I knew I shouldn't expect it to be like Her — but I kind of expected it to be like Her.

When I first took the Moto Hint out of its package, picked up the walnut-sized headset, and put it into my ear, I tensed waiting for something amazing to happen. Some new life force would enter my universe, a sentient voice in my head providing conversation and information while I went about my life. I’d ask it questions; it would provide directions and feedback and Giants scores; we’d be friends.

And indeed, the $149.99 Hint sprang to life as soon as it entered my ear. It made a decidedly modern, space age sound, like an instrument booting in a spaceship in the year 3056. Then a calm female voice, not Scarlett Johannson but the friendly Google Now lady I’ve gotten to know, spoke.

“Moto Hint is ready to pair. Go to Bluetooth menu on device to complete pairing.”

“Paired,” she said, after I’d spend a few seconds digging through the menus on my Moto X. “Moto Hint connected.”

Now what?

“Hint” is actually a perfect name for Motorola’s little earpiece. It’s not invisible; about half its body sticks out of my ears even after I’ve twisted the little silicon tip (which comes in three sizes) into place next to my ear canal. People notice I’m wearing it, maybe even more than other Bluetooth headsets, but no one’s quite sure what it is. It looks a little like a hearing aid, or at a quick glance could just be a big earring. The Hint exists in an awkward middle ground, actually. We’ve all learned to recognize, roll our eyes at, and forget about people talking into their Bluetooth headsets, but as I wandered around nattering aimlessly with a small rock in my ear, people noticed. And they stared. And they asked what in the world I was doing.

Even if the people around weren’t gawking, I never really forgot the Hint was there, but I never really felt compelled to take it out of my ear, either. It’s incredibly light and surprisingly comfortable, though it occasionally did leave the same stiff soreness I get when I wear Apple’s EarPods for too many hours in a row. (A few seconds of massaging my ears solves either ailment.) It doesn’t appear to be actively doing anything to allow sound through the object blocking my ear, but the Hint still permits a lot of ambient noise — I could wear over-ear headphones with the Hint in my ear, and it neither felt nor sounded strange.

Motorola’s goal for the Hint is for it to be invisible. Maybe not for those around you — the BlueDouche problem is hardly mitigated here, much less solved — but at least for you, the wearer, it’s meant to be just an omnipresent <em>thing</em> ready at any moment for input. From a pure hardware perspective, it’s close. It even comes in multiple colors and natural finishes, so it feels somehow more organic. I really don’t mind wearing it all day.

The Hint is great when you’re not using it; in fact, it’s almost exactly what I want a Bluetooth headset to be. I’ll eventually get over the embarrassment of using it in public, and at least if Her is any indication, soon enough no one will notice anyway. Problem is, using the Hint is an entirely different matter.

I never noticed I was wearing the Hint, but others did

The Moto X is the Hint’s most natural companion. (I also used it with an iPhone 6 and a Samsung Galaxy Note 3.) Motorola’s newest smartphone has a remarkable set of voice-control features, enabled by a low-power secondary processor that’s always listening for your voice. Though the Hint will work with any Bluetooth-enabled device, using it with the Moto X means you get the full breadth of what Moto Voice offers. You can say “Good morning” to get a quick report on your calendar and the weather, “Take a selfie” to, uh, take a selfie, or “Find my phone” to force your phone to beep so you can find it. (That last one came in handy, because when you’re using the Hint it’s a lot easier to leave your phone in the fridge and still feel like you have it with you.)

Otherwise, or with any other device, it’s functionally almost the same as any other Bluetooth headset. You can use Siri or Google Now by tapping on the face of the device, which produces a really ugly, mushed clicking noise despite the fact that you’re not actually moving anything – it’s just a horrible, skeuomorphic sound that supposedly acknowledges your input.

