Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Plaud Note Review: Mini Metal Memo Maker (with AI)”.
Sponsored by delete me if I have a gadget weakness Beyond mobile tech, it’s probably audio recorders. I came of age in that very special time in the mid90s, when homealone 2 was playing on HBO like 10 times a day, and I became enamored of Kevin’s talk boy with its famous and plot crucial voice, changing feature. This is Peter mallister, the father. Yes, sir, I was so obsessed with the talk boy that I bought myself.
A little micro cassette recorder from Radio Shack, which I used to record self-conscious, Captain’s Log entries all right. I just spent a whole time taking up this recorder, so it better work yeah. I guess it is all right: it’s Friday and uh.
I stopped watching TGF and boy me. This is stupid, but I really hate this anyway. By the time I went to college, mobile phones had already started to usurp the role of those dedicated recorders, but I made Regular use of the no FRS voice memo features they included and today, of course, those voice.
Recorders are a standard component of most of the convergence devices. Most of us carry, but we’re also in a time when countless companies are riding the Buzzy bubble of AI to resurrect Gadget categories Long Ago, subsumed by the smartphone plae is one such company, and its debut product is, is a totally 2024 upgrade to the micro cassettes. Mini diss talk, boys and Yak backs of yesty year.
Question is: does blending beautiful design with chat GPT make it worth the premium you’ll pay for it premium is a good word to start with, because the notes hardware is a delight right out the box. The first thing that hits you is how slim it is just about the zdepth of three credit cards and at 30 G. It’S also super lightweight, but not cheap feeling, thanks to its cool to the touch aluminum casing. The first reaction you’re likely to get from folks is what is that? Because the hardware doesn’t really give a clue that suggests its purpose.
Only the two controls at the top and the cleverly hidden LED convey that this is a piece of technology and the kind of Gadget that makes me Greatful. I’Ve held on to this sha John shirt for so long past, its expiration date because pockets, not that you need an extra pocket for the note, because pla gives you one right in the Box a faux leather pouch made for magsafe no mag safe, no problem, you Get a stick on ring in the Box too, to use with your Android phone. I need that also in the Box, a charging cord with Magnetic pins on the product side and usba, a or C on the other thanks to an adapter. I love products that give you everything you need and then some right in the Box and that combined with a concise, quick start guide, gets the customer started on the right foot for their $ 159 purchase price at press time.
Finish setup by downloading the companion, app for iOS or Android and in very little time, you’re ready to lay down your first memo. The process of recording is just as simple you press and hold the only button on the device you get a little haptic Buzz amazing. They can even fit a haptic motor in here and that led in the logo lights up to, let you know the microphones at the top Edge are listening Pro tip. Give it a couple seconds more than you think you need, because the microphones don’t actually engage until 2 seconds after the light turns on that’s to let the vibration motor spool down.
So there’s no interference between the two. The note can record for up to 5 hours at a time and despite heavy use over 5 days, I haven’t had to recharge it. Yet when you’re done recording you just press the same button again, the next time you open the app. If the note is nearby, your phone will pull the audio files from it wirelessly or you can do the same manually to a computer via the USB cable.
This is a big part of pla’s pitch for a dedicated device for voice memos. It’S streamlined. It’S quick! It’S basically idiot proof as for the quality of those files. Well, as you might expect these little surface, mount mics aren’t about to win any awards for Fidelity, but in concert with some noise cancelling they’re more than enough to do the job for which they are designed, which is, is capturing whatever words are spoken in meetings briefings Or quick notes to self taken out of noisy Brewery and then uploading those words to chat GPT yeah.
Here’S where the AI comes in chat, gpt’s, whisper speech to text, module, analyzes the recording and then sends back a transcript in any of 57 languages. Not just one. You can read but a transcript. You can then ask it to summarize and man it’s good.
At that Brewery. I recorded Kirk’s incriminating Captain’s Log entry from Star Trek 6 from memory. Don’T judge, and the summary I got back was perfect. I also used it to record a session with my therapist and several business calls and, aside from the occasional flub, I was hugely impressed.
