Plaud Note Review – A ChatGPT AI Voice Recorder & Transcriber

The Plaud Note is an AI voice recorder and transcriber that leverages ChatGPT technology to offer advanced features for professionals and students alike. This compact device aims to streamline the process of recording, transcribing, and summarising audio content, making it a potentially valuable tool for those who frequently attend meetings, lectures, or conduct interviews.

While there are many apps that provide similar functionality, and you can obviously record audio with your phone, Plaud is a more convenient tool to have for frequent recordings and transcription. It also has a surprisingly good phone call recording and transcription feature.

Preview	Product	Rating	Price
	PLAUD NOTE AI Voice Recorder with Case - App Control,...	No ratings yet	£149.90	Buy on Amazon

Features / Specification

Multilingual Transcription and Intelligent Summarisation

At the heart of the Plaud Note is OpenAI’s Whisper speech-to-text model, capable of accurately transcribing audio in 57 languages. Paired with GPT-4, the device can effortlessly generate summaries, meeting minutes, and to-do lists from your recordings, saving you valuable time and effort.

Dual-Mode Recording for Unparalleled Versatility

The Plaud Note stands out as the world’s first recording device featuring a dual recording engine. With a simple slide of a button, you can switch between two distinct recording modes:

• Air Conduction Sensor: Ideal for capturing high-quality ambient sound in meetings, lectures, and presentations.
• Vibration Conduction Sensor (VCS): Designed for crystal-clear phone call recordings by directly capturing internal phone audio.

Privacy-Focused Design

Your data security is paramount with the Plaud Note. The device employs local encryption for on-device data, while cloud storage is exclusive to your account. Data processing only occurs with your explicit authorisation, ensuring your information remains under your control.

Seamless File Management and Collaboration

The companion Plaud app and web portal offer 10,000 minutes of cloud storage, allowing you to easily manage, sort, and share your audio files, transcriptions, and summaries. These features make the Plaud Note an excellent tool for enhancing team collaboration.

Compact yet Powerful

Despite its impressive capabilities, the Plaud Note boasts an ultra-slim profile of just 0.117 inches and weighs a mere 30 grams. The device features 64GB of built-in storage, accommodating up to 480 hours of audio, and can record continuously for 30 hours on a single charge.

What’s in the Box

Each Plaud Note package includes the AI voice recorder, a protective case, a magnetic ring, and a magnetic charging cable. New users receive a complimentary 300 minutes per month of GPT-4 transcription and summarisation services.

Unboxing / Design

The Plaud Note’s design prioritises simplicity and portability. Its ultra-slim profile and lightweight construction make it easy to carry in a pocket or bag without adding noticeable bulk. The device’s minimalist aesthetic is complemented by a simple interface, featuring a few buttons for essential functions and a small display for basic information.

The inclusion of a protective case is a handy addition, helping to safeguard the device from scratches and minor impacts. This case is also MagSafe compatible, allowing you to attach it to the back of your phone. This isn’t just for convenience; you place the Plaud on the back of the phone so you can record phone calls.

I was also impressed that Plaud included a stick on a magnetic ring, allowing you to convert Android phones to MagSafe compatible phones.

The magnetic charging cable is another user-friendly feature, allowing for easy connection and disconnection.

Plaud AI Starter Plan vs Pro Plan

The Plaud Note comes with a free starter plan, which includes 300 mins/month for GPT-4o transcription & summarisation.

This is fine for occasional use, but anyone regularly recording meetings will need more minutes and better features.

The Pro subscription costs £79 annually and includes 1200 minutes per month, as well as more summary templates and speaker labels, which will break the transcript up based on who is talking.

You can also buy additional minutes; 600 minutes will set you back £9.49, and 6000 minutes is £85.

Plaud AI Pro vs Otter AI Pro

When I was offered the Plaud to review, I immediately thought, what was the point when there are other established AI transcription apps?

Otter is the most well-known transcription service, so I quickly compared it to that.

With Otter AI, the Pro plan costs $100 per annum, or around £78, which is the same price as the Plaud AI Pro plan.

With Otter Pro, you get:

• 1200 monthly transcription minutes; 90 minutes per conversation
• AI meeting assistant records, transcribes and summarises in real-time
• Otter AI Chat: Chat live with Otter and teammates and get answers to meeting questions
• Add teammates to your workspace
• Joins Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet to automatically write and share notes
• Enhanced team features: shared custom vocabulary; tag speakers, assign action items to teammates
• Advanced search, export, and playback
• Import and transcribe 10* audio or video files per month

Overall, it has more functionality, especially since it can be integrated with Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet. However, you could easily use Plaud to record meetings if you were using a speaker.

Plaud Note AI vs Samsung Galaxy AI vs Apple Intelligence – Why not use your phone to record and transcribe meetings?

Plaud AI has a useful table comparing the features of Paud AI to App and Samsung, sadly they haven’t done a comparison against the Pixel series.

