If you're in the business of talking to people a lot and really dislike making notes of your recordings afterward, the Notta Memo is an excellent backstop. It'll perform accurate recordings in most environments, is smart enough to know who is who, and the transcriptions are also remarkably error-free. The downsides? It's hard to get (here, anyway), and you'll only have 300 minutes of transcription a month unless you choose to hand Notta a monthly nominal sum for more.
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Artificial intelligence may be everywhere you can bring a smartphone or a web browser, but it has yet to saturate people. Products like the Notta Memo and the Plaud Note hope to change that. Small, flat gadgets that incorporate microphones and other innards, these are built to link what you do every day (like… talking to other humans) to AI services (that don’t involve talking to other humans).
These are just among the opening salvos from various companies, looking to exploit AI before the entire bubble pops. Humane’s effort famously died (it didn’t work the way they said it did), while other companies, including Apple, are looking to stick their capitalist claws into the AI carcass. Notta at least gets its bite in early.
A Plaud-able achievement
If you stuck the Notta Memo and the Plaud Note side-by-side, without the packaging to give the game away, you might struggle to tell them apart. They’re both thin slivers of grey plastic that live inside little sheaths that connect to the back of a smartphone. Natively, in the case of the newer iPhones, but Android users and everyone else without a magnetic circle get one to plunk onto the back of their device.
Also included in the premium-feeling packaging, beyond the device, case, and MagSafe-compatible stick-on ring, is a charging cable. And some instructions, if you really need them. Mostly, though, you’ll want to connect the Memo to your smartphone via the app. From there, it’ll record calls, meetings, and anything else you’d like to tell it. Everything else happens… elsewhere.
There are only two physical keys. One turns the Memo on or off (and does context-sensitive stuff too), the other switches modes between Live and Call. The first is for meetings, the second for phone calls. Both are surprisingly accurate.
Restrictions apply
Recording sessions are simple to implement. The Notta Memo includes 32GB of internal storage, so even if you’re not syncing right away, you can store hours of conversations on the device. In-person calls are handled via four MEMS microphones — something of a standard with portable recording gear these days — while calls are captured via an embedded bone conduction mic that lets it record both sides of your phone call while pasted on the back.
Accuracy is as good as Notta claims — it’ll tell speakers apart handily, separating them in later breakdowns of your interactions with few, if any, errors. The AI system backing the Memo understands 58 languages, but only two — English and Zulu — are likely to get a serious workout for South African users. Still, if you occasionally need to decipher Bulgarian, Urdu, or a collection of others, it’ll sort you out.
Operations are rather boring until the recording stops. After that, however, the Notta Memo will sync with your phone via Bluetooth or WiFi, transfer, and then upload conversations for AI intervention. Users choose which conversations to transcribe, though we saw it automatically performing this operation on first setup. Locking the Memo down for the unimportant stuff is a plan, though, since you only get 300 minutes of AI transcription free each month.
From there, the system will behave much like any LLM. It’ll summarise, answer questions, and generate a series of lists, actionable items, or formats, depending on what you need from the thing. As stick-in-your-pocket AI goes, this (and the Plaud Note) are actually useful implementations. There’s little fluffy, almost no features that you won’t find yourself using, and it’s all about utility. But it may be overkill for anyone who attends a single status meeting a week… unless they’re really, really lazy.
Notta Memo verdict
If you feel you need AI transcription — let’s be honest, if you attend tons of meetings, you probably do — then the Notta Memo feels like a natural companion to have around. It’ll handle itself, both during calls and in person, and the range of language (and translation) support is excellent. The Notta Memo won’t serve to let you order from a native-speaking restaurant in Portugal without learning the lingo, but it will keep your human interactions in nice, neat little summaries and searchable transcriptions. There’s at least some time-saving there, though you’ll probably still have to pay attention while Jeff from Accounts starts talking. Just so you know what questions to ask about what he was on about afterwards.
The only really tricky bit? Finding one in South Africa. Stuff was sent one to test, but our usual route for gear like this, Amazon, doesn’t ship them directly. So expect to pay a little more than the company’s listed R2,450 ($150), plus shipping, if you want to stick one to your phone.
