I’m something of a productivity addict. Whether it’s a new life hack or the latest device or app, I’m always on the lookout for ways to work faster, write better, and level up my life. AI has been a goldmine in this regard, yet I’m constantly frustrated by the limitations of chat interfaces. While apps and web chat are great at my desk, I long for a Star Trek-style computer that can answer questions and carry out tasks when I speak aloud to it. Voice features and speech-to-text functions are getting us closer, but I want something more.
The Plaud Note is one product I’ve tried in an effort to escape the limitations of text-based chatbots. While it’s far from perfect, this distinctive little gadget has been helping me to boost my daily productivity with AI-enhanced notes and even manage some bigger home improvement projects, all while freeing me from the screens and keyboards that fill my days.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
Plaud Note: More Than Just a Recorder
Plaud AI is a company that offers one of the best AI gadgets we’ve seen so far. Most attempts at dedicated AI hardware have been abysmal. The Humane Pin was a bomb, and the Rabbit R1 flopped hard. Most of these gadgets have raised the same question: Why isn’t this just an app?
Which brings me to the Plaud Note. It’s a credit card-size voice recorder, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket or attach to your phone with an included case. With 30 hours of record time and a battery lasting 60 days on standby, it’s ready when needed. Connected to an app, its AI turns simple, recorded dictation and voice memos into a powerful tool for upping productivity and improving daily life.
I’ve been using it to enhance my daily work and help me manage some of the more daunting, sprawling projects that come with homeownership. Let’s look at how AI voice notes are helping me at work and at home.
Use Case 1: Mastering Dictation With an AI Edge
My first use of the Plaud Note was simple: dictation. According to one Stanford study, dictation is about three times faster than typing. Even if you’ve got a good typing speed, you’ll probably speak faster than you type—that’s certainly the case for me.
I also find that my thoughts flow more easily when spoken aloud and sound more like what I’m actually thinking. There’s a lot of writing that happens in the business world that doesn’t concern itself with things like style and tone, but as a professional writer, my voice is invaluable. Dictation preserves that extremely well, capturing my cadence and word choice.
Dictation has been a writing tool in my toolbox for over a decade; I’ve mostly used the dictation features in Google Docs. But the Plaud Note outstrips Google’s basic capability with some very cool AI features. I find the Plaud app’s AI more precise and better at handling the unique vocabulary of technology writing and reviews.
(Credit: Plaud / Brian Westover)
One example highlights all of this pretty well. I’ve tested and reviewed both the standard Starlink dish (for residential service) and the portable Starlink Mini and had plenty of thoughts on how they compare, but I needed to write up these thoughts again for a stand-alone comparison piece. I could have spent all day working on that article, meticulously comparing my reviews, assembling notes, and fine-tuning the word choice to make sure I wasn’t blatantly copying what I had already written.
The resulting comparison article would typically be a full day’s work. Instead, I used the Plaud Note and accompanying app to run through a fairly comprehensive discussion with myself about the different points of comparison, my thoughts on each, and the relevant specs and information. I dictated the bulk of it in just 28 minutes. Thanks to its accurate dictation and AI-powered summarization and organization features, I drafted the piece significantly faster than usual. And that included reviewing the transcript, the summarized notes, and the organized mind map that the Plaud app created.
Use Case 2: Taming the Home Improvement Beast
But it’s in the second use case that the Plaud Note really showed me its value. Beyond simple dictation, I also wanted to take advantage of the Plaud Note’s ability to record meetings. While Plaud Note can record any meeting, my professional ones are already virtual and easily captured. Instead, I wanted it for conversations with my wife.
Now, I could probably come up with a funny quip about having my wife’s exact words on the record. But that’s not what I needed it for.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
We’re in the middle of several big projects. Heck, life is a series of big projects. Kids, careers, bills, hobbies, church and volunteer work, sports and school activities, a dog… Adult life is just an endless series of spinning plates, and keeping them up in the air means coordinating with my wife all the time.
The Plaud Note helps with that coordination. The meeting recording feature not only records what we say in a given conversation but can also accurately separate out who said what, tag speakers, summarize, and convert everything into lists, checklists, mind maps, and broad project schedules.
(Credit: Plaud / Brian Westover)
Case in point: I bought a home with a largely unfinished basement, and the goal of transforming that space has been postponed time and again. The process involves multiple overlapping projects: painting walls, fixing some preexisting damage, putting in flooring, and more. It’s a lot! While we’ve been chipping away at several home and yard improvement projects since moving in, the basement has remained a complicated mess with little progress.
(Credit: Plaud / Brian Westover)
This summer, however, my wife and I are finally making strides. To organize our thoughts and plans, I used the Plaud Note to record our conversation during a walkthrough of the basement. We discussed our repair and construction needs and how we wanted to approach repainting, flooring installation, and trim work. Also, what we could reasonably do ourselves and what would require contractors. Ultimately, our goal is to turn this unfinished space into a usable and comfortable part of our home.
