r/PlaudNoteUsers

Hi, I am willing to buy this gadget, which I see tremendous value, but there is one point I don’t see people talking that much about: how much are others in the room aware you are using this device? And in big corporate environment, how much can this trigger compliance questions? I know Plaud is GDPR compliant, but i mean people being bothered to be recorded…

Thanks

I run on half-finished ideas. The ones I act on are the ones I managed to say out loud before my brain moved on. Typical ADHD situation.

Tested five devices through one specific scenario: mid-task, hand already reaching, brain already starting to slip away from thought.

The one that won isn't the most feature-rich. It's the one where pressing record requires the least thinking.

Hardware

1. Plaud NotePin S (my pick). TL;DR: a physical tactile button you can find by feel, no screen glance necessary. And you can wear it in 4 different ways, depends on whichever matches what you're doing that day. Perfect for those who are way too focused on their task on hand, not daring to pull out their phone or whatever device to start some recording.
2. Pocket AI. TL;DR: MagSafe card on your phone, not something worn on your body, so you still have to reach for the phone before you can record. For me that short period might kill some inspiration already. But its core transcription is unlimited without subscription if transcribing from audio to text matters.

Software

1. Otter.ai. TL;DR: genuinely good transcription once it's recording, but getting there means unlocking the phone, finding the app, and tapping record, three steps that are exactly the ones a slipping thought doesn't survive.
2. Google Recorder. TL;DR: free and built into Pixel phones, does real offline transcription, but same problem as Otter, you're unlocking the phone first, and it's Pixel-only mind you.
3. AudioPen. TL;DR: built specifically for fast voice notes rather than general dictation, quick once open, but "once open" still means the phone-unlock step first.

My takeaway: transcription was fine on all five once recording started. The thought dies in the gap before that, not in the summary after.

If your brain does the same thing mine does, the question isn't which tool transcribes best. It's which one needs the fewest steps while your hands are already busy. What's your setup for that?

I've been specifically testing AI recording devices for capturing random ideas, not scheduled meetings, not calls, just catching thoughts before they disappear.

Tbh at first they all looked the same: press record, talk, get a transcript.

But after a while I realized the real variable wasn't transcription quality or mic accuracy. It was: is it actually charged when I need it?

Here's what I tested, 3 devices and 1 software:

Hardware

• Plaud NotePin S (my pick). Pros: 40 days standby. That number sounds like a spec sheet flex but it actually changed how I use it. I stopped treating battery as a daily variable to track. Clip it on in the morning, forget it exists, idea shows up at 3pm, press, done.
  •   Cons: 40 days is standby, not active recording. Daily heavy use still needs regular charging like anything else.
• Omi.
  •   Pros: pendant around your neck, starts picking up audio the moment you talk without pressing anything. 8 GB local holds things until you can sync.
  •   Cons: 10 to 14 hours active, shortest stretch on this list. The app also needs to be open the whole time, so you're not fully free of the phone.
• Viaim OpenNote.
  •   Pros: open-ear earbuds that double as a recorder, real-time transcription across a wide range of languages, battery stretches to roughly 53 hours with the case. Cons: earbuds first, if you don't already wear earbuds daily, it's an extra habit rather than a drop-in replacement.

Software

• Apple Voice Memos. Pros: free baseline everyone already has, no separate Bluetooth device needed at all. Cons: the idea-capture path runs through unlocking your phone and opening an app, exactly the extra step a dedicated wearable is trying to remove.

Real talk: this whole category comes down to two variables. Is it on you? Does it have power? Everything else such as transcription accuracy, app design, integrations, only matters once those two are already true.

What's everyone else using for this? Curious if there are better options I haven't tried yet.

I’m currently using Superwhisper on all of my devices (upgraded from Dragon Naturally Speaking, and would never go back!) to dictate novels, but I’ve been very interested in getting a dedicated dictation device for a while and Plaud keeps coming up. I’m aware my use case isn’t what it’s designed for, but I’d love to know if it would work anyway.

