NotePin is the latest pointless AI wearable that should be an app

I’d hoped the era of pointless AI wearables was at an end after the Humane Ai pin saw its returns exceed its sales, and MKBHD called the Rabbit R1 “barely reviewable,” but it appears not. The NotePin is the latest nonsensical AI wearable that should be an app.

Plaud has already launched an AI voice recorder that has to be paired with an iPhone that could do the same job without the extra hardware. Not content with this, it has now announced a wearable that has to be paired with an iPhone that could do the same job without the extra hardware …

Wired reports:

The company’s newest offering is called the Plaud NotePin (the naming scheme doesn’t get any better here), and it takes basically all the same features of the Note and packs them into a wearable device about the size of a lipstick tube. The NotePin can be worn as a necklace, a wristwatch, or a pin, or clipped onto something like a lapel […]

The company is pitching its new product squarely at productivity junkies—business bros trying to make connections at conferences, salespeople tracking leads, or anyone eager to get a grip on their innumerable daily meetings. There’s a sort of simplicity to the NotePin. Instead of the many promises some AI devices try to keep, the purpose here is primarily for note-taking. Switch the recorder on, let it do its thing, then check the bullet points for the big takeaways later […]

It costs $169 and lets you record up to 300 minutes of audio per month. To record more than that, you can pay a $79 annual fee for the pro plan that gets you 1,200 minutes per month and additional features like labels that identify different speakers in a transcription.

Or you could, you know, use an iPhone, and save yourself both $169 and the hassle of charging and carrying an additional device.

As we’ve said before, AI hardware devices are like trying to invent the iPod after the launch of the iPhone.

If you think you can do a better job than Apple (and you can, for now), then sure, launch your product as an app and see how well it does. But wrapping your app in a box, and loading the companion app on an iPhone, makes zero sense.

The smartest AI hardware investment right now is landfill sites.