Watch, headphones, phone: Which AI gadget is best?

15:45I think it is.

15:48Victoria Song:Also, you can't stick it in a pocket. Women's pockets, very small. This is, yeah.

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19:21David Pierce: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 was just traveling with my family and everywhere across this country, people are wearing their aura rings. But again, this is AI gadget. 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. I think in 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?

20:07And, like, the most compelling one was when you had where you, like, lift it up and talk to it. But then is that even an AI gadget? I don't know.

20:17Victoria Song:It's like an AI transcription gadget. So I actually think it's much better than the pins and 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, I went to the Enhanced Games and I had this Voci 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.

20:56Victoria Song:because the thing I hate most is going back to a transcript and just reading back all the ums and uhs I've said 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.

21:37Victoria Song: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.

21:46David Pierce: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 the 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. Like that is better than digging out my phone to do it. It's it's innocuous. It's simple. like as a pure form factor, I really love the ring.

22:25David Pierce:Actually, I have the ring higher here. I had the ring at three, um, in part just because if all I'm doing is talking to something, this 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 ceiling on it um and so for a certain kind of ai gadget i'm like very into these but as a as a sort of overall form factor this is i think pretty clearly not it's it's just battery life and

23:01Victoria Song: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 um you know just like the the fact that it's now it's Rectangle.

23:16David Pierce:Now it's rectangle. Yeah, exactly. That's rectangle.

23:19Victoria Song:Case fits in woman's pocket. No, I'm sorry.

23:22David Pierce: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. Because then you don't have to. Two devices?

23:33Victoria Song: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 a case with you. Sure. Okay, that's fine. 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 Evan and Reality's 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.

24:11Victoria Song:Did it work well? Eh, not really. But when it did work, it's an idea.

24:16David Pierce:It's an idea.

24:17Victoria Song:I had it at four is where I had it.

24:19David Pierce:Okay. What did you have at five, V?

24:21Victoria Song:I had glasses at five. Whoa. So did I.

24:24David Pierce:Wow.

24:25Victoria Song:Yeah.

24:25David Pierce:V, make the case.

24:26Victoria Song: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.

24:42David Pierce:You've brought up that exact example so many times on this show.

24:47Victoria Song:Because it keeps happening to me. What happened?

24:50David Pierce:Do we just need to tell this story?

24:52Victoria Song: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.

25:37Victoria Song: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 psyop. Not ideal. Not ideal. And then if you're someone like me, I'm wearing a pair of smart glasses right now that happened to accommodate my really garbage prescription. Love that for me. Negative 10 in this eye, negative 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.

26:11Victoria Song: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.

26:56Victoria Song:And right now that 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 this stuff about glasses and, like, getting punched in the face. But We're anti-getting punched in the face

27:15David Pierce:to be clear. Don't love being punched in the face. On this show, we are anti-punching or being punched in the face. Yeah. We're just looking out. But the ring, the ring feels like an input device for something else that's doing the AI. And it It feels like I don't see how I 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. Don't ruin it.

27:56But I don't know. do I have this wrong?

27:59David Pierce: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 every bit of functionality you add into a pair of glasses makes all of the other things about them worse.

28:37David Pierce: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 number one on the list in terms of raw potential for AI utility. but for me i'm i'm struck by like going through these i found myself down ranking all of the ones that are sort of fundamentally pointing at other people all the time and up ranking 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 we're even though pins and pendants are pointing at other people like they're called glass holes you know what I mean?

29:21David Pierce: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.

29:39Victoria Song: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, and 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.

30:24Victoria Song: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 bed? These are actual thoughts that I've had as I wear these and as I put them out and 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 are 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.