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The Plaud Note recorded the meeting and gave me an accurate transcript of everything discussed. The transcript was then easily converted into notes with items clearly grouped by project. There were action items we had discussed and the option of brainstorming more with the app’s AI assistant feature.
This beat our usual method of jotting things down on a yellow legal pad as we go. Using Plaud Note was like being followed by a highly accurate stenographer. Nothing was missed, no ideas were lost in the back-and-forth. It was crystal clear what we need to act on first.
The best part is probably the mind map template, which organizes the topics of discussion, our conclusions, and our next steps visually. Having all of that information organized like that certainly reduced our stress levels.
This capability isn’t just for basement renovations, of course. It’s easy to see how it could apply to planning other multistep family projects, like vacations or large events, or just keeping track of important family discussions about schedules and responsibilities. And, of course, the ability to record meetings, distinguish different speakers, and get notes, summaries, and lists of action items would be useful to anyone working in an office environment.
Is the Plaud Note the Right AI Gadget for You?
In many ways, the Plaud Note stands out among AI gadgets. It’s essentially a single-function device, so it’s not caught in the trap of trying to do too much, the way higher-profile gadgets like the Humane Pin or the Rabbit R1 have. That laser focus—voice notes and dictation with ample additional features added on the app side—means that the hardware is extremely polished, with very little to complain about.
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(Credit: Plaud)
The dedicated device offers convenience for focused recording without tying up your phone or draining its battery. The AI summarization, speaker tagging, mind maps, and list generation are genuinely useful and often a step above generic voice memo apps for these specific applications.
The Plaud Note also has a pair of studio-grade HD digital microphones—one for dictation and group recordings, and an internal vibration conduction for recording phone calls when placed on the back of the phone, picking up both sides of the conversation from the phone’s speaker. I haven’t had much need for the phone recording mode, but the dictation seems noticeably better than what I can record with my Google Pixel 6, and it also seemed to do better with multiple speakers.
However, there are hurdles. The big question of “Why isn’t this just an app?” won’t have a very satisfying answer if all you need is basic recording. In that case, most users can get by just fine with the smartphone they already have and a free app or two. The Plaud Note’s real power lies in its AI-enhanced processing after the recording.
The other big downside here is that even with great LLM-powered features in the app, there’s just no way for a stand-alone voice recorder tethered to your phone to be as responsive and interactive as any of the major AI tools, like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. Those tools also allow for speech-to-text input and even live conversations, making it fast and easy to interact with the AI in a number of ways. Unlike interactive AIs, the Plaud Note requires a record-upload-transcribe workflow before its AI features can be leveraged, so it lacks an intuitive back-and-forth. This is something to consider, depending on your need for spontaneity.
Finally, there’s the expense of it. The Plaud Note device is $159 just for the recorder, but the real magic is in the app. You can access some of the features for free—the app offers 300 minutes of transcribed audio per month, along with a limited selection of AI summary templates and cloud storage options.
But for $17.99 per month (or $99 per year), you can get the Pro plan, which gives you 1,200 minutes per month, 30 templates (as well as the ability to make your own custom templates), and a feature called “Ask AI,” which lets you engage in Q&A and chat based on longer transcripts. Finally, there’s also an unlimited plan ($19.99 per month or $239.88 per year) that gives you 24 hours of transcription daily, plus every other feature. Even if you think the Plaud will be useful, not everyone is eager to sign up for yet another monthly expense.
The Future is Talkative (and Productive)
Between work and home, there are some fascinating use cases for the Plaud Note and, more generally, for AI voice notes. You’ll just need to think it through and decide whether it’s worth investing in another device and another subscription or figuring out how to make do with your phone and the different apps and features already available to you.
Beyond my specific examples, the potential for AI-enhanced voice notes is pretty broad:
Students could instantly get AI-generated lecture summaries, keywords, and even study questions just by recording a class.
Writers could dictate ideas on the go and let AI organize them for future use.
For those for whom typing is a challenge, it can make tech more accessible by effortlessly turning spoken words into organized digital text.
From work to play and tasks large and small, voice dictation and note-taking are one area where AI can have a huge impact. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m getting enough use from the Plaud Note to justify a monthly Pro or Unlimited subscription, but it’s definitely getting added to my arsenal of tools. And I’ll continue to hunt for ways to integrate dictation and voice notes into my daily work.
How are you using AI? What do you think AI voice notes could be most useful for? Share your best clever tricks in the comments below.
5 Ways to Get More Out of Your ChatGPT ConversationsAbout Brian Westover
Lead Analyst, Hardware
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