Are you able to enter custom instructions? For example, instead of summarizing a recording, could I get it to format my words directs into prose, including automatically inserting quotation marks around dialogue, adding a line break when I say “new paragraph,” etc, without changing much when it comes to the actual content I dictated?

Have any other novelists used Plaud to dictate their books, rather than just for note taking?

I’d love to hear firsthand from other users whether this will work for me, or if someone is aware of a better device, I would appreciate being pointed that direction!

ETA: Adding this update in case anyone else has a similar question. I ended up purchasing a Plaud NotePin S and am able to get the exact workflow I want with a custom template! I can dictate exactly like I do with Superwhisper (and like I used to do with Dragon), and it provides both a word for word transcription and a cleaned up version with proper punctuation, line breaks, and automatically applied quotation marks around dialogue. I’ll probably still use Superwhisper for long sessions at my desk, but this is going to be amazing for inspiration that hits me when I’m on a walk or lying in bed or anywhere else where I don’t want to sit down with a computer. All I have to do is copy and paste it from the Plaud app to my writing program, then proofread and sometimes do a few minor tweaks.

I’m still playing around with it, but so far I highly recommend it for other writers who like to dictate. It’s important to get your prompt right and keep an eye out for hallucinations so it doesn’t change your words, but it’s way, way, way more accurate than Dragon Naturally Speaking.

I switched jobs and now my commute is an hour each direction. How optimal is plaud for that? I d use it to record and summarize calls and my own ideas. Plaud over phone app because of the physical button.

Any best practices? Experiences?

Everything else eg desktop app and teams is a bonus for me

What can I do to remind myself to turn my device off?

I have the Note Pro. but sometimes i wish i had the Pin S, so thinking of having both. If i wear the note pin s on the lanyard inside my shirt, will it still pick up good enough recordings? the wrist band looks too bulky for me and it will look silly outside of my shirt, like an urban cowboy

I'm using Plaud since two weeks and I am really impressed by it. But I cannot find a workflow to feed my Apple Ecosystem without doing it manually

I'd like to
- import calendar events into apple calendar
- import the notes and summaries to apple notes
- import my tasks to my apple reminder to do list.

Does anyone have a solution for this?

Running a small team means the real decisions most of the time happen in the last ten minutes of the meeting, after the agenda is technically over. Sometimes you just cant help zoning out for some time during a long as hell meeting. And thats when things might slip. Tried six AI note takers specifically on trying to help me stay on top of what got decided by end of day.

Otter.ai. Live transcription from the moment a call starts. The gap is it records well but doesn't do the "here is what you actually need to do" step automatically. That part is still on me.

Notion AI. If your team already lives in Notion, notes landing in the same place as your task list is genuinely convenient. Worth being clear though: the actual meeting recording and transcription only ships on the Business plan at $20/user/month. On lower tiers you are pasting transcripts manually.

NotebookLM. Dump several weeks of meeting notes and ask "what did we actually decide about the fundraise" and it pulls the answer from your own source material instead of you scrolling. Doesn't record meetings itself.

Fathom. Joins your Zoom, Meet, or Teams calls and generates a summary plus AI action items automatically. Free tier caps the AI summaries per month, paid tier around $20 per month. This is the one that answered the "who is doing what" question without me having to extract it. People who have been using it for years report transcription accuracy is about as clean as it gets.

Voicenotes. Works across phone, laptop, and watch without needing a meeting bot. Also picks up the conversation right after the official call ends, which is where half the actual decisions happen in my experience. More capture tool than structured record.

Plaud Note Pro. The hardware option I added after spending too much time on back-to-back calls reconstructing what we needed to do next. Auto action item extraction means when I zone out and miss a stretch, I'm not manually re-deriving "okay so what do we actually need to go do" from a raw transcript, that step is already done for me.

