Plaud Note Pro Review: The Best AI Hardware for Your Notes

Plaud Note Pro release date and price

Before we begin, here are a few facts about the Plaud Note Pro: The lightweight nature (30 grams) of this credit card-sized device is already on pre-order. It costs $179a a pop in black and silver colors via the Plaud.ai website and will be delivered from October. This makes it $20 more expensive than the non-Pro version, which is known as the Plaud Note.

You can use the device after purchase at no extra cost, but you are limited to certain recording limits, while additional functions will require various subscription plans. We will now find out whether this investment is worthwhile and for whom.

Plaud Note Pro Hardware and Design

What Exactly IS the Plaud Note Pro, Anyway?

For those who don't know anything about the device and haven't read our hands-on of the Plaud Note Pin, I'd like to share a quick primer. Imagine a dictation machine that has the help of Artificial Intelligence powering it. You can record discussions as well as telephone conversations using said device. In addition, you can listen to your recordings, of course, but you can also read them as text, have them summarized or translated, and do much more.

For all these to work, you will need the Plaud app, which is available on both Android and iOS platforms. We will talk about the app in greater detail later. To be able to record phone calls, you use the magnetic case, as shown in the following picture:

Hardware and Design

Yes, the Plaud Note Pro, like its predecessor, is a real eye-catcher. The device shimmers in silver, is made of aluminum, and has a classy, Apple-esque look. It is the size of a credit card and, at 2.9 mm, not much thicker. Perfect for having it with you at all times. The workmanship is absolutely top-notch — we will discuss the reasons to buy the device later, but for now, know this: The design alone is at least an incentive to buy, in my opinion.

While the Plaud Note from the San Francisco start-up still had a tiny toggle switch to begin recording, we find an elegant button here. A long press begins and stops your recording. However, the button can do even more: if you press it briefly during recording, it marks the current moment as a highlight. This is a real game-changer, but more on that later.

A Look at Its Technical Specifications

Another new feature is the 0.95-inch, 600-nit bright AMOLED display that is protected by Gorilla Glass. There, you can see how much battery is remaining, whether the recording is running, and highlights are also visually noted there. There are now four MEMS microphones (Micro Electro Mechanical System) on board, which record precisely in meetings even when you are sitting up to five meters away. As with its predecessor, the memory count remains 64 GB.

Let's talk about the battery: The standby time given is 75 days, and you can record for up to 30 hours at a stretch. If you were to deactivate dual mode and manage with a recording range of three meters instead of five meters, the value can increase to 50 hours of recording time. However, the device is too slim to host a USB port, which is why there is a proprietary magnetic contact behind the card.

Functions and Chat app

What are the functions of a dictation machine? Yes, it records everything I say. Before using the Plaud Note Pro, that was essentially what I thought there was all to say on the subject. This meant we didn't take the AI factor into account.

First of all, the setup process was completed quickly after loading. It also quickly became clear that not much works here without the Plaud app. I deliberately used the free version for this review. It lets me record a total of 300 minutes per month. If that's insufficient, there's a Pro subscription for $99.99 per year, which gives you access to more functions and allows you to record up to 1,200 transcription minutes per month.

There is also an Unlimited subscription, which allows you unlimited recording. However, this capability will cost you $239.99 per year. It should be clear that this plan is really only targeting professional users.

AI Everywhere!

But what do I get here? Yes, of course you can record calls and play them back afterwards. I sometimes experienced slight overmodulation when I used the Note Pro on my phone. However, you can still adjust the voice quality in the app.

I've already told you that you can use the device in meeting rooms as well as on the phone. Thanks to the MagSafe case included in the packaging (or the included stick-on magnetic ring), you can attach the device to your phone. Thanks to dual mode, the Note Pro automatically recognizes whether it is recording a phone call or a discussion in the room.

Thanks to the four microphones, everything is recorded perfectly and sorted out by speaker. You can, of course, name them later in the app to keep your minutes in order. Speaking of transcripts: it's really great how well this device transcribes the speech. You receive detailed transcripts as well as summaries and analyses.

The Highlight Button is the real...Highlight

This is where the "Highlight" button plays a role again: not only can you find the desired points more quickly, but it also ensures your desired focal points play a role in summaries. With AI summaries in particular, it can always happen that a certain aspect slips through your fingers that the AI doesn't consider to be so important. Pressing the button ensures that this desired information is placed in the first row of your summary!

You can also use templates to edit the texts as you need them. There are 15 templates free of charge, and with the subscription models, this grows to over 2,000 templates. If you cannot find the one you want, you can simply create one yourself (comes with a subscription). With these templates, you can ensure that the text is always perfectly customized: Do you want a complete recording of a call? Or would you prefer a question-and-answer structure for an interview? You have everything at your disposal here.

You can also add notes, upload videos, or photos to bring the recording or transcript to life. This provides you with the opportunity to add further context that is sometimes missing or neglected in the conversation itself. Another powerful feature that is only available to subscribers: "Ask AI". With this function, you can use the Plaud app like any other LLM (Large Language Model) and receive answers based on your documents.

Speaking of the AI chatbot: By default, Plaud automatically selects an AI when generating the protocol, but you can also determine a specific one. You can currently choose from the following: GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude 4, o3 (beta), and o3-mini.

Are those functions insufficient for you? If so, Plaud also uses AI to create mind maps and translate your recordings into 112 languages. What's really clear here is this: without the app, the Plaud Note Pro is a very nice, but also a somewhat useless, and very thick credit card.

How does Plaud.ai Handle Security and Data Protection?

A quick word on security: Plaud.ai advertises its high security standards and ticks all the boxes for GDPR, SOC 2 (US standard for information security), and HIPAA (US standard for health data). The data is stored end-to-end encrypted in the AWS cloud, i.e. in the USA at Amazon. Unfortunately, there is currently no option for the data to be stored on European servers. This is especially concerning with the focus on professional customers who may be recording highly sensitive data, and perhaps Plaud.ai should rethink this.

Do I Even Need Specialized Hardware or is an App Enough?

Perhaps this question has been at the back of your mind the whole time: If the app is so great and such powerful summaries can be created with artificial intelligence from other companies, do I really need a $180 piece of hardware? Or wouldn't an app or a workflow consisting of several apps be enough?

The answer is actually already found in the previous sentence. Yes, the Plaud Note Pro is also so powerful because it works beautifully from a single source. I record, the recording ends up in my corresponding app, and over there, I have a transcript, a translation, a summary, or whatever I want.

In my opinion, the recording quality alone justifies the purchase price if you belong to the target group for such a product. You have four optimized MEMS microphones that suppress noise using AI, have a range of five meters, and can distinguish between different speakers. If you only used one app, there would probably be a smartphone on the table in the meeting. The app has to be launched and operated first, and everything is recorded via the same microphone, and if you're unlucky, someone else calls in between.

When it comes to battery life, it also makes a difference whether the device is really only designed for one function or whether the recording puts a strain on a smartphone battery that also has to manage countless other functions. The Note Pro is small enough to always have it with you, just like your smartphone. And the device scored so well in terms of functionality, recording quality, operation, and battery life that the difference to an app-only solution is obvious.

Plaud Note Pro

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