Revolutionary Compact AI Voice Memo Device Amazes Users - Plaud Note Review

Key Takeaways

• Plaud Note offers premium audio recording and transcription services in a credit card-sized device.
• The device uses your phone’s smarts to operate, making it incredibly small and convenient to carry.
• Subscribing to Plaud’s service plans is necessary to unlock the full potential of the Note, or it functions just as a basic recorder.

I have plenty of ways to record audio, my iPhone 15 Pro being one that’s particularly good at it. But I’ve long realized I was missing a way to harness the information being recorded. Enter the Plaud Note ; a credit card-sized voice recorder that also transcribes and summarizes audio. It’s been eye-opening.

Hardware That’s Almost Too Good to Be True

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

Right off the bat, I was skeptical about an impossibly thin device that could record audio, had 64GB of storage, and had enough battery for 30 hours of continuous recording. The trick is that all the device’s smarts are coming from your phone and in doing so, allows the Note to be ridiculously small.

The Plaud Note needs to be as small as it is, however, because there wasn’t a chance I would carry anything bigger with me all the time. I actually didn’t even have to actively carry the device either. The Note can slide into a MagSafe wallet and stick right to the back of a modern iPhone.

If you don’t have a compatible phone there’s a magnet in the box that can add compatibility with a case.

Beyond just recording notes or meetings, the Plaud Note can also record phone calls. This is where the MagSafe wallet also comes into play. The Note can record the person on the other end of the call by picking up the vibrations (using a vibration conduction sensor) when it’s attached directly to a phone.

I tried two different Plaud-made MagSafe wallets and the Note fit incredibly snug in both. As in it took me several dedicated minutes of prodding to finally wiggle it free. (FYI, the trick is to pinch the top and wiggle it side to side while lifting.)

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The Magic of An AI Voice Recorder

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As a voice recorder, it does fine. Its two tiny microphones picked up audio decently well. I’m not sure how well it would do in a large conference room, but in every intimate setting I used it, it picked up audio well. Its small frame allows for inconspicuous use.

The reason to be excited about the Plaud Note, or anything similar, is less about the audio it collects and more about how it disseminates the information it gathers.

Once the audio is recorded, it’s transferred to a phone where ChatGPT is used to transcribe it.

As a writer, I’ve struggled with transcribing interviews in the past. Even with the best circumstances, doing your own transcriptions is laborious. AI transcription services like Otter.ai have been lifesavers in recent years.

But Plaud Note goes a step further and creates summaries and mind maps of the transcriptions.

Even though I know the power and capabilities of large language models like ChatGPT, the whole package of hardware voice recorder to accurately capture and provide a detailed text summary of my family’s dinner conversation was still a bit mind-blowing.

I used it for work calls (recording audio from my computer speakers) and the results were equally impressive. For an 18-minute call, ChatGPT took about three minutes to convert the audio to text and summarize it. The beauty is that the AI also added an accurate title, so I didn’t have to do that part either. Once the audio is transcribed, you can scroll to any part of the text and tap on it to start playing the audio from there. And for people who would rather use a website on a desktop computer, you can do that too, with notes synced back and forth.

Although I don’t have uses for this device on a daily basis, it could be critical if I had regular doctor’s visits, morning agenda meetings, or was having trouble with my memory.

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Is the Plaud Note Worth Spending Money On?

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

The crux of the Plaud Note isn’t its hardware that can be nestled in the palm of your hand. It’s not even its app and how it organizes your notes and meetings—which looks to be an embedded version of Notion . The value of the product comes down to its service costs.

There is a monthly and annual price option. For $9.90 a month (or $79 a year) you get 600 minutes of transcription, AI summary, and the ability to export the transcripts and summaries.

I found it a nice touch that there are also ala cart options, from $2.99 for 120 minutes to $89 for 6,000 minutes.

Despite how you pay, you will need to pay to get any value out of the Plaud Note. Without a Pro plan, the Note simply works as an audio recorder. You can share and export recordings and sync those recordings, but it’s not any different than using your phone’s audio recording app.

So like most specialized tools, if you’re constantly in meetings or on calls taking notes, this product can help with that. It can truly make it easier. But if those uses are far and few between, I have a feeling you’ll end up regretting spending around $159 on the Note and even more on transcription fees.

The Plaud Note may be an early entrant into the voice recording hardware, but it won’t be the last. Limitless recently announced its $99 Pendant (shipping later this year) that will perform similar tricks. This space is already mindblowing, but it’s about to get a lot more competitive in a hurry. Who knows, Apple may give Siri similar capabilities at its developer conference in June.

Plaud Note

7/ 10

$159 $185 Save $26

Plaud Note effortlessly captures premium recordings of meetings, iPhone calls, and voice memos wherever you go. With the Plaud AI services in the dedicated app, recordings are smartly transcribed into precise texts, and instantly summarized into meeting notes, mind maps, to-do lists, and more.

Storage

64GB

Connectivity

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

Ports

Induction charging

Battery Life

30 hours

Pros

• Audio recordings sound pretty good
• Thin and minimal hardware
• Capable app

Cons

• On-going fees associated with transcription
• Relies on ChatGPT

$159 at Plaud