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Look, Im a Humane AI Pin doubter as much as the next person. And I still think the wearable, AI-powered assistant suffers from a case of this-thing-could-have-been-an-app. But I finally got to spend a little face-to-face time with the pin this morning, and you know what? Its a darn cool gadget. Its just buried under a layer of marketing so thick that its hard to appreciate what it actually could be if Humane wasnt so self-serious.

If you spend time on Tech Threads or the like, you probably already know what the pin does: you clip it to your shirt, talk to it, and it uses generative AI to answer. Its a standalone device with its own SIM card, and theres no screen just vibes. That, and a little laser that projects menus and text onto your palm so you can interact with mortal trifles like Wi-Fi settings and media playback controls.

The idea, reiterated as I watched a couple of Humane employees run through various demos, was that its meant to help keep you connected while unplugging a little bit less staring at screens and more living in the moment. AI helps fetch relevant bits from your calendar and email, and answers your questions when youre curious about the world around you.

Its all very lovely, but lets be real: this thing isnt a philosophy, its a gadget. Gadgets are fun, helpful, and frustrating and all of the above seems to apply to the Humane pin.

The AI Pin was genuinely impressive at times. Theres a vision feature that will use the camera to scan the scene in front of you when prompted, analyze whats there, and describe it out loud. I stood in front of a Humane spokesperson as he tried out this feature, and frankly, the pin nailed it. It described Mobile World Congress as an indoor event or exhibition with people walking around. Easy enough.

But it also pointed out the name Qualcomm on the signage behind me, and obviously reading the badge around my neck, identified me as a person wearing a lanyard from the The Verge. One too many thes, but pretty impressive when you consider I wasnt standing all that close to the pin and the lighting was dim.

The gesture navigation was also impressive more fluid and responsive than I thought it would be. I wasnt allowed to put the pin on myself, and its hard to get into the right spot to project the laser onto your own hand since its really a single-user device. I tried. But a couple of Humane employees demoing the product, who obviously had lots of practice with it, navigated the projected menus quickly and easily just by tilting their hands and tapping two fingers together.

But the pin isnt immune to the thing that gadgets often do: frustrate the hell out of you. Most of the AI is off-device, so theres a solid few seconds of waiting for responses to your requests and questions not helped by the convention centers spotty connectivity. It also shut down on one occasion after briefly flashing a notice that it had overheated and needed to cool off. The employee demoing the pin for me said that this doesnt happen very often, and that the continued use of the laser for demonstration purposes probably did it. I believe that, but still, this is a device meant to sit next to your chest and go with you into lots of different environments, presumably including warm ones. Not great!

The laser projection is clearer than I imagined it would be, but its still essentially light projected onto the palm of your hand. Hands arent uniformly flat, and theyre hard to keep perfectly still. Text kind of dances around in front of you, and while its not difficult to read, it is harder than reading, say, text on a smartphone.

Its also impossible to get a sense of what its like living with the thing in a convention center hall. Could a cotton shirt support its weight? How easy is the laser to see outside in direct sun? Would people understand why the trust light is illuminated? Does the Pin occasionally make things up, the way some AI tends to? I have a lot more questions than answers, but I guess at least I have more than zero answers now that Ive seen it with my own eyes.

My early impression of the Pin is that theres something there, but its not the thing. And the trouble is, all of Humanes marketing has built it up to be the thing. It was first introduced at a TED talk, for petes sake: thats like ground zero for people who take themselves too seriously. Humanes Sai Kambampati told me that the AI Pin isnt intended as a smartphone replacement. But it has its own data connection, its own monthly subscription fee, and its own smartphone-esque price of $699. And its... not supposed to replace your phone?

Whatevers ahead of us in mobile computing, I have a feeling its not exactly the AI Pin as I saw it demonstrated today. Theres a lot more testing I want to do when the pin officially arrives in April. In the meantime, I didnt see the future exactly, but I did see a darn cool gadget just dont take it too seriously.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

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The Humane AI Pin worked better than I expected until it didn't - The Verge