You cannot buy a working Humane AI Pin. It stopped connecting to Humane's servers on 28 February 2025, there is no official channel selling it, and no successor wearable exists. If you landed here looking for a replacement, the short answer is that the best alternatives today are Bee at $49.99 for the cheapest way in, the Plaud NotePin S at $179 for meetings, and Legend One at $499 USD for always-on capture with no audio file. But the more useful thing the Pin leaves behind is a test you should apply to every device on this page.

Device Price Capture What survives if the company disappears
Humane AI Pin Not for sale N/A Nothing. Humane's own FAQ said it would still allow "offline features like battery level, etc."
Bee $49.99 Always-on, button to start and stop Cloud dependent. Premium tier confirmed as coming, price not published
SwitchBot AI MindClip $119.99 Not published Cloud dependent. 64GB on board
soundcore Work $159.00 Press to record Best case here. Audio and transcripts stored locally by default, AES-256
Plaud NotePin S $179 Press to record Cloud processing, audio kept. Free tier 300 min/mo
Vibe Dot $199, from $249 Tap or hold, auto mode in Beta 64GB local storage, phone handles the cloud upload
Legend One $499 USD, first year of membership included Always-on, no button Transcribes on the device, text stored locally, syncs later. No audio file is ever created

What Actually Happened to the AI Pin

Worth getting the facts straight, because a lot of pages on this query stop in early 2025 and several get the corporate detail wrong.

On 18 February 2025, HP announced it had agreed to acquire, in its own words, "key AI capabilities from Humane, including their AI-powered platform Cosmos, highly skilled technical talent, and intellectual property with more than 300 patents and patent applications". HP did not buy the company. It bought assets, a platform and a team. The widely quoted $116 million figure comes from press reporting and appears nowhere in HP's own release, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.

Ten days later the devices went dark. Humane's own customer FAQ said that once the service was discontinued, "your Ai Pin will no longer function as a cellular device or connect to Humane's servers", and that it "will not include any function that requires cloud connectivity like voice interactions, AI responses, and .Center access".

Asked what a $699 device would still do afterwards, Humane answered that it "will still allow for offline features like battery level, etc."

That sentence is the whole story. A premium wearable, reduced by its own maker's description to a battery gauge.

On refunds, be precise, because "Humane refunded buyers" is the version that circulates and it is not really true. Humane's stated policy was that "refunds are only available for customers who are still within the 90-day return window from their original shipment date". Press reporting at the time put the request deadline at 27 February 2025. In practice that excluded almost everyone who bought at launch in April 2024. Unused prepaid subscription time was refunded pro rata. There was no trade-in.

humane.com no longer resolves. If a search result shows you the old product page, you are looking at a cached copy, not a live store.

Where Humane's Technology Actually Went

This is the part most alternatives pages miss, because they were written in 2025 and never updated.

On 24 March 2026, HP introduced HP IQ, which it describes as "a workplace intelligence layer that can coordinate experiences across HP devices through local, on-device AI capabilities and proximity-based connectivity". It is software for laptops. Early access began in spring 2026 on select HP AI PCs, with IQ-enabled devices shipping in the autumn.

Press coverage reports that HP IQ is built on the bones of CosmOS, the operating system originally written for the AI Pin, and that Imran Chaudhri now leads it at HP. HP's own announcement does not mention Humane or CosmOS, so we are flagging the lineage as reported rather than confirmed.

The practical point for anyone here: the Pin's software survived, as a desktop chatbot for enterprise laptops. The wearable did not, and nothing has been announced to replace it. If you were waiting for HP to revive the form factor, it has been eighteen months and the answer is no.

The Test the AI Pin Should Teach You

The Pin did not fail because the hardware broke. It failed because the company stopped, and everything the device could do lived on servers the company was switching off.

So the question worth asking about any AI wearable, before price or battery or microphone count, is: how much of this still works if the vendor disappears?

There are roughly three answers in this category.

Nothing survives. The device is a thin client. No cloud, no product. This was the Pin, and it is where most cheap always-on wearables sit. It is not disqualifying, but you should understand that you are renting.

Your files survive. The device stores audio or text locally, so if the service ends you still have the recordings even if the clever processing stops. soundcore Work is the clearest example here: by default it encrypts audio and transcriptions with AES-256 and stores them on the device, and for cloud transcription it says audio is processed temporarily and permanently deleted immediately upon delivery. Vibe Dot's 64GB of local storage puts it in similar territory.

Capture keeps working without the phone or the cloud in the loop. Legend transcribes on the device itself and holds the text locally, syncing when you are back in Bluetooth range, which is a different failure profile again.

None of this is a guarantee. Companies get acquired: Bee went to Amazon in July 2025, Limitless went to Meta and its Pendant was discontinued on 5 December 2025. But asking the question changes which device you buy.

