Is this the best, most sophisticated voice recorder you can buy?

Praise

Proud

I'll let you in on a secret. I'm on a mission to make my life easier, and maybe yours too. As a writer, one of the most exhausting and most definitely boring tasks for me is transcribing interviews. Maybe you need to turn what was said in a meeting into usable notes. Students have the same challenge: to create a useful version of a lecture. I'm searching for the best solution to this problem, and Proud Note might be it.

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I've mainly been using my Google Pixel 8 Pro smartphone and its fantastic Recorder app. Until now, nothing has come close to it. I record interviews and watch (with some awe) as the audio is transcribed in real time on the Pixel display. It's error-prone, but it's fast on-device and quick to sort through. Plus, all recordings are accessible online and available in both audio and text formats.

Then I discovered Proud Note. Proud (rhymes with cloud), a company that started on Kickstarter last year and is now available to the public. The Proud Note is a slim metal device about the size of a credit card with almost no thickness. It looks sleek and premium, and is well-built; it has a textured front and a smooth back, making it pleasant to the touch. It comes in three colors: black, silver, and starlight.

Proud Note in silver finish.

Proud

It's wallet-sized, but you're better off using the included magnetic case, which is MagSafe compatible so it sticks easily to the back of a compatible iPhone, and it can also be used with other Qi2-compatible phones.

This system allows you to record phone calls by simply clicking the Proud Note into place and sliding the recording mode to the phone call setting. Recording phone calls is not legal everywhere, so check the situation where you live. Some states require consent from all parties involved. Either way, where consent is required from only one party, it's good courtesy.

Proud Note in a MagSafe case.

Proud

To operate Plaud Note, select a recording mode (phone call or memo recording) and press and hold the button. The light will turn on while recording. For phone call recording, I attached the device to the back of my iPhone through the case and the call was recorded very clearly.

For voice notes, you can hold the Proud Note in your hand or place it on a table. Either way, the microphone is excellent and has picked up audio well whenever I've used it. The company says it has noise cancellation.

Once you're done, Proud Note will upload your recording to your phone within the Proud app – you'll need to have your phone nearby and the app open.

From here, you can upload your recording to be transcribed and summarized. It works very well and returns the finished transcript and summary instantly.

When you purchase Plaud Note, you get a starter plan that gives you 300 minutes of free transcription and summarization using GPT-4o each month, and I was very impressed with the results.

Paid subscription levels include the 12 standard features plus additional features like longer transcription times, labels for each speaker and more advanced templates for summarizing. This includes meeting notes, speeches, consulting meetings and lectures. There's 64GB of storage and the battery lasts up to 60 days on standby, according to Plaud.

The results are great – there's still some tidying up to do of course, but it's easy to share the audio and the transcript so you can edit the text on your laptop, for example.

The downsides? You're missing the awesome real-time transcription feature that the Pixel offers, but you do get the handy ability to see what someone said previously during a meeting, and it's especially nice that it's all done on-device like the Pixel is.

But the Proud Note has two other gripes: it fits snugly into the MagSafe case, and it takes practice to slide it out; most of the time you have to hook your fingernail under the call recording switch on the phone to get it out. The other issue is the custom-made charging cable, but I can understand why: it's too thin to fit through USB-C, and the cable is nicely designed to charge while in the case.

Proud Note attached to the iPhone.

A verdict of praise

The Proud Note is an incredibly sleek, incredibly slim device that's so light you barely notice it's there. It looks great and works great. It would be great if the transcription could be done on the device, but waiting for the transcription and summary is not a pain as it's a quick and effective task. Overall, this is a showstopper.

It costs $239, but is currently discounted by $40 to $199 during Prime Day. You can purchase it from plaud.ai.

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