Amazon Prime Day is in full swing and there are thousands of high-tech gadgets with deep discounts to tempt us all to spend our cash in advance. But to me, one of the best products on offer may look unassuming but it’s truly life-changing for anyone who regularly needs to take notes – and every student should have one.
The Plaud Note is a credit card sized voice recorder that packs an absolute punch and it just might be one of the best time saving devices I’ve ever used. Like all voice recorders, it records meetings, seminars and events, both in person and on video or on the phone when you can use a smart magnetic clip to attach it to your device to record both sides of a conversation as you speak.
But the real genius of Note comes after you hit “stop.” As someone who regularly does interviews and sits through large meetings and presentations for work, my phone is clogged with recordings that I then spend hours sifting through and end up starting to transcribe the important bits.
Read more: Nestle Big Chocolate Box of over a kilo of chocolate is under £20 for Amazon Prime Day
Even branching out on Otter.ai, a system for running audio files and then automatically transcribing them, only helped speed me up a bit because I still had to listen back to the recording to check bits that didn’t quite make sense. The Note takes a piece of audio and not only transcribes it afterwards, it then summarizes the recording into bullet-point information about everything that was covered.
It compiles relevant information in a way that blew my mind when I first saw it. Even things that were mentioned at different times but touched on the same themes were put together in a way that took my notes to the next level.
Now in fairness, with a lot of time and effort and my trusty notepad and colored pencil, I could have transformed handwritten notes like that. But the third thing that The Note does is beyond all my capabilities.
When I got my hands on it, The Note cost £149. In the Amazon Prime Day sale it’s been reduced to a more budget-friendly £119, but even at the original price I was so happy with it that I think it was worth the money. It is a complete game changer for both inside and outside of work.
Whether you’re a student overwhelmed trying to keep your notes organized after lectures or someone who sits in meetings and finds your mind wandering, it’s a game-changing piece of kit. It saves hours of fussing and collating your notes once the sessions are over.
I have used it for interviews, trainings and lectures and I have been so impressed with the quality of summaries it has generated for me. It’s especially good if you’re listening to information on complex or fairly dry topics, as you have the audio to refer to first of all but it helps to break things down into more understandable chunks.
The small but mighty device comes with 64Gb of storage – enough to hold 480 hours of audio. You can also store up to 10,000 minutes on the Plaud cloud if you want, plus you can share everything you’ve stored with other people you work with in group projects.
There are, of course, plenty of other Dictaphone-style gadgets—and indeed apps—on the market, both as part of Prime Day deals and from elsewhere, many with reviews as solid as The Note’s 4.4 out of 5-star Amazon rating. The 64Gb Nekside voice recorder has been reduced to just £19.99, while Argos are selling a £39.99 click and collect version.
But for me, the AI-powered transcription and summarization element takes The Note to the next level and is worth the extra money. Although the reviews on Amazon were largely glowing about it, it wasn’t until I took the plunge and used it myself that I realized how useful it could be – which is why the photos I’ve used in this review are mine from a recent workout.
One thing to keep in mind is that when you buy The Note, you get 300 minutes per month included for transcription and summarizing. If you need more, you can either buy bundles with minutes to use on top or pay £80 for an annual subscription. While this makes the overall cost a bit higher, for heavy users it’s worth it and given that my Otter.ai subscription was a similar price, I’d consider it a reasonable trade-in if I used it a lot. That said, so far 300 minutes a month has been plenty for what I’ve needed.
