Plaud Note and NotePin Review: Genuinely Helpful AI

We may earn compensation from reviewed products. Learn about our editorial policies.

80%

80%

The Good

1. Supports 112 languages
2. Can summarise meetings
3. Very convenient

The Bad

1. Subscription for 300+ minutes
2. Note is hard to unsheath
3. You have to manually connect it to other devices

• User Ratings (7 Votes)
  3.7

I don’t know about you, but I’m rather bored of what I now consider generic AI ‘stuff’ for consumers. We can edit our photos in ways that often defy logic. We can click a button and watch as our waffle turns into perfectly-constructed prose. Five-hundred-word PDFs can be converted into digestible bullet points in seconds.

But I bet you rarely find a use case for this stuff. I certainly struggle to.

I’ve always maintained that artificial intelligence is at its best when you don’t realise it’s there. We’ve had this for years in smartphones and within operating systems. Perfectly exposed photos can be taken by complete amateurs with one click of the shutter button. An indication of the travel time to my likely next destination appears automatically on my phone, just when I realise I need it. That stuff is useful, but you never have to think about it. And that’s why it’s so great.

This year has seen some pretty spectacular AI product failures. The Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1 are perhaps the most notable examples of things that no one asked for. For a reason.

However, I’ve been testing two AI-infused gadgets that seem to understand exactly what their intended audience wants. Say hello to the Plaud Note and NotePin.

What is the Plaud Note?

The Plaud Note is basically a card-sized voice recorder. It’s super-thin – just 0.117 inches, to be exact, and benefits from MagSafe compatibility, if you slip it into the included case.

The premise is simple – you carry the Note around with you everywhere and use it to record meetings, thoughts, and basically anything you want to retain for safekeeping. The resulting recordings are then (manually) transferred into the Plaud app, and an integration with GPT-4 does the rest.

The Plaud Note can also record telephone calls. There’s a switch at the top of the device which enables you to flick the Note into that mode, where it uses vibrations to capture the dialogue on the other end of the line. It’s super clever – and it works.

Battery time is impressive, too, for such a thin device. You’ll get around two months of standby time and up to 30 hours of continuous recording.

The Plaud Note costs a not inconsiderable $159/£149 and is available to ship across the world. And it’s joined by an alternative option.

BTW if you’re interested- there are alternative MagSafe accessories that you’ll love.

What is the Plaud NotePin?

If you don’t fancy the Note, the NotePin could be your perfect AI-recording partner in crime. Unlike the Note, the NotePin won’t attach to the back of your phone, but its pill-shaped design means there are far more varied ways to keep it with you.

Thanks to a bunch of well-made accessories, you can either wear the NotePin around your wrist, hang it from your neck, clip it to all manner of surfaces, or use the built-in magnet and detachable metal backing to pin it to your clothing.

The NotePin works in the same way as the Note. Press and hold the front of the NotePin until you feel it vibrate, and it starts recording audio. When you’re done, just press it again, open the Plaud app, and watch as whatever it is you recorded is transcribed and summarised via GPT-4 Ajax.

Battery stamina isn’t quite as impressive as the Note, but the NotePin is no slouch. It’ll last for 40 days on standby and offers 20 hours of continuous recording. There’s no UK price at the time of writing, but it can be pre-ordered and shipped globally for $169, plus shipping.

Who is the Plaud Note and NotePin for?

As impressed as I am with the Plaud gear, this is still a tricky question to answer. Helpfully, Plaud offers examples of who and what the Note and NotePin might be for.

Educators, ‘creative workers’, doctors, and engineers are among the professions for which Plaud believes its devices best suit, and meetings, interviews, and voice memos all get name-checked as potential use cases.

If you’re a passionate note-taker and someone who adores building their own personal knowledge bank of thoughts, ideas, and meeting minutes, it’s hard not to recommend Plaud’s gadgets. Equally, if you just feel overwhelmed with the amount of information and meetings you have to deal with each day, they are a brilliant and far more personal alternative to virtual meeting assistants like Otter.

