I Never Learned Shorthand. Forty Years Later, This Brooch like Clip Finally Solved That

Forty years in journalism and I never once mastered shorthand.

I trained in an era when it was still assumed you would and I can recall that clean, indecipherable scrawl most reporters could rattle off at the speed of speech. Despite my efforts during my cadetship, I was stuck with my own fast, messy longhand. Then came the small handheld tape recorders which was a genuine relief, until the day one failed mid-interview and I was back to writing fast and reverting back to old school reporting.

Zoom solved some of that. Built-in recording, one less thing to fail. But it also ties you to a desk, a screen, a static square of frame and some of my best conversations have never happened sitting down.

Which is exactly the gap the Plaud NotePin S now so brilliantly fills.

Why This Matters — For Me, and For This Audience

The flexibility is the whole story. I can still record online conversations and also a walk-and-talk meeting. Better still, when this is happening in person I can capture this without a device in my hand or a phone propped awkwardly between us. And it’s no longer a case of choosing between taking proper notes and actually being present. That alone would be enough. But it’s the wider use cases that make it a revelation: press conferences where you’re jostling for position, industry events where you’re moving between conversations all day. Being able to capture all of it on the move, hands free, is the kind of shift that changes how I actually work.

Walking meetings and walking mentoring catch-ups are having a real moment among professional women. They are informal, less hierarchical, better for actually thinking out loud than a boardroom ever was. But they’ve always had one flaw: nobody wants to stop and write things down mid-stride, and nobody remembers the detail afterward the way they think they will. The NotePin S is the first tool I’ve used that removes that trade-off entirely.

And then there’s the part I didn’t expect to care about: I like wearing it. After decades of recording equipment that looked and felt like equipment, there’s something quietly satisfying about a device shaped like jewellery. You can wear it as a wristband, necklace, brooch like pin, or clip, whichever suits the day. And it’s not invasive in the way holding a phone up is. Instead, Plaud just sits there, doing the job of recording, while I can actively listen.

Putting It to the Test: The Walking Meeting

I trialled it recently during a walking mentoring catch-up.

Nobody wants to stop mid-stride to write something down, and by the time you’re back at your desk, the specific wording, you know the bit that actually matters, is gone.

With the NotePin S clipped on, there was no phone between us, no moment where the conversation paused so I can check something was actually recording.

What I noticed afterward was less about the transcript quality, though it holds up. It was more about being fully present for once. Not half-listening while managing a device, not mentally flagging the line I’d need to remember later. Just in the conversation. After a career spent worrying about the mechanics of capturing a conversation, that’s not a small thing.

What To Watch Out For

Of course no device is faultless, and that’s worth saying plainly rather than burying in a footnote. Wind can blur a section of audio, the same risk as with any recording device, and AI transcriptions still needs a human editor’s eye to catch what it misses. There’s also a smaller, more human problem: something this small and this comfortable is easy to forget you’re wearing which means it’s just as easy to forget it needs charging.

Note: Plaud weighs just 17.4 grams, runs 20 hours of continuous recording, and holds 64GB of audio locally.

The Verdict

If you’ve ever had a failed tape recorder experience like me, it’s not something you easily forget. All equipment can let you down at exactly the moment it matters most.

But from my experience, wearing the NotePin S on a walk, a few weeks into using it, I’ve really benefited from being able to listen properly, while Plaud just goes ahead and does its thing, leaving me to ask more considered question and being present when I need to be.

And as someone who’s spent my career worrying about the mechanics of capturing a conversation, it is the first tool I’ve used that gets out of the way completely which is the whole point all along.

FACT BOX: Powered by Plaud Intelligence

Plaud’s ecosystem runs on Plaud Intelligence, the AI layer that turns raw recordings into structured summaries, action items and insights. Notes sync across the Plaud App (iOS and Android) and Plaud Web, alongside the company’s wider productivity tools and professional templates.

Key features:

• Multimodal input: captures audio, text, images, and has a useful “press to highlight” key moments, building richer, more comprehensive summaries from every conversation
• Multidimensional summaries: analyses discussions across multiple angles at once, for deeper insight than a single flat transcript
• Ask Plaud: newer additions include smart suggestions, cross-file search, and saving answers as fully-referenced notes

Plaud NotePin S Pricing

• RRP: AUD $299: Australia, available through Plaud, Amazon and Officeworks
• Buy direct: au.plaud.ai/products/plaud-notepin-s
• Amazon Australia: also listed at $299, sold and shipped by Plaud Official
• Officeworks: also stocked, per the launch announcement

What you get inside the NotePin S kit is a magnetic pin, clip, lanyard, wristband, charging dock, and USB-C cable, and every user gets a free starter plan with 300 minutes of transcription per month, upgradeable to Pro or Unlimited for more minutes and advanced AI features.

Worth flagging: Plaud’s product page reminds everyone to obtain consent from people before recording where required by law, and this is something I always do because it’s an important part of interview-ethics. Being asked if it’s okay to record an interview is always something people appreciate.