Plaud App

The Plaud app serves as the control centre for managing recordings, transcriptions, and summaries generated by the Plaud Note. It offers a user-friendly interface for accessing and organizing files, making it easy to review and share content. Key features of the app include:

1. File management: Users can browse, sort, and categorise their recordings and transcriptions.
2. Transcription editing: The app allows for the review and editing of AI-generated transcriptions, enabling users to correct any errors or add annotations.
3. Summary generation: Users can create AI-powered summaries of their recordings directly within the app.
4. Sharing options: The app facilitates easy sharing of recordings, transcriptions, and summaries with team members or collaborators.
5. Cloud sync: Recordings and transcriptions are synced to the cloud, ensuring access across devices and providing a backup.

Plaud Website

The Plaud website serves as both an informational resource and a management platform for Plaud Note users. It offers:

1. Account management: Users can manage their subscriptions, update personal information, and track usage.
2. Web-based file access: Similar to the app, the website allows users to access their recordings, transcriptions, and summaries from any web browser.
3. Advanced editing tools: The web interface may offer more comprehensive editing capabilities for transcriptions and summaries compared to the mobile app.
4. Resource centre: Users can find tutorials, FAQs, and support documentation to help them maximise their use of the Plaud Note.

The website’s functionality complements the mobile app, providing a more comfortable interface for extended editing sessions or detailed file management. 

Voice Recorder Sound Quality for Meetings

The Plaud Note’s air conduction sensor mode is designed to capture high-quality audio in meeting environments. In practice, the device performs well in most meeting scenarios, capturing clear audio that facilitates accurate transcription.

Strengths:

• Clear capture of nearby voices
• Good noise reduction for ambient sounds
• Consistent performance across various room sizes

Areas for improvement:

• May struggle with very soft-spoken individuals
• Performance can degrade in extremely noisy environments
• Positioning of the device can significantly affect audio quality

Users should experiment with device placement to achieve optimal results, particularly in larger meeting rooms or when dealing with multiple speakers at varying distances.

Is Recording a Phone Call Secretly Legal?

One feature differentiating this from most other devices is the ability to record phone calls. Android used to have apps that would do this effectively, but Google has clamped down on it.

Thanks to the vibration conduction sensor (VCS), the Plaud can record calls. You attach it to the back of your phone, change the toggle switch to phone calls, and hold the power button to start recording.

However, you need to be careful with this feature as you could break the law depending on where you live.

I am not a lawyer, so I cannot guarantee the below is 100% accurate. Please double-check the laws in your country/state if you plan to secretly record calls.

In many places, recording calls is against the law unless both people consent. Germany is a two-party consent jurisdiction, but a private citizen can be allowed to do so in cases of self-defence. In the USA, many states, including California, Delaware, and Florida, are two-party consent jurisdictions.

In the UK, it is legal for a person to record a call without informing the other party when the recording is for personal use. You cannot share the call recording with third parties without the other party’s consent.

I am not certain about this, but it should be fine to share the transcript of a call. There is no way to confirm if the transcript was from memory or a recording, but it is easy to claim a transcript is false.

Voice Recorder Performance for Phone Calls

This feature performs reasonably well in most scenarios. It captures both sides of a phone conversation quite well, and most of the audio is clear, but it does suffer in clarity and quality compared to the standard mode. That being said, the AI transcription doesn’t appear to be affected by the audio quality.

Strengths:

• Clear capture of both caller and receiver audio
• Minimal interference from background noise
• Consistent performance across different phone models

Areas for improvement:

• May require some practice to position correctly for optimal results
• Performance can vary slightly depending on phone case material and thickness
• Some users might find the attachment process cumbersome for quick calls

AI Transcription Performance & Speaker Labels

For transcription, you need to transfer the recording from the Plaud Note to the app. When you connect your phone to the Plaud Note it will do this automatically. However, if you have long call recording, this is a very slow process. You can speed it up by connecting to the Plaud WiFi hotspot, which claims to speed up transfer times by tenfold.

The Plaud Note’s AI transcription capabilities, powered by OpenAI’s Whisper model, deliver impressive results across a wide range of scenarios. The device handles multiple languages with ease, making it valuable for international businesses or multilingual environments.

Transcription accuracy is generally high, especially for clear, well-enunciated speech. However, like all AI transcription systems, it can struggle with heavy accents, technical jargon, or multiple people speaking simultaneously.

The speaker labels feature, available in the Pro plan, adds significant value by distinguishing between different speakers in a conversation. This feature enhances the readability of transcripts, especially for meetings or interviews with multiple participants.

Strengths:

• High accuracy for clear speech
• Excellent multilingual support
• Effective speaker differentiation with labels

Areas for improvement:

• Accuracy can decrease with background noise or unclear speech
• May struggle with very technical or industry-specific terminology
• Speaker labels occasionally misattribute short phrases or interjections

Users can improve transcription accuracy by speaking clearly, minimising background noise, and positioning the device optimally. For technical content, users may need to review and edit transcriptions for complete accuracy.

