Indiegogo staffers are putting crowdfunded products to the test in our new series of honest reviews. In this edition, our very own email marketing and lifecycle strategist Karisa Hunt tried out PLAUD NOTE, the new AI-powered voice recorder that our crowdfunding community is talking about. Does it live up to the hype? Read on as we put it to the test!

With remote work on the rise, remote video calls are a part of a lot of people’s day-to-day lives. We’re fully remote here at Indiegogo, so it’s definitely a part of my work life as well. I spend a good portion of my meeting time jotting down things to remember later, so when I saw PLAUD NOTE’s claim that they could record, transcribe, and summarize meetings for me, I was definitely interested.

Unboxing

The PLAUD NOTE box is very small, which was great news to me. If the box was small in size, I figured that the actual device wouldn’t be too large to comfortably handle.

The packaging is great, with the device and all its components arranged neatly and protected well. And, yes: the PLAUD NOTE is quite small for what it does, which is a huge win in my book.

Setup

Setup is pretty simple – really, all you have to do is touch a button on the device and then add it in your app, and you’re done. It’s as easy as pairing anything Bluetooth is, which is great. The PLAUD NOTE comes with a little case that magnets to your phone, so installation takes about three seconds total.

The app is pretty intuitive, too, and it comes pre-loaded with a few recordings with transcriptions and summaries that tell you how to use it. I think it’s really cool that they used their own product to give instructions on how to use it – it’s a great, immediate way to show that it really works ike it claims.

Use

Now came the real test: would it work as I hoped?

In short: definitely, absolutely yes.

Okay, maybe that was long, but the emphasis is necessary. PLAUD NOTE is able to record meetings happening around you (like a video call taken on a computer), but it can also record a phone call with the flip of a switch and touch of a button. The transcription is very, very fast, and it’s way more accurate than I was expecting. My initial test was just to record a conversation my sister and I were having about video games, and not only did it spell Ori and the Will of the Wisps right, it knew that it was a title and it capitalized and italicized it properly. The summary is available as soon as the transcript is, and it’s accurate and to the point. It even breaks down different parts of the conversation, giving you an overview of how a conversation flows and what the important points of each beat were.

The mind map is also very cool; it shows you at a glance what each of the meeting’s beats were without the detail, so you can see immediately what the main points were, and then swap to the summary view to get more detail.

Conclusion

PLAUD NOTE positions itself as a game-changer, and I think that’s absolutely true. You’ll never worry about missing things in a meeting again, and you’ll have meeting notes at your fingertips soon after the meeting ends. I ended up giving PLAUD NOTEs as holiday gifts to a few family members, and they’ve all reported back to me that it’s made things so much easier for them in their daily work lives. PLAUD NOTE really does make you more productive, and if you’re someone who’s in a lot of meetings with a lot of detail, then I highly recommend picking one up for yourself.

To learn more, check out the campaign for PLAUD NOTE!