I say “supposedly” because as often as not, nothing happens when the sand-in-the-machine clicking sound goes off. I tap and I wait. I wait for Siri to ding, for Google Now to ask me who I want to call, for Moto Voice to start listening. Then I tap again. And again. More than once I just took my phone out of my pocket, or yelled “OKAY MOTO X” extra loud hoping the Moto X would activate in my pocket. (Unlike the X, the Hint isn’t always listening; it always takes a tap to wake it up.) It has a habit of disconnecting when my phone goes into a pocket or a bag, too, and never holds up beyond more than about 30 feet.

One thing it does do well is automatically turn on and connect when I put it in my ear and shut off when I take it out, which is incredibly convenient and useful. On the other hand, it’s always a mystery what will happen whenever I put it on. Sometimes my music would start back up when I put the earpiece in; other times, silence.

This is all, of course, ignoring the most important flaw with the Motorola Hint: it just doesn’t sound good. It’s not worse than your average Bluetooth headset, but it’s not good at all. It’s actually worse than Apple’s EarPods, and I can’t often say that about any audio product. Its audio is quiet and compressed, always making it sound like there’s something blocking my ear canal. The sound effects, the voice prompts; everything I’m sure sounded great on a set of speakers but sounds muffled and wrong in this tiny earpiece.

The sound is just surprisingly bad

There are two mics on the device, one for listening to you and the other for cancelling out ambient noise. My biggest worry with the Hint was that the mic wouldn’t work well, for sheer distance from my mouth, but that really wasn’t an issue. I sounded better to others than they did to me, and voice commands came through as accurately as they ever do when I talk to my phone on a busy street.

Based on my testing — a mix of phone calls, listening to Spotify, and relatively frequent voice commands — Motorola’s advertised three hours of talk time battery life is about right. I used it all day without fail, as long as I wasn’t touching it every two seconds or constantly streaming music. It’s not for the heavy phone callers, but it’ll stay alive in your ear throughout a normal work day. And there’s that handy canvas carrying case, which keeps the tiny headset from disappearing in my bag and also provides two extra charges. It’s also a convenient dock, attaching to a Micro USB cable and sliding closed to keep the Hint safe. The case is, honestly, the most innovative thing about the Moto Hint.

You can’t talk about the Moto Hint without talking about <em>Her</em>. It’s both the most natural analog for the hardware and the future we might hope for. But Theodore Twombly’s operating system is alive, vital, able to both respond to his questions and offer ideas of its own. It’s amazing because it’s two-way, because it’s doing much more than just waiting for you to tap on the button.

The Hint is just about tapping on the button. For all the time I’ve spent with it, I can’t yet figure out why I’d want to keep it in my ear all day. It’s a very comfortable, mediocre-sounding Bluetooth headset, and comes in handy sometimes when I’m quickly sending a text and don’t want to dig out my phone, but neither voice control in general nor the Hint in particular is powerful enough to make the hands-free connection a permanent one. Even the Hint itself would prompt me to take my phone out sometimes, to read a recent message or check a map.

Motorola has good ideas that it just can’t build yet

I love the idea of having a headset that’s always listening, always connected, always ready. But that’s only useful when that headset is as powerful as Samantha in Her, or at least much closer. If it’s not that versatile, that useful — and it’s not — then it’s mostly just dormant douchebag jewelry, sitting in my ear waiting for the calls that come less and less frequently for most people.

If a simple Bluetooth headset is what you’re looking for, there are a thousand options, many of them better at their specific task — taking and receiving phone calls — than the Moto Hint. The Jawbone Era even offers some of the hands-free control you get from Motorola’s device, and it’s $50 cheaper. (It even has a similar charging case.)

It looks right. It feels right. But for $149.99, the Hint needs to sound and work better to be worth the money, and it needs to do a lot more a lot easier before it’s something I’ll wear in my ear all day. The Hint’s fundamental problem is no different than Google Glass: it’s not useful often enough to be worth keeping it on all the time. Motorola tried to make the future – but all it wound up with was a Bluetooth headset.