The Alternatives Worth Considering

Cheapest way in: Bee, $49.99. Always-on, starts and stops with a button press, and by default stops recording after fifteen minutes of silence. Bee publishes a strong audio position: "We never store audio recordings. All conversations are: Processed in real-time, Immediately deleted after processing, Never saved or stored." One caveat that matters for total cost: Bee's site states that "In the future, Bee will have a Premium monthly subscription", with no price attached. So a paid tier is confirmed and unpriced. Do not treat $49.99 as the whole bill.

Cheapest in-stock clip: SwitchBot AI MindClip, $119.99. 16.8 grams, 64GB, speaker recognition, a two-year warranty and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The honest caveat is that SwitchBot still has not published its capture model, a battery figure or the Pro tier price, which means you cannot calculate what it costs to own. Good for finding out whether you like the category.

Best for local control: soundcore Work, $159. Anker's entry, 48 grams, press to record, worn as a clip, a necklace or a phone accessory. The local-storage-by-default position is the strongest answer on this page to the question the Pin raises.

Best for meetings: Plaud NotePin S, $179. The strongest transcript reputation in the category, 112 languages with speaker labels, up to 20 hours of continuous recording and 40 days of standby. Free tier covers 300 minutes a month, Pro is $99.99 a year, Unlimited $239.99. It keeps audio, which is a feature if you ever need to check a garbled name against the original. We compared it directly with Legend in Legend vs Plaud NotePin S.

Most flexible capture: Vibe Dot, $199, down from $249. Five microphones, 64GB, 30-plus hours of continuous recording, and a choice of tap, press-and-hold or an automatic mode that starts when it hears your voice. That automatic mode is labelled Beta on Vibe's own site, so buy it for the manual modes and treat auto as a bonus.

Also worth knowing: Omi at $179 is the open-source option, genuinely modifiable. The full field, with three-year costs rather than sticker prices, is in Best AI Pendant 2026.

Where Legend Fits

Legend One is the always-on option on this list, and it is the most expensive: $499 USD including the first year of membership, renewing at $499 a year, which is $1,497 over three years. It is built for people with ADHD, worn at chest height, with three microphones and speaker separation across more than 150 languages. If you want the reasoning behind that design, read why Legend exists.

On the question this article is really about, Legend's design answers it differently. It transcribes speech to text live on the device and no audio file is ever created at any point, so there is no archive of recordings sitting on a server that could be switched off, sold or leaked. The text is held locally and syncs to your phone once you are back in Bluetooth range, which means it keeps capturing when your phone is in another room. A Halo light shows when it is active. It comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee and a limited hardware warranty while membership is active (1 year in the USA, 2 years in Australia).

The honest trade, and it is a real one: because no audio file exists, there is no playback. If a transcript garbles a name or a number, you cannot listen back to check it. Plaud, Vibe Dot and soundcore can. If verification matters more to you than minimal retention, buy one of those instead. Our no-audio pendant comparison shows which devices keep audio and which never create it.

Which One to Buy

If you want to test the category cheaply: Bee at $49.99, accepting that its subscription is unpriced.

If your capture is scheduled meetings: Plaud NotePin S at $179, or soundcore Work at $159 if local storage matters more than transcript reputation.

If you want the strongest answer to the Humane problem: soundcore Work, because your files sit on the device by default.

If the conversations you lose are the unplanned ones, and pressing a button is the step that fails for you, an always-on device is the only design that solves it, and Legend is the one built around that premise.

FAQ

Can you still buy a Humane AI Pin? No. There is no official channel, humane.com no longer resolves, and the device stopped connecting to Humane's servers on 28 February 2025.

Does the Humane AI Pin still work? No. Humane's own FAQ said it would no longer function as a cellular device or connect to its servers, and would lose every feature requiring cloud connectivity. What remained, in Humane's words, was "offline features like battery level, etc."

Did HP buy Humane? Not the company. HP announced on 18 February 2025 that it had agreed to acquire "key AI capabilities from Humane", namely the Cosmos platform, technical talent and more than 300 patents and applications. The $116 million figure widely quoted comes from press reporting, not from HP.

Is there a Humane AI Pin successor? No wearable. HP introduced HP IQ in March 2026, which is workplace software for laptops. Press coverage reports it is built on CosmOS, the AI Pin's operating system, though HP's own announcement does not say so.

Did Humane refund everyone? No. Refunds were limited to customers still inside the 90-day window from their original shipment date, which excluded most launch buyers. Prepaid subscription time was refunded pro rata.

What is the best Humane AI Pin alternative? It depends on the job. Bee at $49.99 to try the category, Plaud NotePin S at $179 for meetings, soundcore Work at $159 if you want your files stored locally, and Legend One at $499 USD for always-on capture where no audio file is created.

Humane and HP statements quoted from HP's 18 February 2025 press release and HP's 24 March 2026 HP IQ announcement; Humane's customer FAQ as reproduced by Daring Fireball. The $116 million figure and the CosmOS lineage of HP IQ are press-reported and not confirmed by HP. Competitor prices verified at each maker's own site on 13 September 2026; promotional prices move, so confirm before buying. Photo via Unsplash.

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