- Integrated AI transcription and translation
- Record, transcribe and summarize meetings
- Viaim RecDot are $236 now (so around £185 or AU$375), usually $249
Fancy an AI feature that’s actually useful in your everyday life? Then Viaim’s RecDot earbuds could be the very thing. When you’re out and about they’re a perfectly normal set of hi-res wireless earbuds. But they have extra powers: they can automatically record, transcribe and translate meetings and other sound sources, generating meeting summaries and to-do action lists. You can also use them to record and transcribe phone calls.
You don’t necessarily need to wear them to use these features either. You can capture meetings on the buds’ memory chip while they’re in the case as well as in your ears, as long as you leave the case open and push the red dot on it to start recording (which goes a long way towards explaining the name RecDot), and the pickup range is a promised 7 meters.
The RecDot are one of three pairs of buds unveiled by the company this week. There are two other models: the Nano+, a more compact model, and the Air, which use ear hooks rather than an in-ear design. All three come with the AI features.
Not just an office experience
The Viaim RecDot are being marketed as a “smarter, more efficient office experience”, but if the AI features are as good as claimed then these buds could be useful to a much wider group of people. Think students recording lectures; singers recording vocal harmonies; writers conducting interviews.
I’m currently in the latter category (although I also sing): I use desktop recording software for phone interviews and a small wireless mic system for in-person conversations, feeding the recordings into an AI transcription app that’s almost as accurate and considerably faster than me. The prospect of a single device I can use for all of that – and that I can also use to listen to pop music on the way to work – is very compelling.
The Viaim RecDot come with 36 hours of battery, 48dB active noise reduction, an AI meeting assistant and a price tag of $249, currently discounted to $236.55 (so around £185 or AU$375, although availability and official pricing in these regions isn’t yet known) for an introductory period. You can find out more at viaim.ai.
Leave a comment