30:58Victoria Song:They must have a camera. You must have the multimodal AI. And I just don't think that something that society is having an easy time grappling with. so until i'm shown otherwise i think the the hurdles for glasses are the highest of any gadget

31:15David Pierce:on this list i think i agree okay so i think in the interest of moving on um i think v and i are going to overrule you here alice and did you have glasses like way higher no i i'm fine with this i can look at okay and i think ring we're going to leave at four because i we had it at three four and five so we'll just take it right in the middle um 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 i i think i five and four we we could we could sit here and flip back and forth all day but we can just leave them where they are for right now uh this brings us to our top three allison what did you have at three this is tough but i put headphones at three so did i okay yeah tell me why it feels like there is a lot of potential and um as a as a means of like talking to the ai that's on your phone or whatever getting the the input and you know language translation it's it's very socially acceptable to be wearing AirPods all the time.

32:24But I think the societal, you know, permission to be like talking with AirPods in, I hate it. I feel like a jerk, you know, whenever I go, I'm like, I will always take them out. Even if I have that, like the pass through mode on where it's like going to dim the, you know, make the music quieter. Yeah, I feel like you look like a jerk when you talk to people with airpods in and that would have to change before i would

32:56David Pierce:rank them but i feel like that i feel like that fight is lost i don't think by and large people agree with you anymore no really i'm really not younger people like i still have that same problem but i see gen z people all the time just oh no i'm an old one of the things that i find the wildest is seeing couples like walking along holding hands, both wearing headphones. People do that? I'm like, this is just like, what on earth are we doing here? That sucks. I mean, I agree with you, but I think to me it's like the coffee shop question is a good one, right? Like what do you do when you walk into the coffee shop to talk to the person at the counter?

33:33David Pierce:I think at most society is it, take one of your AirPods out. And I think a lot of people, I know for sure a lot of people just roll in headphones on and talk to the person at the counter. Oh my gosh. Which is, I think, a case for why headphones belongs high on this list, because that sort of ubiquity in society suggests that you can wear them all the time without people looking at you twice. Yeah. Which is also why I had them here. Like, I think I still remember how exciting it was when the Hey Siri stuff started working and I could talk, I could set reminders on my phone through my AirPods with my phone in my pocket.

34:09David Pierce:And it's just like that little thing was such a nice little quality of life improvement in using my phone that I feel the same way about all of these AI features. Like just put voice mode into my headphones and I'm good to go for a huge number of things. David, do you take your AirPods out to go order your breakfast sandwich? I either take both out or I take one out like very demonstrably in front of them. Do you know what I mean? Okay. Where it's like I do the I am listening to you now gesture. I would never just walk up with one in that they didn't see. Because then it's like, I want it to be clear that I am listening to you.

34:46David Pierce:Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. All right. But I see people all the time. I saw somebody the other day with like giant Sony noise canceling cans. No. Clearly playing something, essentially walk up to the counter and like yell at the person that they wanted a bacon, egg and cheese. And I just wanted to walk up and just be like, buddy, you can just take these off. Like everybody will be happier. They go off.

35:06Victoria Song:It's insanity.

35:07David Pierce:V, did you have headphones here too?

35:09Victoria Song:I had them higher. I had them at two.

35:10David Pierce:Really? Okay, what did you have at three?

35:12Victoria Song:I had watch at three. Oh my gosh. That's just so fun. Just because it's not a natural thing to just yell at my watch. I've used Gemini on the wrist. I've used Siri on the wrist. It's just more natural to use my headphones to do that. Like, I don't think it's as weird. And all the things that I like about using AI and glasses can also be done with, or a lot of it can be done with headphones. So like the audio element of it, just it's simpler. You don't have to litigate the stuff with the camera for most people. Although some people, Razer, Cough Cough, Project Motokill, are trying to stick cameras in over your headphones.

35:55Victoria Song:And don't do that. Don't do that. Just don't do that. Don't be that person. Don't be that person. But yeah, I have yet to see AI integrated into the watch itself in a way that I think is really great. I think the potential there could be like a health coach situation where you are looking at stuff. Or I'm curious whenever it is that they roll out Siri for the Apple Watch, the new Siri for the Apple Watch, how it integrates with the phone in terms of like at least you'll be able to see and read a little bit more. and like kind of go back and forth. I'm curious. I think the potential is high there.

