What is Plaud? Note Taking Driven by AI
Listeners to podcasts will be more than a little bit used to the various adverts that pop up during them when the podcasts in question are free.
From Nord VPN to Sky, via Huel and Peloton, there are any number of different products that are sold to us in between conversations about football, entertainment or news.
Anyone who subscribes to Stephen Bartlett’s Dairy of a CEO podcast will almost certainly have heard him talking about Plaud, but what exactly is the AI-driven note-taking app? Is it something of a passing fad, or a bit of hardware that might come in useful for people?
Plaud Explained
If you were to have a look on the Plaud website, you will see that the company declares their aim to be to ‘amplify human intelligence’. It is fair to say that that is quite a lofty ambition, yet the company, which is registered in the United States of America in Delaware and has its headquarters in San Francisco, has set itself the aim of creating the ‘world’s most trusted AI work companion’ by 2030.
Part of its method of doing so has included releasing its current, state-of-the-art offerings, which are essentially note-taking devices that are driven by the use of Artificial Intelligence.
On its surface, it is just a voice recorder. Delve a little deeper, however, and you’ll soon realise that it is so much more than that. If you are the sort of person that puts productivity at the top of your agenda, there is a good chance that you already know all about Plaud.
The credit card-sized Dictaphone that is the Plaud Note can fit into most pockets or even simply attach to your mobile phone, meaning that it is with you pretty much whenever you need it. It has a battery that can last for 60 days on standby and the ability to record for up to 30 hours, connecting to your phone via an application.
What it Does
Of course, knowing what the Plaud Note looks like and how long the battery will last is all well and good, but most people will just want to know what it actually does. In its most simple form, it is a device that will record what you dictate to it.
A study by Stanford University back in 2016 showed that speaking to text recognition software is about three times faster than typing, so that alone will be good news to most users. For many, thoughts flow much more easily when they’re speaking rather than typing something out or writing their thoughts down onto a piece of paper.
@ellharve made note taking easier with #studymotivation #studyhacks #paper #challenge#writeapaperwithme #university #columbia #college #exams#finalsweek #finalsathome #examseason #studying#studyabroad #ivyleague #plaud #ai ♬ original sound – Ellie
Yet what the Plaud can do is so much more useful to a lot of people than simply recording your thoughts. Instead, the app can help to organise your thoughts into a much more visually easy-to-understand comparison. What might otherwise take a full day of cross-checking your thoughts on two products, say, will instead take less than an hour thanks to Plaud’s ability to succinctly work out what it is that you’re thinking.
It can also help to separate out who said what, accurately identifying the speaker when there is more than one person taking part in a meeting or a conversation.
Why You Might Want to Buy It
Imagine a scenario in which you and your partner want to make structural changes to your home. You can initiate the Plaud before you begin a walkthrough of the area, letting it record the thought processes that you both share about the best way forward.
After you’ve finished, the Plaud Note can look to offer you a plan based on the organisation of your thoughts, doing the likes of working out what needs to be done first in order to complete the task in the most efficient way possible. Whether it is the right gadget for you will largely depend on your personal use case, of course.
I’m just at the start of my Plaud journey, only been two weeks, so I’m hoping to refine my use cases and optimize them a lot more, and I’m loving all the potential so far! Lots of conference friends of mine have gotten intrigued by what I’ve shown off so far!
— Faris Aziz (@farisaziz12) November 25, 2025
There are different products available from Plaud, with each offering its own unique form factor that will be useful for each person. There is also the need to think about the AI Membership that you will need to pay for on top of the device itself, in order to get the most out of the Plaud product that you buy.
The Note is the credit card-sized version, which will be what most people turn to thanks to its ability to add the likes of photographs to your thought process. Meanwhile, the NotePin is a much smaller device, being able to be literally pinned to clothing in order to have it on you all day long.