Plaud NotePin review: the AI assistant everyone needs | Tech Reader

You may be wondering why the Plaud NotePin exists. That’s exactly what my initial reaction was. Why buy this when I have an excellent recording app on the Google Pixel 9 Pro and Apple Intelligence Summaries on the iPhone 16? It’s the same reason other AI devices — like the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1 — failed, but the NotePin is different for one key reason: it blends into the background and can transcribe your day.

The capsule features the main body and a small rear cover that magnetically attaches and covers the charging pins. These connect to a proprietary charging dock that charges the Plaud NotePin using a USB-C cable. There are also two holes for a lanyard or to connect the necklace that comes with the accessory kit.

The front of the capsule features a small LED and an invisible capacitive button. The LED is fairly bright, but it can be difficult to see under glare or at a glance while driving. The button is my chief complaint; it took several days for me to get used to it, and even now, I struggle to activate it correctly every time.

Although Plaud plans to sell the NotePin on its own, it currently comes with an accessory kit by default. The kit allows you to wear the Plaud NotePin in different ways, including around your neck, lapel, or wrist. The magnetic cover on the rear of the Plaud NotePin also doubles as an easy way to attach it to your shirt.

However, even when Plaud gets around to selling the NotePin without the accessory kit, I’d still recommend buying it. The kit is a must if you plan to buy the NotePin, as it makes it easy to ensure you always have it on your person.

The Plaud NotePin features a 290mAh battery that is rated as offering up to 40 days of standby or up to 20 hours of continuous recording. These numbers may seem high for such a small capacity, but the Plaud NotePin mostly delivers on these.

Crucially, it achieves the key goal of allowing you to record for a full day. This makes it ideal for people who work long hours and want to record from morning to night. Alternatively, if you work a more traditional nine-to-five job, you can probably expect two days of recording off a single charge. It takes around two hours to charge the NotePin to complete, but even a quick 15-minute  is enough to record for several hours.

The secret to the Plaud NotePin is its simplicity. It doesn’t try to do 100 things; instead, it does a few things exceptionally well. Pressing the button is difficult, so it doesn’t trigger accidentally during your day-to-day movements. The dual microphones pick up audio even in moderately loud environments, but likely won’t work well when there’s a lot of background noise, and it can sound quite muffled when wearing the wrist strap with long sleeves.

The Plaud NotePin has two transfer options to offload recordings to the app on your phone. For smaller files, it can transfer over Bluetooth at around 35Kbps to 45 Kbps, but for larger files, you can connect directly to the Plaud NotePin over Wi-Fi and transfer at around 10 times the speed.

The hardware on the Plaud NotePin is well-suited for its intended purpose, but does it live up to its AI goals? Is this an ideal use case for AI, and can the Plaud NotePin survive when others haven’t? The answer to the latter question is still unknown, but it certainly lives up to its goals and is an ideal use case for AI for specific people.

Once you’ve recorded something, the Plaud app allows you to generate a transcript, a summary, or a mind map of the recording. I recited the introduction to this review, which lasted a few minutes, and the summary and mind map feature didn’t provide much additional value. However, this was due to the lack of length.

I often forget to stop recording on the NotePin, so I end up with long recordings that span multiple topics. One of these recordings lasted 3 hours and 39 minutes and incorporated appointments with plumbers and electricians at my mother’s home, which is currently being renovated, a visit to my barber, and a phone call with a partner for an upcoming event. The summary feature was particularly helpful for this, surfacing key action points, takeaways, and even checkboxes at the end, as well as AI-powered suggestions on things that still needed clarification.

It takes just a few seconds to transcribe short notes, and even the three-and-a-half-hour recording took just two-and-a-half minutes to upload, transcribe, and generate a full summary. Unfortunately, the Plaud NotePin only comes with 300 minutes per month of transcription, although the Pro version gives you 1,200 minutes per month and costs $79 per year. If you plan to record every part of your day, you’ll run through this in just five hours, so you’ll need to be more intentional about what you record and transcribe.

For some people, this won’t be a problem. However, I can see companies running into limit issues almost immediately. That’s a shame because the Plaud NotePin is ideal for some specific professions.

Imagine you’re a salesperson: If you walk into a meeting, it is likely to be frowned upon to record the meeting on your phone. However, a simple gadget on your wrist that’s easily mistaken for a fitness tracker is ideal. The same applies if you’re a doctor and want to use the Plaud NotePin to assist with note-taking and recollection. Or a real estate agent who wants to engage with potential customers when showing a home, but be able to recall the finer details at a later date.

These are just some of the use cases for Plaud’s professional templates. It’s questionable how useful they are as templates, but they highlight some of the use cases where the Plaud NotePin is the ideal AI gadget. Combined with the choice of two large language models (LLMs) — ChatGPT4o and Claude 3.5 beta — plus more in the future, it’s also future-proofed for an ever-changing AI future.

I’ve got one more use case to add to Plaud’s list: in the car. When you have a quick thought while driving — which happens to me a lot — you can’t just pick up your phone and start recording. Sure, you can rely on your memory, or you can press a button on the Plaud NotePin and record away. I’ve increasingly found myself doing that, as the Plaud NotePin is the ideal driving companion.

The Plaud NotePin is available to preorder for $169 as part of an early-bird bundle that also includes the accessory kit, unlimited cloud storage, and access to certain AI features.

The Plaud NotePin comes with 300 minutes of monthly transcription and a host of other features as standard. If you subscribe to the Pro plan for $79 per year, you’ll get 1,200 minutes of transcription per month and access to the full suite of 20-plus professional summary templates.

The Plaud NotePin is available in three colors: Lunar Silver, Cosmic Gray (featured in the photos in this review), and my favorite, Sunset Purple. The accessory kit, which is valued at $45 but can’t be purchased separately, comes in one color, with the wrist strap in white.

It would be easy to dismiss the Plaud NotePin as just another AI gadget, but to do so would be to do it an injustice. Unlike other AI gadgets, the Plaud NotePin has a clear purpose and delivers precisely what it sets out to do.

Where things get murkier is deciding if you should buy the Plaud NotePin. If you don’t take many meetings or have a strong memory, you likely won’t find as much value in it. However, if you often forget conversations that you wish you could recall, or if you work in one of the professions mentioned or have a similar job, it is an excellent companion device.

Personally, I’m planning to use it extensively during my house renovations and as a fixture during trade shows and events. It’s a great way to record everything that matters, especially conversations about potential partnerships and briefings about devices. For me, buying the Plaud NotePin for $169 is a no-brainer.