone that it is really nice to have a subset of things that I can do that are not with my phone. And so I can sort of close my eyes and imagine a world in which people feel the same way about AI devices that they feel about like digital cameras where it's nice to have a thing for this purpose. But I agree with you that we certainly have not seen anything that clears that bar. So I'm not ruling out rectangle forever.
But Allison, you've been bearish on this for like two years now, and I think history is proving you much more right than it's proving me so far.
You can't stick it in a pocket. Women's pockets very small.
Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I do appreciate the number of episodes of the Vergecast that come back to litigating the number and size of women's pockets. And I think that is the correct thing for us to harp on. Like if we at The Verge can just solve women's pockets, we will have done society a great service. I really believe.
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So, pendant, pin, rectangle, it's the bottom three. I think that's about right. This actually now kind of immediately starts to get complicated for me. Allison, what did you have at number five?
Yeah, this is tricky. I think I put ring at five just because and I caveat this because the rings are very popular. I like I was just traveling with my family and like everywhere across this country people are like wearing their Oura rings. But again, this is AI gadget. This is not we're not doing a wellness debate here. This is as an AI gadget. Yeah. So, I think it's just so limited, I think. And V, you can correct me on the state-of-the-art rings, but like how much of a battery can you fit into that thing? And like the most compelling one was one you had where you like lift it up and talk to it. But then is that even an AI gadget? I don't know.
It's like an AI transcription gadget. So, I actually think it's much better than the pins on the pendants because I was like, I am God with this ring. I am journalism interview recording god because like not only could I take notes at an... I went to the Enhanced Games and I had this Vochi ring on and I was like taking notes while I was at the event being like this is strange note for later. And it's very discreet. It's great. And there was like a little button on it that I could press and it would highlight parts of the transcript so that when I would go back to the AI transcript, I could, you know, pull the quotes out much more easily because the thing I hate most is going back to a transcript and just reading back all the ums and I've said uh and my stupid questions and having to face that while like picking out the good quotes. So, that just made it really easy. It was super convenient. And other journalists noticed I was doing it and they were like, oh my god, what is that product? And they were taking pictures and they wanted it. So, that was actually pretty cool. But again, the limitations there, as you mentioned, are going to be one, your ring size, if you're swelling in the summer, and battery because I got maybe like two or three hour-long interviews before I had to stick it back into a case and then I would also forget to charge it because it would just be on my finger as a ring.
Some people are not super into rings as a form factor. You also just described the entire use case like there is no other ceiling past what you just said as what you can do on your smart ring right and I think to a large extent that's fine right like I am perpetually fascinated by the Pebble Index which is basically just a little ring with a button that you bring up to your mouth like a spy and you say like remember to call Allison on Monday and it just dumps a thing into your reminders that reminds you to call Allison on Monday. That is better than digging out my phone to do it. It's innocuous. It's simple. Like, as a pure form factor, I really love the ring. Actually, I have the ring higher here. I had the ring at three. In part just because if all I'm doing is talking to something, this motion of like having my hand up to my mouth is about as natural an AI interaction as you're going to find anywhere. It's just there's nothing else you can do with these things. And like we're not getting cameras into rings. We're not getting speakers into rings. We're not getting screens into rings. There's just no ceiling on it. And so for a certain kind of AI gadget, I'm like very into these, but as a sort of overall form factor, this is, I think, pretty clearly not the thing.
It's just battery life and processing power, right? Because there's always like this issue. Like some people are doing interesting things where they're having the case be how you upload and kind of like as like a little hub to help with battery life as well as you know just like the fact that it's...
Now it's rectangle. Now it's rectangle.
The case fits in woman's pocket.
No, I'm sorry. If my ring needs a... if I have to bring a charging case for my ring for it to work, it's eight on this list. I'm like absolutely not.
You don't have to. It's for when you're charging at home that it can also help with the processing and the uploading. You don't have to bring that.
That's different. I also had the ring higher. But also just because there are some... if you could fix the battery issue which is a pretty challenging engineering issue. You can like kind of do some two-in-one interestingness there. Like the Even Realities G2 glasses has a smart ring that you not only does it track fitness and whatnot, but you use it as a gesture control to control your glasses. So, that's like an interesting use case. Did it work well? Not really, but when it did work, it's an idea.
I had it at four is where I had it. Okay. What did you have at five, V?
Well, glasses are just a different right now in their most useful form. They are really great headphones for when you don't want to get run over by your local Range Rover from the suburban mom with road rage.
You have brought up that exact example so many times on this show.
Cuz it keeps happening to me.
What happened? Do we just need to tell this story?
