The Plaud Note Voice Recorder
Record and transcribe your conversations on the same credit card–size device …
It’s self-evident that the gadgetry of the past 30 years or so has made both work and social life immeasurably easier. Explain to a Gen Z–er that study or work tasks they do in seconds once took a week and required traveling—even, heaven forbid, talking to people—and it’s like describing, well, history.
Yet it’s not difficult to think of technology that could improve life still further. For your columnist, the dream gadget would be a discreet camera that recognizes people at a social occasion, whispers in your ear who they are, along with their partner’s and children’s names, reminds you of things you’ve done together, subjects not to mention, and so on.
This quite extraordinary new product, Plaud Note, would be my second-choice dream gadget, the crucial point being that it isn’t a fantasy. Plaud Note is a superbly designed digital recording device that’s the length and width of a credit card and the thickness of two. It can record conventionally with its built-in microphones, or clamp magnetically to the back of a smartphone to record calls electronically. At the end of your conversation, meeting, or lecture, the Plaud Note transcribes it in seconds, depositing a time-coded, written record on your phone, along with a bullet-point summary from ChatGPT and a (rather less useful) mind map.
It’s hard to overstate the quality of the transcription and the summaries. Used for an interview on an art project in a noisy London coffee shop, Plaud Note correctly spelled five out of six artists mentioned, even though your correspondent couldn’t hear properly. When I used it to record a three-hour discussion with the founder of a charity, the summary was succinct and impeccable.
While it’s conceivable that a forthcoming smartphone will have something like the Plaud Note built in, the phone-call-recording ability is something that the likes of Apple and Samsung have seemingly been keen to avoid. This is because recording calls is a legal gray area—permissible in some states and countries, not so much in others. The rule of thumb is to always announce to someone when you’re recording a conversation.
However you choose to use it, the Plaud Note is a labor-saving gadget par excellence and so far the most useful innovation of the year. The beauty of the little machine and its admirable simplicity is hard, like that of its functionality, to exaggerate.
A few caveats: It’s possibly best to consider Plaud Note as a still-experimental device. It’s very new, and while it worked perfectly for review, it still seemed prudent to run a conventional recorder alongside the Note. If the Note were to fail, the online service Otter.ai will transcribe any voice file, and you can always get a summary by feeding the full transcription to ChatGPT yourself. But that requires two subscriptions, and Plaud requires only one after the three-month free trial is up.
Secondly, privacy. We’re sure Plaud, OpenAI, Microsoft, and other similar companies are diligent about protecting users’ data, but let’s put it this way: if you’re planning a crime or discussing a confidential business plan, perhaps step away from your Plaud Note, just as you would choose a room where there isn’t a smart speaker.
Lastly, Plaud seems to be a young, China-based start-up, and customer service is spotty. We asked Plaud several questions about the company and the product and got a single irrelevant response several weeks later. To be fair, youthful tech start-ups in the West, too, are notoriously chaotic, but it’s best to know that the “customer journey” may not be smooth.
The Logitech Casa Pop-up Desk
Tired of looking down at your computer? Bring it up to eye level …
The ever reliable Logitech has been busy lately with a raft of boring but important new products, including the $200 MX Brio, a great update to its already superb Brio Webcam.
But the latest Logitech product your columnist likes best represents more of an ergonomic advance than a technological one. At first, the Logitech Casa Pop-up Desk looks like a medium-size hardcover book. It then unfolds into a miniature workstation that perches your laptop at a comfortable height so you don’t have to hunch over it.
Neat cubbyholes in the Casa conceal a small wireless keyboard and a trackpad that easily slip out to provide a near-full-on desktop computer experience for Apple and PC users alike. There’s even an empty-lidded space to corral cables.
The Casa is ideal if you generally work with a laptop plugged into a desktop monitor in your house but sometimes prefer to set up your home office elsewhere. The Casa is also compact enough to take on a business trip.
A simple but clever and surprisingly satisfying productivity accessory.
The Withings ScanWatch Nova
All the health-and-fitness features of a smartwatch, with a more classic look
Last month, I looked into whether there is an Apple alternative to the all-too-ubiquitous Apple Watch. My choice was the much rarer Apple Watch Ultra 2, with its quirky styling and impressive two-to-three-day battery life.
Well, this beautifully made, new diver-style smartwatch from France can run for a heroic 30 days on one charge. And while it will send you whichever smartphone notifications you choose, it is primarily a watch and health-and-fitness dashboard.
In just a few years, we’ve become blasé about what was once a deeply futuristic idea—wristwatches that give a 24-7 running commentary on our vital signs. This is no gimmick. Your columnist has his vigilant Apple Watch to thank for alerting him early to an atrial-fibrillation issue, which likely would not have been picked up otherwise.
The upshot of this is that when wearing a conventional watch, I feel almost incomplete—the same kind of slight disadvantage you feel when venturing out without a smartphone.
The Withings ScanWatch Nova looks out for an even wider range of health indicators than most other smartwatches. Tracking body temperature is particularly unusual and useful. The only common indicator missing from the ScanWatch is blood pressure, which can be tracked by only one wrist-worn gadget I know—the Swiss-made Aktiia wristband. However, minute-by-minute B.P. readings are not loved by cardiologists and have not been adopted by smartwatch-makers.
If you hanker after a smartwatch to look over you but prefer a more traditionally sporty look than the Apple Watch, the Withings is pretty remarkable.
Be aware, though—you read it here first—that coming fast down the track is a genre of wearables called “earables”—headphones that detect vital signs through your ear canals. Obviously, they’re not worn 24-7, but they are said to be more accurate and more insightful. Maybe then we can go back to wearing a proper mechanical watch to tell the time.
The Nohrd Bike
A wooden Peloton alternative that will have you spinning in style …
There comes a point when technology becomes too complicated, and there’s a movement back toward simpler gadgets.
It happened to this writer with Peloton. There came a time when the fancy complications were too much, as was the thought of paying a huge monthly subscription. Since disposing of the Peloton, however, your columnist has quite missed being able to work up a healthy heart rate while listening to music or watching TV.
This premium-quality, bare-bones-simple, and interior-friendly wooden stationary bike from Germany may well be a worthy Peloton replacement.
Maker Nohrd sells it in various types of wood, all of them sculpted and beautiful, and none too demanding of floor space. Choices such as walnut and oak are the luxury options, while pine and ash are better entry-level choices.
It’s oddly refreshing that the Nohrd bike isn’t Internet-connected and does little more than calculate your distance covered. Shifting the resistance up and down is done with a satisfying mechanical wheel adjustment.
Nohrd bikes are expensive, so it might be a good idea to try before you buy, in case it’s too simple for you. There are showrooms in several U.S. cities, from California to Rhode Island.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer for the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology