The Vergecast - Watch, headphones, phone: Which AI gadget is best?

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

So far, there have been exactly zero great AI-first gadgets. But that hasn't stopped the tech industry from trying to figure out what shape and size these new gadgets might take, and whether any of them can best the device in your pocket. The Verge's Allison Johnson and Victoria Song join David to rank all those shapes, from pendant to smartwatch to rectangle, to see whether there is actually a next big thing out there. Further reading: ⁠Apple sues OpenAI for allegedly stealing hardware secrets | The Verge⁠ ⁠Less is more with the Oura Ring 5 | The Verge⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Virgcast, 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 on 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 OS27s 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.

actually shipped 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 radiai 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 are formerly at Apple. Eish. The case names I.O., which is Johnny Ives' hardware startup that OpenA.I. bought and a couple of OpenAI

executives. Apparently, more than 400 X 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. Chat ChupitT was part of the Siri. It's now very hard to imagine that happening ever again. And finally, the Virge's Victoria song reviewed the new ORA 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 the verge.com. That is 90 seconds from The Verge for Monday, July 13th. 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. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12-month plan required $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See Terms. The Hulu original series Furious. is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer.

Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. All right, let's talk AI gadgets. joining me now my rank friends. I think of you as my rank friends. The Verge is Allison Johnson.

Hi, Allison. Hello. And the Verges V song. Hi, V. Hi. We're here to get yelled out 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 rely. I'm glad that Allison is leading the charge because I got some heat for starting that 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, 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 on to 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, I 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 gets 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? I it's in the bottom for sure like the if we're talking like a humane AI pin pin oh yeah super super throw that down there uh that's a bottom ass uh AI gadget but if you're talking about something more like the plot 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

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, you know, clothing item. It's easy to lose. You're 100% going to stick it in the wash by accident. Broaches are making a comeback at fashion. week and on the red carpet.

But I think the average person, a broge is not an everyday, you're going to wear this a lot of the time thing. Doesn't really go with my like ath leisure, you know, leggings every day 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 I think AI necklaces are just a bad idea and everybody should stop doing it now. Like I just don't, I don't get it.

Like you look at the friends of the world and the omies 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 meat? 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 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. Sure. 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 air tag that glows and is stuck on a shoelace. But we've done this a million times, right? Remember when all the watchmakers 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. Yes. 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 where 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 a 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 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 at 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 packs 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. There's room for one rectangle. Yeah. Yeah. And those pretty much spoken for. Yeah, it's spoken for. We can't have any more rectangles than 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 X, Y, Z 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 like ruling out rectangle forever. Yeah. 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. I think it is. All right.

Also, you can't stick it in a pocket. Women's pockets, very small. This is, 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. Support for this show comes from Keeper Security. Your data is everything. And it's on you

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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 like everywhere across this country, people are like wearing their aura 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 the, it's just so limited. 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? And like the most compelling one was when you had where you like lift it up and talk to it. But then is that 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, I went to the enhanced games and I had this Vouchi 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 A.I. 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 uh as 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. 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 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. 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 getting screens into rings.

There's just there's no ceiling on it. 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 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 so small. But now it's rectangle. Now it's rectangle.

Yeah, exactly. That'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. Because then you don't have to. 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 piece with you. Sure. Okay. That's fine. That's different. I also had to bring 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 and one

interestingness there, like the Evan and Reality's. 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? Eh, not really. But when it did work, it's an idea. It's an idea. I had it at four is where I had it. Okay. What did you have at five, B? I had glasses at five. Whoa. Wow. Yeah. Do you make the case? 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

rangerover from the suburban mom with Road rage. You've brought up that exact example so many times on this show. Because 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 rangerover 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, eh. 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, where you're risking getting punched in the face by someone who thinks you're a sci-op, 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. negative 10 in the side, 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, 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 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 the- We're anti-getting in the face to be clear. 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 feels like I don't, 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, you have in 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. But I don't know. Do I have this wrong? 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, like, all of the battery life issues are going to get worse. And all, 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. Mm-hmm. 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, this is just the thing that we're doing because it is, 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. 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 there are. 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. 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 bed? These are actual thoughts that I've had as I wear these and as I put them out into, like 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 they 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 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 movies, 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 look at. Okay. 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 far, just to recap, we have pendant at eight, pin at seven, rectangle at six, glasses at five, ring at four. I think five and four, 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. 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. Tell me why. It feels like there is a lot of potential. And as a means of like talking to the AI that's on your phone or whatever, getting the input and, you know, language translation,

it's it's very socially acceptable to be wearing ear pods all the time but i think the the societal uh you know permission to be like talking with air but like air pods 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 um 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 rank them higher. I feel like that fight is lost. I don't think by and large people agree with you anymore.

Really? I'm really not younger people. I still have that same problem, but I see Gen Z people all the time. 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?

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? 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 the. 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. And it's just like that, 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 the.

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? Where it's like, I do the, 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. 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 cancelling 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. Everybody will be, everybody will be happier. Make it off. Yeah. Insanity. V, did you have headphones here too? I had them higher. I had them at two. Really? Okay. What did you have three? I had watch at three. Oh my gosh. Just because just because, 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. 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, 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, Razor, Cough, Cough, Project Motocchio are trying to stick cameras in over your headphones 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. 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. But I do think headphones is just a bit more natural than a watch for, for AI. Oh, hello, Pedy. You've joined the ranking squad. Petey is with me on watches.

I can tell. Petey is the number one AI gadget killer. That I believe. So this suggests also that both of you had smartphone at number one. Yeah? Yes. Yeah. Was that a complicated decision for either of you to make?

No. No. One and like seven and eight were like super easy. You're both wrong. Whoa. The answer is watch. No. So my top three were watch smartphones, headphones, headphones in that order.

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 wrist up to talk to it is actually very natural. 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 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?

Exactly. And I think there is something to the fact that there's a lot of watch stuff that is still too 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. 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. 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 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.

But I get that 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, like, you can have that cellular connectivity in it. Like, we've solved that. 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. I cannot argue at 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 the ages. ago. 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 words greed on the verge.com about why that's a stupid idea. Like, I don't put cameras on your

frickin watch. Do you want to have the nostril shot at all times with your camera watch? There was a, 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. Okay. So I think 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 it 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?

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. 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 where I'm just like, every time I'm like, how did you not hear me? Like I said Vergecasts, 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 we have made progress. It's an improvement. Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay. Like, this is weird, but I'm okay with the watch being at two.

It feels weird being the wearable lady being like, I'm okay with the watch being at two, but I am okay with it. Okay. Yeah. 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. 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? And yet here we still are. But also for everything else on that list, you need the phone for it to work. So. Exactly. 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. That's just a rectangle. It's true. It is a rectangle.

It's true. It's one of the good rectangles. Call the hotline 866, Verge11. Send us emails, Virgast of the Verge.com. Allison V, good to see you both. Thanks for doing this. Thank you. All right.

That's it for the show. Thank you to Vee 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, verse 1-1. 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 up to is to subscribe to 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. Thank you in advance. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Box Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kajas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larch, and Aaron Lacasio. We'll see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.