It’s 2024 and you still haven’t adorned yourself with AI? This won’t do. Lucky for you, PLAUD’s NotePin wearable technology is willing to volunteer to help you address this issue. The NotePin AI tool is a new wearable that promises to improve the quality of your life, particularly by boosting your productivity. Like the Limitless AI pendant, this AI wearable primarily offers a transcription service to help you record conversations that you can review later at your convenience.
The PLAUD wearable AI is “an ultra-thin, ultra-light, wearable AI device designed to function as a memory capsule and help users improve productivity and efficiency in their careers,” meaning you can now walk around with an assistant to take notes when needed.
Image: PLAUD NotePin
Presenting NotePin, the Latest Wearable AI Technology
Nathan Hsu, CEO and Co-founder at PLAUD.AI calls the NotePin an “always-ready business partner” who can handle mundane tasks while you focus on what’s important to you. That’s an awfully tall claim for a gadget that’s essentially a voice recorder paired with an AI transcription service, but if it works effectively, it could be a reliable tool that many turn to, particularly those who work in the corporate sphere.
Considering the number of meetings they attend and need to keep track of, the AI wearable could offer a convenient way to return to conversations they’ve had earlier in the day or week.
The pill-shaped design is not particularly innovative or unique, but it does provide a sleek and unobtrusive look that is much needed for a device that is likely to be used most in professional settings. It is available in three simple colors—sunset purple, lunar silver, and cosmic gray.
The NotePin wearable tech can be worn in many ways, adding to its versatility to suit the user’s convenience. It can be used as a necklace, slapped on your wrist, or clipped or pinned anywhere onto your clothes, ready to be used as you see fit. These wearing modes make it easier to use, adjusting itself to suit the user rather than the user having to accept that the device will always stand out jarringly from their outfits.
Getting to the Heart of the Matter—What Is the NotePin’s AI Purpose?
PLAUD’s wearable AI is designed to “elevate your workflow” by tracking your conversations at the touch of a button and providing a transcript of what was said. The AI is smart enough to identify when the speaker changes, attributing precise speaker labels to ensure your transcripts still make sense to you later on. The device comes with some preset, professional templates that you can select through the app, ensuring the records are structured in a way that suits you and your needs best.
Thankfully, the device doesn’t keep recording the whole time you equip it. It starts its job at the touch of a button. This is useful to at least hint to the other individual that they are being recorded, but that’s the bare minimum you would expect to see in a device such as this one. It also has a privacy light that should come on when it starts recording, alerting others to its presence. It does not come with a consent mode like the Limitless AI recorder does, which is a big miss in our books.
With support for 59 languages, you can choose between the GPT-4o or Claude 3.5 Sonnet LLM models, and the AI will not only provide a transcript, but also summarize and analyze your recordings so you can see the most important details at a glance, The recorded information can be viewed through the app or website, and the AI tools will allow you to search for information from your recordings so you don’t have to manually scroll to find the details of a meeting that took place last week.
The NotePin AI’s purpose is clear, but does it have enough battery life to serve its goals? It does. The device can support 20 hours of continuous recording and has a 40-day standby time when not in continuous use. If you use the NotePin wearable tech solely for meetings and discussions, you likely should be able to get a couple of days of use out of it.
The PLAUD NotePin Subscription Plan Is Quite Expensive
PLAUD’s NotePin AI is priced at $169 USD. That’s not too bad of a deal if you plan on using it regularly to save time and energy spent on meetings, discussions, and other conversations. However, to get the full experience of using PLAUD’s wearable AI for extended periods, you’re forced to consider using a subscription. Just like the Humane AI Pin, the NotePin has a subscription plan laid out to enjoy the use of the gadget, but unlike Humane, the plan isn’t unnecessarily expensive, nor is it compulsory.
You can enjoy all of the features and functionalities of the NotePin wearable technology for free and this includes unlimited cloud storage, audio and text importing, and multiplatform integration. The only catch is that you only have access to 300 monthly transcription minutes per month and only over 9 professional templates for your summaries.
The Pro subscription plan costs $6.6 USD per month billed annually at $79 USD per year. This gives you access to 1,200 monthly transcription minutes, over 20 professional summary templates, custom templates, and the Ask AI tool. When new PLAUD AI features are released, the Pro plan users will be the first to benefit from them.
The PLAUD NotePin subscription plan doesn’t appear essential for casual users or those who only have to record 1-2 really brief meetings every other day. In a 30-day month, free users will be able to record approximately 10 minutes of content every day. If you only have occasionally long meetings where you put the gadget to use, the free plan sounds feasible. But for anyone who really intends to put the device to full use, a subscription plan will be necessary.
Image: The different wearable modes of the NotePin AI gadget
Final Thoughts on the PLAUD’s Wearable AI
Productivity-based AI wearables offer a much wider and more useful set of applications than companion AI devices like the Friend pendant that we discussed earlier, but all of them evoke an equal amount of concern when it comes to the potential for misuse.
From smart glasses to these AI devices, many tech makers believe that recording every moment constantly is the technology we all need to improve our lives. While having more concrete records of experiences that our brains fail to hold onto in detail is helpful, there is the fear that we are perhaps trying too hard to capture and record every single detail in high definition despite being less likely to actually go over all of this recorded content.
Still, the NotePin wearable technology is perfect in the sense that it doesn’t overpromise and doesn’t offer to revolutionize our lives in a way that it will ultimately be unable to live up to. The Rabbit R1 and Humane Pin did just that, and both have been found lacking in their application. PLAUD’s NotePin AI could save users a lot of time with its abilities and could be applied in many contexts other than meetings.
Students might find the ability to record and review classes helpful, and those who work with picky clients might find it much easier to reflect on discussions with them. There is the matter of the other individuals being unable to consent to the recording, but considerate users of the device can always ask the other individual before recording them.
PLAUD opened up pre-orders for the device on August 28, 2024, and it will be available on Amazon starting in November. If you’re thinking about getting your hands on the device, now is the time to place your orders.