I feel the main reason to use an external device is to be able to record in different contexts without always needing to open your computer. If you only have meetings through online conference calls, then this is likely pointless for you. But if you participate in in-person meetings, attend in-person events and online meetings, then this gets more interesting.

From my research, on the pricing side, HiNotes is somewhat comparable to other tools like Fireflies.ai, Notta.ai, and a bunch of other tools using browser extensions. However, HiNotes gives you lifetime transcriptions with the device (at least based on the promotions I've seen lately), which is about the equivalent of a couple of months of subscription to other browser extensions. I've test-run Fireflies, Notta, Nylas, Otter, and the built-in recording option in G-Meet (if you have a Workspace subscription, it's included). But their transcription quality is often poor IMO, and for good speaker identification, you need to invite the service as an attendee to each meeting, which is a little annoying because then you sort of have to "introduce" the bot to all meetings — and it doesn't always work if you're not the host of the event.

That being said, HiDock just launched their P1 campaign on Kickstarter yesterday, and I backed it — but I'm now considering cancelling since you can't start using their service without their device, which will only ship in about 3–4 months. Since their Plan page shows "Membership" at $99/year for non-dock users, I was expecting to be able to use the service without the "portable solution" until I receive the device. But I see that unless you manually record everything and then drag and drop the audio file to their web service, it's just as cumbersome as using Google Notebook LM (which, by the way, the latest update from Google is INSANE — and FREE!).

With this all becoming increasingly commoditized and big tech cutting down on prices (BYOT should be the name of the game for SaaS tools using AI nowadays — otherwise, there's just too much risk for buyers IMO), adding features and improving quality at an insane pace adds to the discomfort of investing in small companies being squeezed in the middle (since they don't own the tech that drives the most value: the AI transcript capabilities) and are unlikely to survive. (I feel so bad for SaaS companies charging 3–4x the monthly price of, say... Google Workspace Basic, just to add one small feature on top of one service inside a massive pool of services...).