Can this credit-card sized device take the pain out of meetings?

The Plaud Note Pro is the new flagship model in Plaud AI’s lineup and promises the best note-taking experience. Released just ahead of the IFA tech show in Germany, the new model now has a screen and a ripple-textured aluminium finish, but it was what was on the inside that made the biggest change.

Having previously tested the Plaud Note, I was keen to see what this upgraded offering could really do, and whether the extra functionality made a big difference to my transcripts. Like the Note, the slim device sits in a magnetic card holder that snaps onto the back of your phone – either thanks to the iPhone’s Magsafe or using the provided magnetic ring.

Priced at £169 / $179 / €189 for preorder on the Plaud website, it's not a big jump in price from the original, but it does offer some impressive new features.

On the front of the Note Pro, peaking out of the card wallet, is now a 0.95-inch AMOLED display, which can show you battery life, recording status and file transfer progress. It’s a sleek addition to the device, that is actually quite useful for recording. When you long-press the button to start recording, you initially get a series of slowly moving bars across the screen like a wav file, though this hides after a few seconds, and just leaves you with a pulsing dot that turns into a single line. When you do a short press to highlight a section, it shows a purple marker.

The recording light is subtle but really handy to show that it’s still recording. When you wake the device by moving it, the full line graph comes back up. When not recording, you get a battery percentage and a colourful row of lines, until it drops back into standby mode and the screen goes off.

Bigger on sound

One big benefit of the Note Pro is that you no longer need to switch between the ambient recording for face-to-face chats and phone recordings. The device automatically detects which source the sound is coming from and adapts accordingly. You can even switch mid-recording.

In-room recording is one area the Note Pro now benefits. It has doubled the distance it can comfortably pick up audio to 5 metres (16.4 ft). It features a four-microphone array and uses beam forming to focus on those who are talking while removing unwanted noise, much like active noise reduction headphones.

The big advantage of the Plaud Note Pro is that you’re not using your phone’s battery while you’re recording. In fact, it offers 30 hours of recording on a single charge, or 50 hours in ‘endurance mode’, which has a reduced recording distance of 9.8 ft. That means for regular use, only only have to worry about charging it every week or so.

Even more intelligent

Another big change for the Note Pro is the upgrades to the Plaud Intelligence. This is the system that turns your voice recordings into useful transcriptions, summaries and resources. In addition to the general AI summary, there are over 2000 summary templates to choose from, and a smart template chooser to help you find the right one. Using what it’s calling its multidimensional summaries, you can quickly swap between multiple templates for different approaches.

One interesting addition is the multi-modal input option. This allows you to combine text and images with your audio recordings to create a better picture of the meeting or event. A new notepad section in the app allows you to add thoughts or simply keywords, as well as adding pictures using your phone’s camera. You can also use the Note Pro’s Highlight feature to mark certain areas of the recording as important. All of this can then be pulled together for the AI.

The clever thing about the Plaud AI is that each recording, along with its transcript and summary, then becomes a resource from which you can pull information. You can do this by simply asking the AI questions, using natural language in voice or text. The system will then find the answer in the source material and give you a response. This can save time scouring through the full transcript.

The ultimate note taker?

While the Note Pro doesn’t look that different to the Plaud Note, the added features here do make it an even better solution for those relying on such a device. I tried the Note Pro out on a few meetings over the past week and was really impressed by how much information it managed to pick up, even on a call that had some poor audio quality at times.

The device itself does benefit from the screen and the longer battery life. With the card wallet attachment, it’s easy to slap it on the back of your phone, so you always have it with you. I also like that you can sit it away from your phone when recording too, so you’re not having to leave your phone on the table.

For me, it’s the Plaud AI that really makes this solution, as the range of templates for summaries is extensive but also really detailed. It gives you so much more than your regular AI overviews. The other features are nice additions too, especially for longer recordings.

I was really impressed with the original Plaud Note, but the Note Pro is a step up. So, yes, this could be the ultimate note taker right now.