There is this one woman in my neighborhood in this Range Rover and she is aggressive and you know in suburban America sidewalks are sometimes there and they're sometimes not. So it became when I moved to New Jersey from New York. New York you always have sidewalks. This is not an issue. But here I was like, oh no, I really need the open-ear headphones when I'm going on my runs and my walks because otherwise this woman is going to pancake me. It was a close call a couple of times. So, yeah. They're great as open-ear headphones. The AI is not that great a lot of the times. If they have a display, that stuff hurts my eyes a lot and you look kind of goofy doing it. But really, really the issue is not only is the battery life not great enough on most of these for all-day wear, you're risking getting punched in the face by someone who thinks you're a scoper, you know, not ideal.
Not ideal. And then if you're someone like me, I'm wearing a pair of smart glasses right now that happen to accommodate my really garbage prescription. Love that for me. -10 in this eye, 8.75 in the other. Like that's great, but that's not the case for a lot of people. Just in terms of your face fit, the fact that you can't replace the batteries on this, everyone's like face size is different, everyone's nose bridge is different and everyone's you know vision is also different. There's so many obstacles into making a nice looking pair of glasses that fits everyone that has battery life that lasts a long time. Like I am increasingly skeptical that this is the AI gadget of the moment. Even though, you know, let's be real, the executives at Meta really, really, really are hammering that home and big tech can't get over glasses. It's just it's such a challenging thing to get right. And the societal backlash against it has me putting it here because to sell it, you really have to litigate the camera. And right now that conversation is not going well for big tech if you look online at least. So yeah.
But can I defend flipping ring and glasses here? Because I feel like I 100% agree with all the stuff about glasses and like getting punched in the face. But the...
We're anti-getting punched in the face to be on this show. We are anti-punching or being punched in the face.
Yeah. We're just looking out. But the ring feels like an input device for something else that's doing the AI. And it feels like I don't see how it could do more than that. And the glasses like could and kind of are like able to do a little more with the AI and like having the display and you can talk to the AI assistant. Maybe it's not much more than like, you know, relaying to the AI on your phone, which is actually the ultimate AI device. Spoiler alert.
But I don't know. Do I have this wrong? Like...
No, I think you're right. But I actually think you're both actually sort of aligned in a funny way, which is the great challenge of these devices, right? Which is that they are so by default outward-facing that they can do a lot of new exciting different things. They are going to have lots more power than lots of other kinds of devices. But with every single increase in functionality, all of the social mess is going to get harder and all of the battery life issues are going to get worse and all of like every bit of functionality you add into a pair of glasses makes all of the other things about them worse. And so I think this is the thing I struggled with this one more than any other because I actually think you could make a case that glasses could be as high as like number one on the list in terms of like raw potential for AI utility. But for me, I'm struck by like going through these, I found myself downranking all of the ones that are sort of fundamentally pointing at other people all the time and upranking the ones that are sort of fundamentally private. And I think the glasses to me are like the most other people-facing ones in the sense that they are like the most noticeable version of the thing. So like even though pins and pendants are pointing at other people like they're called glassholes. You know what I mean? Like this is just the thing that we're doing because it is eye level. It is how we look at each other. And I think that is just such a hurdle to overcome that I pulled it down on the list. Even though all the utility stuff, you're absolutely right. I mean V has tested a bunch of these things like they can do more than all these other devices and it's not...
Like that's also why I put it at five because it was actually fairly easy for me to do six, seven, eight and then I was like glasses goes down there and not because I'm a hater and not because I think that they're not some of the most useful AI gadgets that we have at the moment for certain communities. They're extremely useful. It's just the challenges with glasses I think are higher than any other gadget on this list for so many different reasons. Like in its simplest form, glasses are a medical device. Like they are a medical device. I need them to see. When you get like conversations about like Philadelphia courts banning smart glasses. What happens if you show up for jury duty? And they're like, well actually your glasses, they have a smart recording capability. You're going to have to put it with your Kindle and not have it. Well, you're boned. That's really bad. And so then, do I have to carry backup glasses in my bag? These are actual thoughts that I've had as I wear these and as I put them out into like I go out into the world with these smart glasses. So, there are different utilities and functions that you can have with the glasses that I think are really great. There are glasses that double as hearing aids. There are glasses that help blind people. There are, you know, a lot of cool things it can do. It's just the camera. It's really litigating the camera. For them to reach maximum potential, they must have a camera. You must have the multimodal AI. And I just don't think that's something that society is having an easy time grappling with. So until I'm shown otherwise, I think the hurdles for glasses are the highest of any gadget on this list.
I think I agree. Okay. So, I think in the interest of moving on, I think V and I are going to overrule you here. Allison, did you have glasses like way higher?
No, I'm fine with this. I can live with it.
Okay. And I think ring we're going to leave at four because we had it at three, four, and five. So, we'll just take it right in the middle. Which brings us... So, so far, just to recap, we have pendant at eight, pin at seven, rectangle at six, glasses at five, ring at four. We could sit here and flip back and forth all day, but we can just leave them where they are for right now. This brings us to our top three. Allison, what did you have at three?
This is tough, but I put headphones at three.
