Everybody’s suddenly building hardware to take notes on your meetings — but the software’s really the trick.
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After creating an impressive (not to mention somewhat TikTok famous) AI-powered voice recorder, Plaud is launching a more ambitious gadget: a wearable designed to be with you all the time, recording your notes and meetings and helping you get stuff done. The device is called the NotePin, and the pill-shaped gadget and accessory lineup seems to take some cues from early Fitbits. You can wear the NotePin around your neck as a pendant, pin it to your chest, strap it to your wrist, or clip it just about anywhere.
AI wearables are everywhere right now and largely fall into one of two categories. There are the companionship devices, like Friend, meant to just provide something to hang with and talk to. Then, there are the productivity devices, like Limitless, designed to be useful more than delightful.
The NotePin is very much in the second camp: Plaud is positioning it as a way to transcribe, summarize, and get action items out of everything that happens in your life. Its battery lasts for up to 20 hours of continuous recording, the company says, but Plaud doesn’t intend for it to always be on — you have to tap on the device to start recording, for one thing, rather than just setting it and forgetting it. This is good UI and also good privacy practice both for users and for the world at large; these devices raise complicated questions about who consents to being recorded, and requiring manual action at least solves part of the problem.
Plaud’s first product, the Note voice recorder, is one of the better AI voice note tools on the market. The Note is made to attach to the back of your phone and record voice notes or phone calls, and then automatically transcribe and summarize them. Plaud’s app is a little messy, but the basic tech works pretty well. The NotePin’s main improvement is its form factor: Plaud is hoping that by getting the device out of your pocket and onto your body, you’ll have more reasons to use it.
The NotePin itself costs $169, and Plaud’s AI features are free for very basic uses and $79 a year for more advanced things like summary templates and speaker labeling. (Presumably, anyone interested in buying this thing is going to want the pro features.) The software will ultimately be what matters: the AI boom seems to mean many more people will start recording much more of their lives, and it’ll be up to Plaud and its competition to figure out what to do with all that information. Perfect memory is an enticing thing, but it’s an awfully hard one to get right.
