There was a time about a year and a half ago when it seemed that artificial intelligence had opened up a whole new category in consumer technology. The Humane Pin wearable and Rabbit R1 wearable were small, self-contained devices that promised to be your personal AI assistants and threatened to become smartphone killers.
But as soon as the commotion around him reached its peak, it calmed down again. The devices that appeared during the first wave of enthusiasm over-promised and under-delivered, and today we trust our phones more than ever.
The tech industry has yet to completely reject the idea of autonomous AI devices that combine the power of sensors and large language models. Former Apple design visionary Jony Ive and OpenAI are working on their own AI-focused “screenless phone” concept. Small tech companies are now building interesting devices themselves and experiencing surprising success.
I recently discovered Plaud AI, who have sold over a million AI note-taking devices and just introduced their latest product, the Note Pro. This credit card-sized technology sits next to you on the table and fits into a slim case on the back of your phone, making it easy to carry. The five microphones can record sound from a distance of up to 5 meters and after two hours of charging you get 50 hours of continuous recording.
This third device from Plaud is an update of the original desktop printer (a portable note-taker is also sold) and has more powerful recording capabilities plus a host of new features. First, there’s the small AMOLED screen at the top that shows recording status and battery life. A second notable change: you can also press the power button to highlight important parts of a conversation in real time.
The Note Pro has 64GB of built-in storage, but the heart of its intelligence lies in the smartphone app, which analyzes all the footage captured by the device and hopefully turns it into something really useful, understandable and actionable. Plaud Intelligence is based on OpenAI, Anthropic and Google LLMs and is multimodal, meaning it can merge images and text that can be analyzed as a whole.
Like previous Plaud products, Note Pro is designed for use in a professional context and offers access to more than 2,000 templates, including templates aimed at people working in specific fields, such as medical or legal. As a journalist, I have to record many of my conversations and meetings, so I’m curious if Plaud can offer something other than Otter, which I usually rely on.
Note Pro vs. my phone: the real test
This brings me to the big question facing the Note Pro: why should I carry around a separate device to record my meetings when my phone is more than capable? I will try to answer this question when I test the unit next week. Nathan, CEO of Plaud
Xu said he sees “a lot of beauty in human intelligence,” but he wants to help people overcome our shortcomings: our limited memory, tendency to get distracted, and inconsistent energy levels are examples he gives. By applying the power of an LLM to our daily lives, artificial intelligence can help bridge the gap, he said.
Yes, you can use an app on your phone to record a meeting and run it through AI, or rely on the AI tools built into Google Meet or Zoom, but these are often collected separately. Instead, Plaud is with you the whole time, filling in the gaps between those meetings, capturing the details of each conversation (even the personal conversations that are often overlooked) and understanding them in the context of the entire day.
“Conversations are a form of intelligence: where ideas are born, decisions are made, and meanings are shared,” Xu said. “That’s why we exist to help people capture, extract and use information.”
I have other questions about the Note Pro, mainly related to privacy. According to Xu, Plaud’s data protection measures are “best in class”, as should be the case when recording confidential and sensitive medical, legal or business conversations. Some doctors I spoke to are already reluctant to use AI transcription services because of the risk of breaching doctor-patient confidentiality, and many corporate environments may be reluctant to use these devices in the workplace.
A small but still important question is how long it takes before you lose your own charging cable. The Note Pro is thinner than a USB-C port, so it’s obvious why it needs a dedicated charging port, but it can be tricky to keep track of.
I will update this article with my thoughts as I feel more comfortable with the Note Pro. But if you can’t wait, it’s available. Book now for $179 (£169 or about AU$350) and will ship in October.