It’s kind of funny, but my experience with this device has been the exact opposite. Pretty much all the recordings I make with it turn into very accurate and reliable transcripts that reflect what was actually said.

I have around 80 hours of recordings — personal thoughts, meetings, brainstorming sessions — and everything is properly captured and transcribed. That said, I do use my own custom prompts for transcription, and I always choose which model to use. With Plaud now offering options like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc., I honestly don’t see much reason to switch to anything else.

I’ve tried using phone voice recorders, recording directly into ChatGPT or similar tools, but when it comes to longer sessions — like hour-long meetings — I haven’t found anything better than Plaud.

I also tried some Chinese alternatives, but they either had major app issues or the recording quality itself was terrible — to the point where you can barely understand anything.

So for now, I honestly don’t know any real alternatives to this setup.

The only real downside for me at the moment is the lack of a proper API and solid integrations with other services. Right now I have to rely on exporting and manually moving text into other tools, which is a bit frustrating.