We're here at Razer's CES booth, and as usual, they have brought some
interesting stuff, namely Project Metaco.
Uh they are headphones with cameras on them.
Hold on. Just hold on. So far, in terms
of wearables with cameras, you got smart glasses. Smart glasses everywhere,
everyone's doing smart glasses. Razer's like, "No. We're going to do smart
headphones with cameras." So, it's actually really great for me as someone
who wears glasses already. I don't love
having to do a lot of demos where they're like, "Wear these glasses." I'm like, "I can't see anything."
So, Razer stuck a pair of 4K Sony cameras on this thing, which can take
POV video, but can also feed directly in
to their AI, Project Metaco. It's a
whole thing. It's not just It's not just headphones. So, with cameras on your
headphones, you can do things that you could only really do with smart glasses before, like
asking what kind of food you can make with these ingredients.
Hey Metaco, what kind of meal can I make with these ingredients here?
No problem. I can see the ingredients pretty well. There's pasta, cherry
tomatoes, garlic, bacon, spinach, and some olive oil. Are you thinking about
making a pasta dish with these? No, I'm thinking more like a casserole.
That sounds delicious. Do you need any suggestions on how to put it all
together, or are you looking for a specific recipe idea? So, not only is
that a cool use case to use with a camera-equipped wearable, you can do it
with headphones now that keep the audio inside an enclosed space. One of the
problems with these smart glasses is that they have open-air speakers. If you
have the volume up high enough, especially in crowded areas, anyone can
know what you and your AI are saying to one another, and that's private. That's
private to me. They can also do smart wearable stuff, like look at text in
foreign language and translate it. Hey Metaco, I'm in Japan looking at a menu,
and I have no idea what the heck I'm looking at. Help me, please.
>> see the menu more clearly. It looks like it's divided into
sections. There's a tomato-based option at the top, a creamy Of course, I'm here
to help. The menu you're holding has a few sections. The top section shows a
>> That's enough. Understood. If you need anything else,
just let me know. Okay. Right on. Right on. Okay.
Um Wow, now I know what to order.
Razer says Metaco is LLM agnostic, so
you can have it call to Grok or Gemini or your LLM of choice, uh depending on
which one you want to work with. Razer isn't revealing a ton of details about
the final specs of this thing because they are still working on it, but
they're targeting a release sometime this year, and they did say that they're
targeting 30-plus hours of battery life, so you can take it with you. You can
take it out outside of your house. You don't need to stay plugged in at your
gaming PC while it's looking at the game
stuff that's happening and giving you advice and tips. Although that's not the
only AI assistant that can do that, they have another one, and we're going to
take a look at it right now after this message from our sponsor, dbrand.
dbrand has come in clutch once again and sponsored our CES coverage after our
previous sponsor dropped out. Why? I don't know why they would do that, but
dbrand is there. They care about us, and they have skins and cases and screen
protectors, and you should care about that, as well as the fact that they have
these fun new URLs like thanksdbrand.com.
Uh thank you, dbrand. I love you. Now, while Metaco is in a
wearable meant to be taken out with you out in the world, when you come home to
use your computer or your laptop, you've got a different AI assistant waiting for
you. It's Project Ava. Now, Razer announced Project Ava last year, but it
was more of a gaming-specific assistant. This year, they have this desktop app
that can be used across your desktop experiences. It can read your screen and
be able to give you advice and tips on what loadout is good for Battlefield 6
or which attachments you want, but it also will be able to use cameras, either
the camera on your laptop or any camera
connected your computer, even the one integrated into this external hologram
accessory. So, this right here is my my special friend, Kira. But, if
you're not into Kira, you can also have Zane.
Zane is also very reliable, and he goes beast mode.
>> Greetings. Yep. Zane here, your gaming beast mode at the Razer CES booth. Yes.
>> Time to get serious. It is time. Let's crush this M433 build. Let's Let's
do it. Let's crush this M433 build. Uh
call me Big Boy, please.
