Anker soundcore Work Review: Does This AI Voice Recorder Make You More Productive?

So the hard part of meetings in the professional world is not the meeting itself. You show up, you talk, you leave. The hard part is what comes after. When you just went out for lunch, you come back six hours later, you sit down, and you're like, hold on, what did I commit to? What were the deliverables? What was I supposed to follow up on? Either you just miss a few of the things that you said you were going to do on the call, or you have to re-watch a recording of it, or go through incomplete notes. It takes time, and when that stacks up, meeting after meeting after meeting, that materially impacts your productivity. So Sound4 sent me this device to try it out, and they pitched it as the solution to that exact problem. So giving you back that hour or two per day where you're catching up on meetings. So I played around with it this week, and I want to break it down for you in this video. Now what this is, is called Sound4Work. You have this little device here, and then it fits into a little charger stand. And it's an AI voice recorder, and the whole pitch is that you don't have to take notes anymore, it just offloads all of that for you. And you can see, it is tiny. This is the size of the entire device. So it's the size of a coin, about a third of an ounce. And you can just wear it, so you can clip it to a collar, or drop it in a pocket, or put it on a computer, and it records, transcribes, and summarizes conversations. So we're going to get into exactly how it works, and a few of the core workflows for day-to-day usage. Now at any point, if you do want to support the channel, and you want to get this device, they're currently running a creator discount. So the code and links are down there, that gives you a pretty big discount that equates to roughly the same price as Prime Day. So more on that at the end, and now let's get into the primary way in which you actually use this thing. So in terms of how you're going to use this, the actual workflow starts with pressing the button on the side of the device. So you push it once, and then it's recording. You don't have to unlock your phone or find an app. You can just clip it to your collar, press that button, and you are completely good to go. And then during the meeting, let's say you're having a conversation, and something important comes up, or something you want to remember, or something to do immediately after the call. And that's going to drop a marker right on that spot, so the AI will know that that's important, and you can find that information easily afterward. And the idea there is you're not scrubbing through a recording or notes, and this will tie into some of the summary style features we'll look at in a second. So then as far as step three, that's kind of the sync process. And this is actually pretty cool. With a lot of meeting recorders or AIs that sit in your meetings, you have to wait after the call for it to actually process. Either you just have some kind of bar where it's loading or downloading, or you have to open an app and turn on Bluetooth. Now this device is MFI certified. And so without the NerdSpeak, it's going to be synced in real time. So by the time you're done with the meeting, you'll just open the app on your phone, and the recording is going to be there. Now here and there, you do need to wait a moment for the transfer to complete. And in that odd case, it is a knowledgeable volume of time. So then you have the SoundCore app on your phone, and that's where you can actually look through those recordings, and the summary, and all the AI features. Now for step four or five here, I forget, you're going to open the recording, and then you click to get the full transcription. And every time I've used it, I'm sure it depends if you're taking meetings outside or something, it is a fairly accurate transcription. And you can see the moments you double tap for, they're going to be highlighted in that text and or recording. And then there's a key point section that is pulled out to the top of that recording as well. So the decisions and the action items are going to be there. That's the important part for your review. And then you're going to pick a template for the kind of conversation it was. So that might be a client meeting, or a project review, or sales follow-up, whatever it is that you're doing. And then the AI is going to match the summary to the format of that conversation. So then step six here is going to be generating a one-page summary of that whole transcription. So you tap here in the app, and it will generate that. And that's a clean view of the entire meeting condensed into this format. And what's important is that that is an image. So that's something that you can pretty easily share. It's not a big block of text, you can just drop it into Slack or group chat or something to share the context if you need to. And that is something which isn't available on a lot of your competitors that you see like plotting. And then for the last step in the workflow here, this is more something that builds over time, but it's pretty cool after you have a week or a month or a few months of meetings that are stored up in the app, you have this AI thing called Ask Anka. And it's basically an AI that can search through all of your recordings. So over time, it starts to build this knowledge moat, all this information and context about what you're doing, such that it becomes a second brain of sorts. And then you can start to ask the questions like, what have I talked about in the last four meetings with Joe? Or how's progress on this project that we talked about in our team weekly meetings? Whatever it is, right? You kind of get this AI assistant that knows you in a more personal way than something like, say, GPT, or you might just feed it documents here and there. And that's only going to be effective and work if you have more meetings there, if you just have one or two, that's really not going to be that helpful versus those summarize and per recording features. So that is the core workflow and how you're going to use an AI recording device like this in your day-to-day professional life. And to step back, it does largely help with that problem of the extra hour that you spend kind of looking back through recordings or just the even worse problem of you don't do any of that. And then you just miss things that were talked about in meetings. And what's really useful, like just takes a lot more effort to get to is that kind of second brain where it knows a lot about your relationships and your meetings such that you can talk back and forth with that AI. Now, as far as comparables go, your phone is going to be super low friction. The problem is the formatting just sucks, like if you record a voice memo or something. So no one is going to use something like that today. Software tools like the AI to join the calls, we've looked at some of them on this channel are incredible. They're just constrained by the digital environment. So for anything in person, that's not going to work. If you're only software, that's one thing. Those tools are incredible for in-person meetings. That's where something like this starts to become, I think, the much more reasonable solution. So your coffee chats, if you work at the office, etc. So it's not magic. It's not going to think for you. The goal of this device, I think, just like a lot of the AI tools we look at on this channel is to take some of that menial and grunt work out of your day such that you, as a professional, can do more of the important things, the idea, the creatives, the direction, and let the AI do the rest. That is my slogan. So that translates pretty well into who I think this is for. If you have lots of meetings across the board nowadays, you 1,000,000% want some kind of AI solution or assistant or helper. If you're only digital, then you have a lot of options to choose from. If you do a lot of online plus in-person or just in-person, then this is going to be something that you want. But again, if you only take calls online, then forget it. There's a lot of great options out there. And as far as that kind of interacting with the physical world goes, I think this is pretty much as low friction as it gets because recording a conversation on the phone is just impossible. And otherwise, there's no good alternative that captures those in-person meetings and environments. That in mind, that's all the information I wanted to get across to you. It's pretty straightforward because it's a pretty straightforward device as well as the value prop associated with it. That in mind, if this sounds like it's a fit for you, again, you can help support the channel and you'll get a discount link if you want to purchase this or try it out at the link in the description or on the screen. So there's links to both the site and Amazon. And I think they sell it for $169. And during the launch period, so kind of with those links, you get it for $119. So that's the price point on this. Pretty reasonably priced. You can definitely get a lot worse than that. And so you can get it at that price, again, at the link in the description. And to emphasize it, that is the same price as Prime Day. So you're never ever, to my knowledge, going to get a better deal on it than that. So if it's useful to you, I hope that helps you out as a device. If not, then I hope another video will help you out. In either way, pretty cool to see AI really becoming an essential part of a toolkit for the modern professional. I think we're going to see a lot more AI-infused hardware over the next few years. And it's an exciting time to both be a professional and make videos like these. That am I. I appreciate y'all being here. And I'll see you in the next one. Cheers.