Equally, if you’ve been curious about AI for a while and have been waiting for something that delivers a simple solution to a common problem, rather than something that promises to completely transform your life in the most sci-fi way imaginable, then Plaud deserves your attention.

Traditional note-takers and meeting minute devourers can probably give the Note and NotePin a miss.

How good are the Plaud Note and NotePin?

The spec sheets for the Plaud hardware are impressive, but that extends to the app, too. It supports 112 languages at the moment and the integration with GPT-4 is, once again, simple, but impressive.

You obviously get a full transcription of your recording, but the summary offers just enough insight and condensed information to make it useful long after the meeting or thought was captured. It even creates a mind map, which will be of use to anyone who prefers such visual summaries, and there are a bunch of templates you can choose from when instigating the summary. These include meetings, lectures, and consulting, and are all based on knowledge graphs.

Three hundred monthly minutes of recorded audio are included for free, along with unlimited cloud storage. If you need more minutes, you’ll have to stump up for the $6.60 per month (billed annually) Pro subscription, which provides 1,200 monthly minutes, more summary templates and an ‘Ask AI’ feature.

So, there’s lots to be impressed by, but the asking price for either the Note or NotePin still raises one big question: are they worth it?

Plaud tells us that you could save, on average, 260 hours per year with their AI tech. Tie that in with the monetary value of your – or someone else’s – time, and the outlay for the hardware is quickly eclipsed by the return.

In reality, the benefits of owning a Note or NotePin are far less measurable. Strip back all of the marketing and suggested time savings and these are very simple audio recording devices that lean on GPT-4 for the clever stuff. They just happen to be thoughtfully designed and convenient. That should result in the Note or NotePin following you everywhere and acting as your ever-present life documentarian, but I think it’s far more likely that the most consistent users will find one application for their Plaud device and stick with it.

That’s fine and, once again, it’s where the Note and NotePin shine. If your Plaud companion just helps you record thoughts throughout the day or is the thing that’s always by your side during meetings, it’s a worthwhile purchase.

Downsides

There are some drawbacks you need to be aware of if you’re considering a Plaud Note or NotePin.

They both need charging. Not regularly, as the battery life demonstrates, but if you add a Note or NotePin to your daily carry, it’s yet another thing to charge. I don’t know about you, but for a new battery-powered gadget to make its way successfully into my life, I need to really want to use it regularly. Otherwise, I forget to charge it.

Similarly, if you feel you need more than 300 minutes each month, you have to pay for that Pro account. Which is another subscription. How many subscriptions do any of us really want in our lives? There’s a limit, right?

The Note is also super tricky to unsheath from its MagSafe Case. You can technically leave it in there and still hit the record button, but it would be nice if there was a faster method for popping it out.

I’m also slightly disappointed that you have to manually synchronise your recordings to the Plaud app. I guess this has to do with OS limitations on iOS and Android, but it’s another step you have to take and it’s easily forgotten. This is why the Plaud Note and NotePin demand a proper routine being developed around their usage. For some folk, that might be too much faff.

Conclusion

I’m fully aware that if you look at the Plaud Note and NotePin at face value, they are just portable audio recorders that connect to an app which has a GPT-4 integration for transcription and AI summaries. You could achieve the same result with your smartphone and an app like Otter.

However, marking them down simply because that would be unfair. Of course that’s what they are; Plaud has simply combined great hardware design with a tried-and-tested AI platform. I’m not sure how else you’d achieve the same result. What they’ve done brilliantly is make the Note and NotePin easy to use. It’s a stripped-back hyperbole-free AI experience that just works.

They’re not for everyone. If you’ve got this far in my review and you’re still scratching your head, I wouldn’t bother. But if your interest has been piqued, or if you’re acutely aware of your inability to retain or record important information, the Note or NotePin could be a lifesaver.

More than anything, Plaud should be congratulated for demonstrating that AI tools don’t need to be complicated or Star Trek-like to be impressive. I’m a big fan of that.

Before you go