36:34Victoria Song:Battery life is better than these like pins and pendants marginally. I think the potential is big, but if we're talking about like what is useful now as an AI gadget, I think headphones are a little bit more easy to do. The one argument I would have maybe if you wanted to put watch higher is that it's an actually portable rectangle. It's an actually portable rectangle that takes up no pocket space. And if you were to do translations, you could do it by the rest. It is like, I think of all these devices, headphones and watches are the ultimate companion for your phone. So together, all three is like a pretty great AI gadget ecosystem.

37:15Victoria Song:But I do think headphones is just a bit more natural than a watch for AI. Oh, hello, Petey. You've joined the ranking squad. Petey's with me on watches. I can tell. PD is the number one AI gadget killer.

37:28David Pierce:That I believe. So this suggests also that both of you had smartphone at number one. Yeah? Yes.

37:34Victoria Song:Yeah.

37:35David Pierce:Was that a complicated decision for either of you to make?

37:38Victoria Song:No. No. One and like seven and eight were like super easy.

37:42David Pierce:You're both wrong.

37:43Victoria Song:Whoa.

37:44David Pierce:The answer is watch. No. So my top three were watch, smartphones, headphones in that order. um v you just made a really good case for headphones except that i think a thing we just fundamentally disagree on is i think this this motion of like bringing my my wrist up to talk to it is actually very natural uh in a way that i still find just like shouting to nothing with my airpods on to be weird yeah same i actually sort of like the the idea of talking to a thing yeah it signals to everyone around you like i'm doing a thing rather than just like they don't have to wonder like are you talking to someone or exactly and i think there is something to the fact that there's a lot of watch stuff that is still two-handed in a way that is not ideal but especially as you get to more voice control and more of the stuff like this this sort of just bring your wrist up look at it and talk to it gesture i love like it is i wore an apple watch for so many years for no other reason than to set timers and reminders with my watch, which is like an insane thing to spend all of that money on, but it really, really was what I used it for.

38:58David Pierce:And so to me, it's like the upside of a watch over a phone is I don't have to take it out of my pocket. It doesn't come with, like we talked about, all the baggage of the phone. It doesn't kill my phone's battery, which is kind of important, but it is actually this extremely accessible thing. The downside is I think a lot of people are going to try to put cameras in watches. And I think that is going to go universally terribly and that no one should try that. And that fundamentally, a lot of what we need is a camera to do some of the stuff that we want. So like phone is eventually going to win on just like raw utility.

39:31David Pierce:I think there's no question about that. But to me, there's just something about I was just thinking about it. And I'm like, what what is the thing if I had all of these in front of me? What would I naturally gravitate to? And I think for me, it's the watch. Yeah, that's just me. I think it's the, I still have it at number two, but I think it's the strongest of the AI gadgets here because you can have that cellular connectivity in it. We've solved that.

40:00Victoria Song:So slow. It's so slow to get the answers. Exactly. Exactly why phone is number one, because the watch works best if it's the thing you have on you and you have your phone with you. and then it all comes together. That is a very fair point.

40:19David Pierce:I cannot argue with that point. Yeah, like we solved all these problems so long ago. Like the battery, we can cool them down. You know, the cellular connectivity. You're not going to find a better like cellular modem for your headphones than a phone. It just won. It won ages ago. That's what I got.

40:41Victoria Song:Also, everyone expects a camera to be in a phone, right? You're not going to have this problem that glasses are running into. And like, one, you put cameras on a watch. I'm going to write a 4 ,000 word screed on TheVerge.com about why that's a stupid idea. Like, I don't put cameras on your freaking watch. Do you want to have the nostril shot at all times with your camera watch? There was a band that put a camera in the watch band at one point. Just nostril shots all day. Nobody wants that. I have a toddler to take pictures of my nostrils with my phone. He does that very well on his own.