Having a summary like this to preserve the important points for later review is a huge help. Calls are the other clever part of the notes: hardware flip the switch up and the two main microphones deenergized, while a third VCS mic wakes up that stands for vibration, conduction sensor and it does what it says – picks up the vibrations from your phone earpiece. So it can record both sides of a phone call now the bummer about that is obvious. The note needs to be physically connected to your phone, while it’s recording and the whole approach does feel a little hacky, but the upside is that this gets around all the technical and legal hurdles that make phone call, recording, apps, so Barse and inconsistent these days. No permissions, no Bluetooth, headaches, it’s a hardware solution to a software problem. If we stopped there, the pla note would be an easier recommendation than it is. But if there’s one thing companies love more than AI in 2024, it’s subscriptions why? The Note won’t get me to applaud its pricing model or privacy policy. After this, it’s been a little over 6 months, since I first told you about delete me, the simple service that gives control of your personal data back to you in that half a year delete me has reviewed over 4,000 listings from data Brokers across the web.
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Why Can’t This just be an app? It’S the phrase we’re going to hear more and more as companies keep kicking out AI enabled pieces of Hardware that well really could just exist as an icon on your home screen. The plot note is particularly vulnerable to that question. Thanks to the built-in voice recorder, apps on Google, pixel and Samsung Galaxy flagships, I showcased the Samsung version in my s24 ultra video transcription and summarization powered by Google Gemini in this case, but otherwise similar to chat gpt’s, offering with a bonus that the phones can label Different speakers in a conversation which plaud says it won’t be able to offer for a few months, no extra hardware needed for these features and for now already included in the price of your phone. By contrast, plaud will ding you 180 bucks for a Year’s worth of transcription and you’re limited to 10 hours of trans subscription per month credit card. You got it.
Thank you now to be fair. The subscription cost is currently discounted to $ 79 and you get 3 months free when you buy a note, but it’s not clear how long those promotions will last and that 600 minute monthly limit will definitely impact those who want to record. You know more than two meetings a week: that’s a big hit in a competitive climate that includes a lot of apps that accomplish many of the same things as the note and, if you’re already a user of of large language models.
You probably already know that you can drop a transcript from say the pixel recorder right into Google Docs and from there you can paste it into any AI service. You like to produce a summary, a summary that could be a lot more precise than plaes, because some Services, let you program your own, prompts to refine them, which pla does not. Finally, there’s the question. You really have to ask with any product like this. What company am I in trusting with these potentially sensitive recordings? Well, answering that led me down a fascinating rabbit hole into the world of so-called registered agents, which are essentially companies that allow certain types of businesses to operate by giving them a physical address for Legal purposes.
Pla’S end user license agreement states that it’s a us-based company operating from this building in Sheridan Wyoming, but that’s actually the address of its registered agent, which also serves as the agent for literally thousands of other companies and in Wyoming registered agents. Don’T seem to need to do any kind of vetting of the companies they represent now, while there’s Intrigue of Plenty to be found at this particular address I’ll link, the original reporting below I’m not saying pla, has done anything wrong here. The reason it’s worth mentioning is that plaud has gone to some effort in its end user license agreement its privacy policy even on Reddit, to call itself a us-based company practically speaking, that’s just not the case and to be as clear as possible.
I am not saying that’s bad if I believed that I wouldn’t review most of the phones I cover and I wouldn’t be manufacturing a product that I co-developed in China. Now it’s really just a matter of inconsistent messaging and sloppy legal ease. There are so many typos and straight up missing sentences in pla’s documentation that I can’t believe it would bear any real scrutiny from a legal standpoint. Of course, while the terms and conditions of pla’s competitors like Google and enablers like open AI, are much less sloppy. They’Re. Also not much more generous with the Privacy rights they bestow on their users, so assuming you’re down with the devil, you don’t know over the devil you do. Is the pla note worth buying well for a certain type of person? Yes, someone who values the Simplicity of a single button over a set of apps someone who wants an easy way to record a lot of phone calls.
Someone who doesn’t have time or patience to manually make transcripts in chat GPT and would prefer an all-in-one solution for that, even if it comes with a fee. Those people are out there and the note is a good product to serve them. But as more and more phone makers try to cram in more and more AI every generation, I’m afraid this new era of single-purpose gadgets may be just as shortlived as that.
Out of the talk boys that preceded them, the convergence device eventually comes for us all, but I sure am going to have a great time covering this new wave of AI instruments. While it’s here stay tuned for coverage on the rabbit R1 and Humane AI pin on the channel – and let me know if there’s a weird new Gadget – that’s not yet on my radar hit me in the comments or on threads at Captain two phones. This video was produced following several days with two pla note devices plot offered me a review sample after I’d already bought one. Hence the two colorways featured here plot also provided comment and clarification on some questions I put to it during the review process, but the company had no early preview or editorial input at all into this video and it provided no compensation for same please subscribe to the Mrmobile, if you’d like to see more videos like this till next time from Michael fer, thanks for watching and stay mobile, my friends .