AI Summary

The Plaud Note’s AI summary feature can run on GPT-4 or Claude. For Claude, you need to define a custom summary template, whereas the predefined ones all work with GPT-4.

The GPT-4 aims to distil the key points from recordings into concise, readable summaries. This feature can be a significant time-saver, especially for long meetings or lectures.

 The quality of summaries generally depends on the clarity and structure of the original recording. Well-organized meetings with clear agendas tend to produce more coherent and useful summaries.

Strengths:

• Ability to quickly generate overviews of long recordings
• Customisable summary templates for different use cases
• Generally good at identifying main topics and key points

Areas for improvement:

• May occasionally miss nuanced or implied information
• Summaries of very technical discussions may require human review
• Quality can vary based on the structure and clarity of the original conversation

I have personally not had much use for the summaries yet, but if I were recording a lot of long meetings, I would appreciate that this would be a useful feature, allowing you to quickly identify the content of a meeting.

Additionally, the title of the recording gets changed to a user-friendly name, giving a rough indication of what the recording is about.

AI Mind Map

The AI mind map feature is an innovative addition that visually represents the key concepts and relationships discussed in a recording. This can be particularly useful for brainstorming sessions, project planning meetings, or complex lectures.

Strengths:

• Provides a quick visual overview of main topics and their relationships
• Can help identify connections that might not be immediately apparent in linear notes
• Useful for visual learners or for presenting meeting outcomes

Areas for improvement:

• May oversimplify complex topics or miss subtle connections
• The effectiveness can vary depending on the structure and content of the conversation
• Some users might find the auto-generated layout less intuitive than manually created mind maps

The mind map feature complements the text-based summaries well, offering an alternative way to review and understand recorded content. However, users should be prepared to adjust or expand on the AI-generated maps for more nuanced or complex topics.

Price and Alternative Options

Preview	Product	Rating	Price
	PLAUD NOTE AI Voice Recorder with Case - App Control,...	No ratings yet	£149.90	Buy on Amazon

The Plaud Note AI is available directly from Plaud.ai and it is also on Amazon UK for £149. For US buyers, it is available for $159 form both Plaud and Amazon.

Aliexpress has the Focase REC ChatGPT-Powered AI Voice Recorder for just £25, or you can buy it directly from Focase for £56, and it includes 12 months of free AI transcription. It doesn’t look as impressive as the Plaud Note, and it is not clear what the costs will be after 12 months or if it does labels or any of the other advanced features Plaud has.  

Mobvoi has an AI recorder for just £24 but has terrible reviews.

Overall

I personally like the Plaud Note, and I can see myself using it regularly for briefings as it will save time taking notes. I’d prefer not to have to listen to recording meetings as it is too time-consuming.

Its combination of hardware versatility and advanced AI processing capabilities makes it an appealing option for professionals who frequently engage in meetings, interviews, or lecture scenarios.

As much as I like it, I think the main appeal is really just the convenience of having a single device do it all for you.

Those who only occasionally need transcription services might find a combination of a traditional voice recorder and a transcription app more cost-effective. Similarly, users who primarily conduct online meetings might be better served by software solutions like Otter AI that integrate directly with video conferencing platforms.

The best alternative would be to use your phone or a normal digital voice recorder and then use one of the many AI transcription apps available.

The Google Pixel phones all support AI voice transcription, as does the Samsung Galaxy S24 series.

Otter works out at the same price, and there are plenty of well-reviewed voice recorders for around £40. Alternatively, ChatGPT Whisper is much cheaper but isn’t integrated into ChatGPT natively. Third-party websites offer the functionality, but you don’t get things like labels, summaries or mind maps.

Overall, I think Plaud Note is excellent for anyone who spends a significant amount of time in meetings per month and would benefit from the all-in-one convenience this offers.

James Smythe( Editor-in-chief )

I am James, a UK-based tech enthusiast and the Editor and Owner of Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Passionate about all things technology, my expertise spans from computers and networking to mobile, wearables, and smart home devices.

As a fitness fanatic who loves running and cycling, I also have a keen interest in fitness-related technology, and I take every opportunity to cover this niche on my blog. My diverse interests allow me to bring a unique perspective to tech blogging, merging lifestyle, fitness, and the latest tech trends.

In my academic pursuits, I earned a BSc in Information Systems Design from UCLAN, before advancing my learning with a Master’s Degree in Computing. This advanced study also included Cisco CCNA accreditation, further demonstrating my commitment to understanding and staying ahead of the technology curve.

I’m proud to share that Vuelio has consistently ranked Mighty Gadget as one of the top technology blogs in the UK. With my dedication to technology and drive to share my insights, I aim to continue providing my readers with engaging and informative content.

Last update on 2025-01-21 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API