AI note-taking leader Plaud launches the refined, professional Note Pro

Plaud, the company behind popular AI-powered note-taking gadgets, has announced its latest flagship: the Plaud Note Pro. It takes the company’s already capable recording hardware and pairs it with new software smarts designed to align human intent with machine summaries in real time. It’s a tiny device with a focused design that reduces clutter and streamlines transcription and note-taking even better than today’s advanced smartphone summarizing tools.

What the Plaud Note Pro can do

An impossibly small AI transcription and summary tool

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Plaud has built a reputation with its compact Plaud Note and the clip-on Plaud NotePin. These AI-powered, distraction-free devices promise to free professionals from frantic typing by automatically recording, transcribing, and summarizing conversations. The Note Pro doubles down on that mission with an all-new feature called “press to highlight.” Instead of hoping the LLM figures out which parts matter most, users can tap the device mid-meeting to signal importance, essentially training it on the fly. The company is billing it as the first real attempt at human-AI alignment in note-taking.

On the hardware side, the Note Pro takes up little space — it’s the size of a credit card, under 3mm thick, and about 30g in weight — but packs in four MEMS microphones with beamforming for clearer pickup up to five meters away. Battery life stretches to 50 hours of continuous recording, which should get most professionals through a week of meetings before needing a recharge. It also supports dual-mode recording and automatically detects whether you’re on a phone call or in a room and adjusts accordingly.

Software is where Plaud really pushes boundaries. Alongside the Pro, the company is rolling out Plaud App 3.0 on iOS and Android in October. The update includes multimodal input (audio, text, images, and highlights), multifaceted summaries that break down discussions from different angles, and an updated Ask Plaud tool. The latter lets users ask questions about their recordings and trace the answers directly back to the source audio.

Design-wise, Plaud is giving the Pro a rippled aluminum finish that looks a little more premium than past models. There’s also Apple Find My support, instant file transfer, and new customizable viewing modes to suit different work environments. Early buyers who pre-order will get a magnetic case and 600 minutes of free transcription.

Plaud makes a convincing pitch. In a market full of AI-powered productivity apps, it wants to own the hardware-software combo. With over a million users already in its ecosystem and enterprise-ready compliance (including SOC2, HIPAA, and GDPR), the Note Pro is aimed squarely at professionals who don’t just want transcripts, but also actionable insights.

Of course, AI note-taking still has hurdles to clear before it goes fully mainstream. Plenty of professionals are wary of recording devices in sensitive meetings, and even the best transcription models can miss nuance or tone. Plaud’s “press to highlight” might help bridge that trust gap. Still, only time will tell if workers want to adopt another dedicated gadget when their phones can already do much of the job.

The Plaud Note Pro is available for pre-order now in the US, UK, and parts of Europe, with shipping set for October.