41:16David Pierce:Okay. So I think where we're going to land here is that we all have the top three just in slightly different orders. But it seems like a consensus that will work for all of us is we'll put phone number one. That's okay. It's wrong, but it's okay. And then I think, how do we feel about watch at two and headphones at three versus headphones at two and watch at three? Either of you want to make a really impassioned case for one of them to be ahead of the other?

41:43Victoria Song:In my gut, I think headphones is too, just because the utility of the AI is immediately there, but versus like judging on a watch's potential to be a really great AI gadget.

41:54David Pierce:I think there are a lot of people who would tell you the Apple Watch is the best Siri gadget that currently exists. Yeah. Okay, screen. It's the screen because I can see what it thinks I'm saying. and the headphones, I just have to like hope to God. Okay. And then like based on the reaction, I get back. Can I just say, this is a random tangent by the way, but I've been using the developer beta of iOS 27 and there's a thing that Siri does now, which is ask, if it doesn't quite hear you correctly, it will ask, did you say this or this? Oh. And it is so much better, but it drives me so crazy every time.

42:31David Pierce:Where I'm just like, every time I'm like, how did you not hear me? Like I said, Vergecast, not Verge Smash. Like, what are we doing? And then I'm like, oh, but the last time it would have just gotten it for the last 15 years, it would have just gotten it wrong and moved on. So like, I guess I guess we have. It's an improvement. Yeah. Yeah.

42:47Victoria Song:I'm OK. Like, this is weird, but I'm OK with the watch being at two. It feels weird being the wearable lady being like, I'm OK with the watch being at two, but I am OK with it.

42:56David Pierce:OK. Yeah. I think I think this is the right place to land. So that means in order, our ranking is phone, watch, headphones, ring, glasses, rectangle, pin, and pendant. That feels right to me. There's nothing here that feels like a million miles away from where it's supposed to be. Yeah, nailed it. And phone still wins. Phone wins. Boy, it's going to be a bummer for a lot of companies out there that phone still wins the rankings. Look, I've been saying this for a year. How many like billions of dollars in venture capital is out there trying to solve the problem that phone is number one on the list.

43:29David Pierce:And yet here we still are.

43:31Victoria Song:But also for everything else on that list, you need the phone for it to work. So exactly.

43:37David Pierce:There is that. There is that. All right. Thank you both for doing this. If anybody has thoughts about the rankings, if there are any whole device types that we missed, if you want to get really mad about how the iPad should have been higher on this list. Also, we would love to hear from you. Call the hotline.

43:52Victoria Song:That's just a rectangle. It's true. It is a rectangle. It's just a rectangle. It's true.

43:55David Pierce:It is one of the good rectangles. Call the hotline 866-VERGE11. Send us emails, vergecasttotheverge.com. Allison V, good to see you both. Thanks for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to V and Allison again for being here. And thank you as always for watching and listening. As always, with these episodes in particular, I really earnestly do want to know your feedback. What did we get wrong? What are we missing entirely? What ideas about some of these gadgets have you been trying that we haven't seen yet? I want all of your feedback. Call the hotline 866-VERGE11.

44:26David Pierce:Email us vergecast at theverge.com. Especially if you think I'm right and V and Allison are wrong. Those are my favorite emails. Keep them all coming. And as a reminder, as always, the best thing you can do to support everything The Verge is up to is to subscribe to The Verge, theverge.com slash subscribe. It gets you all of our podcasts ad free, including this one. It gets you all of our exclusive newsletters. It gets you all of our coverage of AI gadgets and everything else. Go to theverge.com slash subscribe. It makes a huge difference. and thank you in advance. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Box Media Podcast Network.

44:56David Pierce:The show is produced by Josh Cajas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Aaron Locasio. We'll see you tomorrow. Rock and roll. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately though, Mint's story is better. Every plan,$15 a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending. Zero tears. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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