Every one of these is fine at capturing what was said. But the one that actually saved me time is Plaud Note Pro, which skips straight to "here's what needs to happen next," because that's the exact step I lose when I zone out mid-meeting.

Now it is easy to record conversations, summarize meetings, and extract action items. But after that, many people still need to move those action items into Todoist, Obsidian, Notion, ClickUp, or a calendar. Some workflows involve email filters, Zapier, or several other steps.

It made me realize that extracting a task and completing a task are two very different problems.

I’ve tried Apple Notes, Apple Calendar, Flomo, and TickTick. My problem was never recording tasks. It was remembering to return to them. I could capture something important, feel relieved that it was “in the system,” and then completely forget about it a few days later.

Even when all my tasks were stored correctly, I still had to open the app, review a long list, and decide what mattered today.

I’m currently building an AI memory assistant, partly because of this problem. I don’t see it as a replacement for tools. I’m more interested in what happens after information has been captured.

My current thinking is that a useful system should do three things:

1. Understand a natural voice note and separate it into individual tasks.
2. Remember the context and bring a task back when it becomes relevant.
3. Show only a few important tasks at a time, rather than another overwhelming list.

Ideally, it would behave more like an assistant. It might show you three things that deserve your attention today. Once you complete one, it brings in the next. The user shouldn’t have to keep reorganizing the system just to remember what to do.

I’m curious how you guys handle this part of the workflow.

After extracting action items from a meeting, where do they go? Do you have a system that reliably brings them back, or do some of them still get lost after being recorded?

I've been trying to use Plaud to help with a mineralogical analysis I'm working on at the microscope. Basically, I count grains and read out the mineral at each count. I've added all terms to my custom dictionary, I'm speaking loudly and clearly several inches from the device, the device is outside of its sleeve, and there is no external noise. Nonetheless, Plaud is consistently losing 5% to 15% of the words I'm reading into the device. I even tried reading back from Plaud's own transcript as a test and again got about 8% fewer words back. Is this lossiness expected or is there maybe some tweaking that would help improve the word recovery? Thanks

I kept swapping lecture note apps every few weeks and starting over, so this semester I actually stuck with one setup long enough to see what held up. Tested six AI note takers for lectures across the full semester, mostly software with one hardware option I kept as backup. Here's what actually stuck.

Software first:

Otter.ai. Real time transcription while class is happening. The free tier monthly cap adds up fast across a full semester of long lectures. In larger halls where voices carry from different parts of the room, accuracy dropped noticeably in my testing.

NotebookLM (Google renamed it Gemini Notebook in July, same thing underneath). Dump a week of lecture recordings and notes in and ask it what actually mattered before exams. Good for that. Doesn't record lectures itself, you still need the source material to give it.

Goodnotes. If you're the type who still wants to write by hand, the AI layer can summarize your handwritten notes and supported recordings. The AI stuff is an add-on to the handwriting experience rather than the main reason to use it.

OneNote with Copilot. If your school already has you on Microsoft 365, Copilot can pull action items out of your notes without switching apps. Whether you actually have a Copilot license through your school is the variable that decides if this works for you.

Notion AI. Convenient if you're already running your whole semester through Notion. Worth knowing: the actual meeting recording and auto-transcription only ships on the Business plan ($20/user/month). On free or personal tiers you're pasting transcripts in manually.

Then hardware:

Plaud NotePin S. 9.84 ft pickup range covers most classroom and small group settings well. Works without an app running, so there is no risk of missing the first few minutes of a lecture while loading a tool. Best positioned within that range of the speaker rather than across a large lecture hall. But past the free transcription quota, you might need to spend extra for the transcription time.

The software tools are fine when you sit close and always remember to open the app before class starts. Mine does not always cooperate on both counts, which is why the hardware stayed in the bag all semester.

