The trick to understanding Opera’s Neon browser is recognizing that it’s not just a browser with an AI bot added to it, but a browser with three AI bots all living side by side. This is both a strength and a weakness, because while you don’t have to leave to do all the AI things you want, knowing where to go for which AI tasks can be really confusing.
Opera began taking people off the waitlist for its AI browser, Neon, last month. It’s entering an increasingly crowded market of AI-powered browsers including Google’s Gemini-infused Chrome, Perplexity’s Comet, and The Browser Company’s Dia. Unlike many of these competitors, Opera is charging $19.90 a month, setting standards high for a product most people get for free.
Neon has a similar setup to other Opera browsers. It’s got features like a built-in ad blocker and VPN, and a sidebar you can power up with apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. The AI features are placed front and center on the home and new tab screens. Under the search bar is a toggle with four settings: a regular internet search; a chatbot called Chat; an agentic browser-controlling agent called Do; and an AI building agent called Make. (Opera says that Neon is built on AI models from OpenAI and Google, but it does not specify which model is used for which part of Neon.)
Chat is the most straightforward feature, an AI assistant built into the browser that will probably be familiar to users of any AI chatbot by now. It can be accessed at the start of a search query but also lives in the top-right corner of the browser for access at any time. Chat readily handled our quick research queries and could answer specific questions about the page we were browsing, like our request for a summary on the latest research in quantum computing. But it wasn’t perfect. Chat’s answers were so verbose it felt like we had to put in real work to get through them. When we asked Chat to tally and summarize comments from five of the most recent Verge stories, it replied with approximately 400 words to tell us there were none.
It was this exercise that showed us that Chat couldn’t always read the internet, but it gave the impression that it absolutely could. Another time it said there were zero comments on three Verge stories when there were actually four. We found it odd that Chat instead offered a guess about what “early comments on tech news sites” often include.
Opera’s executive vice president for browsers, Krystian Kolondra, said the bot failed because we’d chosen the wrong tool. Chat successfully noted the number of comments listed on top of the Verge articles when Opera tried it, Kolondra said. Summarizing comments, however, requires expanding the comments section on the webpage, which needs a click. Instead, we should have sent our queries to the AI agent Do, Chat’s more active cousin that takes over the browser and completes tasks for you.
We tried out Do on a grab-bag of tasks: book a CrossFit class, reserve a massage for under $50 at a nearby spa, and find PDFs of baby romper sewing patterns. While Do worked, we couldn’t switch back to Chat within the same window if we wanted to ask follow-up questions about the task at hand. There’s also no way to course-correct Do while it’s in action. We watched in horror as the bot scrolled past perfectly nice floral arrangements we’d tasked it with finding for a friend only to add a monstrous funerary wreath to our basket, even as we clicked on the better options. Another time, Do declared that there were no theater tickets for a January show when a cursory check showed many. It’s hard to trust something after such unflinching but misplaced confidence.
As with other AI browsers, doing things with Do was also slower than doing it ourselves, though it hinted at what outsourcing the general mundanity of web surfing could look like. And using Do doesn’t mean you can completely check out just yet. Sometimes it encountered obstacles that only a human can handle. When it did, the Do tab at the top of the screen flashed in an easily missed shade of red letting us know we needed to step in and help the bot on its way.
In addition to Chat and Do, there’s also the AI agent Make, which can, well, make little web tools for you. Make exists in a virtual computer where it downloads the needed software, scripts, or, in our case, pictures for your creation without cluttering up your personal computer. We asked for a simple memory matching game with introductory Spanish vocabulary. It worked, and within a few minutes we were matching the word “libro” to a picture of a book. The game was clunky, but it was convenient to close the tab and know that all the book pictures disappeared along with it.
The final selling point for Opera’s Neon is Cards, effectively prewritten prompts that can be used on any of the AI agents that Opera says act like “power-ups” for your AI interactions. Cards could, in theory, save us from writing out a prompt, but at the moment, it’s hard to see ourselves needing the option to reuse a set of instructions. The app store-like interface is largely filled with content from the Neon team ranging from gimmicky prompts that rewrite sites as if spoken by Yoda to more serious prompts for news aggregators. Opera’s hope is that the platform will fill up with useful user creations as more people use the platform, but there is little there today.
At times, using Neon felt a bit like working with a hapless intern we’d never asked for rather than a sophisticated, timesaving piece of technology. Often, one of its AI systems would ask for feedback, then just launch into a task without waiting for a response. Given its ability to use the browser, it’s all too easy to imagine where this proactivity could go very wrong, such as sending out a load of LinkedIn requests to people you had just wanted to anonymously stalk in a professional capacity. One time, we replied letting it know everything looked great and to go ahead, and Neon said “I’m glad you think so!” and immediately stopped working. Kolondra told us Neon will pause for requested feedback in the future, but that the feature is disabled as it’s not ready yet.
Kolondra acknowledged that Neon is a work in progress right now. “In general, Opera Neon is in an early access release stage, and made available for people who want to participate in the journey of developing this product,” Kolondra told The Verge.
But Neon is also a paid subscription product, asking for $20 per month, for something that is largely available for free elsewhere. Right now, that’s a tough sell — especially with Neon feeling more like an AI browser we need to adapt to than a browser that’s smart enough to adapt to us.
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