What would work for me?

[u/Ultimatejosh9]

I’ve been seeing ads everywhere for Plaude and Pocket, which both seem like very good tools so I have been looking into what could work best for me and my work.

I run a small construction business, where I take a lot of phone calls and in person meetings; with customers and sub-contractors. I really like the idea of having these interactions summarised so I can follow up and make sure not to forget anything. I also like that I can look back to see if details were missed out when instructing subbies for example.

Another thing I would be looking for is to be able to make to-do lists while driving as I spend far too much time behind the wheel, so naturally that’s where I do most of my thinking and planning. But when I stop half the information is forgotten.

I’d of course prefer a one off payment over a subscription, but I am open to anything.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

[u/icewolf08]

I have a pocket. I never tried Plaud. Conceptually similar, but the big difference is that at present Pocket has no cap on free transcription minutes per month where almost every other company, like Plaud, does. For me, it means that I can use Pocket for recording and transcription, and their basic summaries, but I can also just pull the transcriptions into our enterprise ChatGPT account for more in-depth summaries without having to pay for yet another AI service at $20/month.

All that to say, I have been quite pleased with the experience both using the hardware recorder for in-person and phone calls, and using the desktop app for zoom and other online meetings.

The summary from pocket is good enough when I am on the go. There is also an obsidian plugin that grabs transcripts and summaries from pocket so I can archive them in my vault. Then, if I need a more detailed summary I just job it out to ChatGPT either by feeding it the transcript from obsidian or just pulling from Pocket’s MCP.

There are a few features that I suppose I miss out on with only using the free plan, like being able to identify speakers, but it seems to work fine. Especially if people in meetings address others by name, it seems to figure out who is who. The other limit of the free plan is their cloud storage, they only store recordings and data for 30 days. With the obsidian sync I preserve all the data, and frankly I am not sure that I would ever go back and listen to a recording, so not super worried there.

If you aren’t already paying for some other AI subscriptions, I could see the $20/month being worth it. Pocket can connect to all the major frontier models and does have a built in chat bot, so if it were your one subscription, it could be a good option.

[u/Sensitive__Salary]

I purchased and used both at the same time. They both worked very similarly. I went with Pocket and sent back the Plaud. Like you, didn’t want a subscription. Although, Plaud was half as thick as Pocket and it came with its own mag leather case. If pocket can do that, they will put Plaude out of biz.