There was a moment around 18 months ago when it felt like AI had unlocked an entirely new consumer technology category. The wearable Humane Pin and handheld Rabbit R1 were small, standalone devices that promised to be your AI personal assistants and threatened to be smartphone killers.

But almost as soon as the hype around them peaked, it died down again. The devices that hit the market during that initial wave of excitement overpromised and underdelivered, and today we remain just as reliant on our phones as ever.

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The tech industry hasn’t completely discarded the idea of standalone AI devices, which combine the power of sensors and large language models. Former Apple design visionary Jony Ive and OpenAI are working on their own AI-centric «screenless phone» concept. Meanwhile, smaller tech companies are also building interesting devices of their own — and making surprising successes of them.

I was recently introduced to Plaud AI, which has already sold over a million AI note-taking devices, and just unveiled its latest product, the Note Pro. This credit card-sized slice of tech perches on the table next to you and slides into a slim case on the rear of your phone for easy transportation. Its five microphones can capture audio up to 5 meters away, and 2 hours of charging will give you 50 hours of continuous recording time.

This third device from Plaud is an update to its original tabletop note-taking device (it also sells a wearable note taker) and comes with more powerful recording capabilities, along with a clutch of new features. First is the small AMOLED display along the top edge, which will display the recording status and battery life. The second notable adjustment is that the power button can also be pressed to highlight key parts of a conversation in real time.

The Note Pro has 64GB of built-in storage, but the core of its intelligence is in the companion smartphone app, which parses all the material the device captures, hopefully into something genuinely useful, intelligible and actionable. Plaud Intelligence relies on LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, and is multimodal — meaning you can add in pictures and text, which it can analyze as a whole. 

As with Plaud’s previous products, the Note Pro is designed for use in professional contexts and provides access to over 2,000 templates, including those designed for people working in specific fields — medical or legal, for example. As a journalist, I need to record many of my conversations and meetings, so I’ll be interested to see if Plaud can offer anything above and beyond Otter, which I usually rely on.

Note Pro vs. my phone: The real test

That brings me to the big question hanging over the Note Pro, which is why would I carry a separate device to record my meetings when my phone is more than capable? It’s a question I’ll attempt to answer as I test the device out in the coming week. Plaud CEO Nathan Xu laid out his vision for the Note Pro in a briefing, explaining why he thinks people would want to carry one themselves.

Xu said that he sees «lots of beauty in human intelligence,» but that he wants to help humans overcome our shortcomings — our limited memory span, tendency to get distracted and our inconsistent energy levels, are examples he gives. By applying the power of an LLM to our daily lives, AI can help pick up the slack, he said.

Yes, you could use an app on your phone to record a meeting and run it through AI, or rely on the AI tools built into Google Meet or Zoom, but they’re often captured in isolation. Instead, Plaud is with you all the time, filling in the gaps between those meetings, capturing nuggets from every conversation — including the face-to-face ones, which are often overlooked – and understanding them in the context of your entire day.

«Conversation is a form of intelligence — it’s where the ideas begin, the decisions are made and the meanings are shared,» Xu said. «So we exist to help people to capture, extract and utilize intelligence.»

There are other questions I still have about the Note Pro, largely based around privacy. Xu says Plaud’s privacy protections are «best in class,» which it will need to be if it’s capturing confidential and sensitive medical, legal or corporate discussions. Some doctors I’ve spoken to are already wary of using AI transcription services due to potential breaches of doctor-patient confidentiality, and many corporate environments may be resistant to people using these devices in the workplace.

A lesser, but still significant concern is how long it will take for me to lose the proprietary charging cable. The Note Pro is slimmer than a USB-C connector, so it’s clear why having its own charging connector is necessary, but it may prove tricky to keep tabs on.

I’ll be updating this piece with my impressions as I get to grips with using the Note Pro, but if you just can’t wait for that, it is available for preorder now for $179 (£169 or roughly AU$350) and will ship at some point in October.