A new startup by the name of Rabbit demoed their AI-powered “R1” device at CES and it’s intriguing, to say the least. For starters, it runs on the company’s RabbitOS void of the construct we know as ‘apps’, and is based on their Large Action Model (LAM). There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get right into the Rabbit R1, its features, pricing details, and availability.
Rabbit R1 Overview:
The Hardware
Designed in collaboration with Teenage Engineering, the Rabbit R1 is a portable smart gadget that comes in a bright orange colorway (leuchtorange). It features a small 2.88-inch touchscreen alongside an analog scroll wheel to the side. But the primary way of interacting with the R1 is via the ‘Push-To-Talk’ button on the right. The R1 also features a “360-degree rotational eye” which is basically just a camera that can either face you or turn around. So, although not quite a smartphone, the R1 packs in all the essentials required for a speech/touch-based system.
The LAM Model
The most intriguing part about Rabbit and the R1 is what they have decided to call the “LAM model”. Unlike Large Language Models (LLMs) powering most of the AI products and services we have seen so far, Rabbit’s Large Action Model (LAM) can actually take actions and initiatives on behalf of the user.
Founder and CEO Jesse Lyu said that they have trained their LAM on thousands of interfaces and it can effectively navigate through apps, web portables, and their UI without a worry. This enables the R1 to do things like book flights, tickets to movies, and even call you an Uber.
Furthermore, you can query it about the weather, current affairs, or a random thought just like you’d a normal voice assistant. That’s not all though.
Another cool feature of the Rabbit R1 is that you can teach it to do things. Similar to macros, you can record yourself doing a task and have the R1 learn and replicate it. In the demo, Lyu had the R1 learn how to generate images using Midjourney in Discord and also to use the lasso tool to remove watermarks in Photoshop. As such, although I am quite skeptical, this could be super useful to automate a series of actions in the future.
The Eyes
There’s also the camera I mentioned earlier. It faces you for the most part but can turn to recognize objects and scan stuff. An amazing demo was how the R1 could take a look at the leftovers in a fridge and suggest a recipe with low calories within just a couple of moments. That means it can not just recognize food items, but also how rich they are, and which things go together and which don’t, all while following a different set of instructions about how the recipe needs to be ‘low-calorie’. It also seemingly recognizes people and celebrities as shown with a ‘Rick Astley’ demo.
You can of course take pictures with the R1 (8MP) and record 1080p videos at 24 fps.
Under the hood
We took a quick look at the external hardware but under the hood, powering the Rabbit R1 is a modest MediaTek Helio P35 processor. This 2.3 GHz chip was quite popular among budget smartphones a while ago so it’s not surprising to see here. For storage, there’s 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.
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The Rabbit R1 also has a micro SD card for storage expansion and a sim card slot for 4G LTE connections alongside Bluetooth 5, and dual-band WiFi. The company mentions all-day battery life for the R1 with its 1,000 mAh cell.
Will the Rabbit R1 replace smartphones?
When asked if he thought his innovation would replace phones, Lyu mentioned that he doesn’t want the Rabbit R1 to replace the smartphone – at least not right now. And although the demo was very impressive, I am in a similar boat. Sure, it can do all these cool things, but smartphones have become integral to our daily lives from being your source of news and entertainment to your shopping portal and bank vault. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes though and I’ll be following it very closely.
Rabbit R1 Pricing and Availability
The R1 is surprisingly well-priced at USD 199 without any kind of monthly subscription. Their first batch of 10,000 has already sold out, and they are taking pre-orders for another shipment in the summer.
| Rabbit R1 | Price in the US | Price in Nepal (Converted) |
| 4/128 GB | USD 199 | NPR 26,000 |
- Meanwhile, check out our video on the 7 New Features of HyperOS:
