You have to work hard to find products that don't include artificial intelligence at the moment, as many of them add AI as little more than a gimmick. That isn't the case with the impressive Plaud Note, which is built with AI from the start.
While the Note is a genuinely revolutionary device, it comes with a fairly hefty price tag of $159. Now, thanks to Black Friday deals on Amazon, you can get the base model for $127 — 20% off the original price.
I've been using the Plaud Note for the best part of a year and it has been with me to meetings, conferences, in briefings and at one point during a photoshoot.
The Note can be used to take notes, quickly record ideas, transcribe the contents of an interview or even just be left on a table and record a lecture. It is so small it just sits on the back of an iPhone, connected using MagSafe.
One of the more interesting features of the Note, which became slightly less valuable with the arrival of iOS 18.2, is call recording. At the tap of a button on the back of the device, it can record any call you make on the phone. With iOS 18.2, this is now available as part of the operating system, including transcription.
An AI powerhouse
Recording quality aside, and it is very good at recording and picking up on voices even in a loud room, the biggest advantage is the deep integration with OpenAI models like Whisper for transcription and GPT-4o for analysis.
The easy-to-use companion app can take the recording, transcribe it and summarize it based on a series of templates. This allows you to get an overview of a meeting with set action points, or find the most important moment in a lecture.
It is currently about $30 off on Amazon for Black Friday which means you can get the Note, case, magnetic ring, charging cable and 300 minutes per month of trancription using GPT-4o or Claude 3.5 Sonnet for $127 instead of the usual $159. For even more excellent offers, check out our Black Friday live blog.