Just about five days ago my Note Pro has starte to randomly ring like Find me has been activated. It does not stop even if I hit the button on the Note. I ran it through Claude and AI said there is a known issue with this but gave me no fixes or further info short of contacting Plaud Help. I do not want to change my device especially if this is user error on me.

The shower thought thing kept happening to me. Idea hits, hands are wet or I'm walking the dog, I tell myself I'll remember, and twenty minutes later it's just a vague feeling something mattered. Voice memos piled up unread.

Three months ago I started testing wearables because unlocking my phone mid walk kills the thought. Ended up with Bee, Omi, and Plaud NotePin S.

Bee came up at dinner when a friend mentioned his wife uses one for little reminders. Omi I kept seeing in threads here about keeping an old Pendant useful, so I borrowed a unit from a coworker. Plaud NotePin S I bookmarked from a design podcast clip in a work Slack channel and finally bought once the random idea problem got annoying enough.

Omi felt closest to always on lifelogging. Random ideas show up without me doing anything, but so does coffee shop noise and half a TV show in the background. Same memory pile.

Bee is the cheap button option. Tap start, tap stop, summaries on your phone. Fine for short errands, but it leans on Bluetooth to your phone and the quiet auto stop cut off a parking lot rant once when I forgot to tap again.

Plaud NotePin S is the wearable I kept for deliberate notes. Press the button when the thought hits, Press to Highlight if it grows. Not always on though. Twice I fumbled the clip after a shower and lost the first two or three seconds. Good when you mean to record, rough when you wanted passive capture.

After three months: Omi for always on memory, Bee for cheap on ramp, Plaud NotePin S if you want an AI dictation device that only rolls when you choose, which fits capturing ideas better than a full day ambient log for me.

What do you use for random ideas that are not meeting notes?

I kept using Voice Memos for client meetings since it was free on my iPhone. Fine for a quick clip, messy with three back to back sessions and nothing tied those recordings to notes.

Phone had to stay face up so I could tell it was still rolling. A Slack call once stopped a session mid conversation. Finding the right file later meant scrolling past random memos.

I put off buying separate hardware longer than I should have. What pushed me was an afternoon where I could not tell if a meeting was still recording once my screen locked.

What I wanted was a dedicated AI recording device for meetings that showed status without unlocking anything. I ended up keeping a Plaud Note Pro on the table. The AMOLED screen mattered more than I expected. Recording, paused, or stopped is right there, plus battery before a long block. Better room pickup than my phone mic, and everything lands in one searchable transcript.

Tradeoff is another device in the bag. Travel weeks I still need the charging cable.

Anyone else compare Voice Memos to dedicated hardware for meetings? What made you stick with one?

I cannot bind my subscription and support is not helping. I bought the unlimited subscription, followed the instructions with the activation email, but it did not bind. Now my activation link says expired and I can not get support to send me a new activation email.
I bought the 2 things directly from Plaud 2 weeks ago. I just want to return it and get a refund based on the lack of support.
The support AI chat is useless

My econ lectures moved to a 400 seat hall and I stopped trusting my phone recorder within two weeks. Our professor uses the lectern mic, but from the back rows my phone still turned everything into mush.

I wanted a dedicated Al recording device for mic'd lectures so I wasn't showing up fifteen minutes early, waiting for the previous class to leave, and sprinting for a front row seat every time. A classmate mentioned the Plaud Note Pro Enhance mode when I complained about the hall, and I started comparing hardware instead of another transcription app.

I moved to the upper middle section and put the Plaud Note Pro on my desk in Enhance mode. The lecture comes through the room speakers, and the 16.4 ft pickup range handled that better than my phone ever did. I stay on Enhance for the pickup even though it tops out around 30 hours on battery instead of 50 in Endurance, which shortens the range anyway. Searchable transcript after class, nothing open during the lecture.

Anyone else recording in huge lecture halls where the prof is on a mic? How far back were you sitting?

Any good solutions for the plaude note pro. I keep forgetting charger