Humane has cut the AI Pin’s hardware price to $499. The Verge reported the drop from $699 and tied it to weak sales (The Verge, 23 October 2024). The $24-a-month CosmOS subscription is unchanged.
Two hundred dollars off the pin is real money. It is not a change in the product the April reviews described. Reviewer-measured battery life is still around four hours on the Pin. The projector, the camera and the LTE eSIM are still the features; meeting capture is still not the job. Lapse the subscription and the hardware still stops being a computer.
Year one at the new list price is $499 plus $288 of CosmOS, or about $787 before the Battery Booster lifestyle. That remains the most expensive way in this category to own a microphone that only listens when you touch it. Plaud’s Note, as of this week, is still $159 plus a plan you can at least export WAV out of without paying. Limitless’s Pendant is still the always-on alternative.
Price cuts after a launch this bad are usually read as inventory policy. They are also a data point for anyone scoring value: a device can get cheaper without getting better, and a ranking that used the April number would now be wrong. The AI Pin page will use the $499 figure. The reviews from April are still the description of the software.