Big Boy, solid M433 on screen. Slap a
top optic and vertical grip for laser accuracy. Okay.
>> Equip that factory upgrade, then hit firing range. Dominate. What's next? I
feel like that's all I needed to dominate this game. Thanks, Zane.
Now, if you don't like how Zane or Kira works, apparently there are other outfits. There are other appearances you
can choose, uh just so you know. Hey, I'm Kira, your Razer AI companion.
>> I think I did stop her there. That's good. >> Who nicknamed AI companion? Digging that
M433 >> So, right now Project Ava's AI smarts are coming from Grok, but Razer says
that you will be able to connect it to other LLMs as well, like ChatGPT or
Gemini, if you want to later. So, one of the use cases Razer pointed out was
that, "Okay, you're really, really good at games, but you know, you could use a
co-host when you're streaming." Project Ava or Kira or Zane or whoever
you want to name them could help with that. You could ask them something like,
"Hey, what's the chat saying? What's the vibe?"
The chat's hyped about an upcoming stream and game updates. Folks chatting
patches, GPUs, and Tuesday vibes. Super
fun energy. Tuesday vibes and super fun energy is all basically I'm trying to
achieve at any point, so.
But, if you don't want it to be constantly looking at whatever's on your screen, you can set it to screen and
camera or just camera or just screen if you want. Um or you can just turn it
off. You probably don't want me to say that,
but it's all good. Razer also says they're planning on adding a physical
privacy shutter, so if you want to like make sure that the camera isn't seeing
anything, they'll have like a physical thing to cover the camera. [music] Now, there's been a lot of backlash
against Microsoft, for example, for like kind of forcibly injecting a lot of like
Copilot and agentic features into Windows directly.
So, in some ways, as much as I'm not really an anime waifu kind of guy, I
appreciate that there will be ways to add agentic features and add kind of
like looking at your screen and answering questions about the stuff that you're showing, and even interacting
with something via camera, I appreciate that that's like a thing you can add on,
and Razer is providing that in a very gaming-flavored form.
And it'll be your choice to check it out when it supposedly launches sometime
this year. It's not just a project.
It's more than that. It's a companion.
And finally, here we have Project Madison. Razer's coming. They're doing
something different with chairs this year. They got haptic feedback. So, they
got four haptic motors in the back, two in the butt,
and it's going to rumble your tummy right up.
So, it'll translate audio from a video or movies or whatever directly into
haptic, so like it can work with anything that way. But, if you're
gaming, they've worked with developers to fine-tune the experience in over 100
games. So, specific actions that you take in those games will translate to
specific configurations of how your body gets
rumbled. But, it's not just rumbling. They also got these THX speakers
embedded right there on either side of your head. I should sit in it.
Keep that in. During the demo, it was nice having very directional, so you can
hear the enemies on this side or on that side with these THX speakers. I mean,
audio is kind of still rumbling,
but that's a debate for another time. But, if these aren't
enough for you, you can connect these to any other speakers from Razer or from
other manufacturers to have up to a 7.1 surround experience, total immersion,
including butt rumbling. But, you may have also noticed as well, there is RGB
lighting here that syncs with all of Razer's other products as well, so
you're going to be in it. >> [laughter] >> Razer let me try this thing out, and I
got to say, it was pretty nice. It feels like being in
>> [music] >> a theater. Well, the you know, the if you're in the rumbly seats,
especially. But, playing the game was next level cuz
I do feel I did feel like specific actions that I took corresponding to
like, oh, if I use this gun, that's activating in the middle of my
back. And if I use my grenade launcher, that's all butt, all the time.
And some of them are butt and back. I feel like if you used it for a really
long time, you might get some tinglies, but, you
know, you can use it, you can not use it. Razer lets you do that. Now, Project
Madison is just a project. Razer says they hope to bring it to a released
product at some point, but for now, only I get to try it.
You have to wait. Wait. Wow, my butt feels all tingly, in a good way. Thanks
for watching this video, guys. Subscribe to ShortCircuit for more CES coverage.