The Era of Typing is Over: AI Voice Transcription Takes Over

Hello, this is Jaehyun, your designer.

In today's newsletter, I'd like to introduce you to two remarkable voice recognition AI tools: 'Letterly' and 'Voicenotes.'

Both Letterly (https://www.producthunt.com/products/letterly-2 ) and Voicenotes (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/voicenotes-2 ), featured on Product Hunt, are highly acclaimed voice-based AI tools gaining significant attention this year. Have you ever found yourself painstakingly transcribing lectures or interviews? Transcribing audio can be tedious and inefficient. These AI tools, which accurately recognize and transcribe audio into text in real-time, significantly boost productivity. As someone accustomed to manual typing, I was initially skeptical. However, after using these tools, I discovered an entirely new level of convenience and efficiency, and I'm excited to share this with you today.

If you've ever watched Harry Potter closely, you might remember the enchanted quill that took notes during interviews. I used to envy that magical quill, thinking how convenient it would be. While we couldn't imagine such a tool back then, today we have AI like 'Letterly' and 'Voicenotes' that perform the same function perfectly. These tools bring to life Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Let's dive into how accurately these AI tools transcribe audio by comparing today's featured products.

Core Functionality: Real-time Audio-to-Text Transcription

One reason we don't often use recording functions for personal notes is the difficulty in reviewing specific parts. Text-based notes allow us to quickly scan and find the needed information. However, the advantage of audio recording is that it captures every detail vividly, allowing us to focus solely on 'thinking' without the distraction of 'writing.' Often, our best ideas come when we're talking to ourselves, but if we don't transcribe them, those ideas can be lost. The moment we start writing, those fleeting thoughts can disappear. Voice transcription AI solves this problem.

By accurately transcribing spoken words into text, tools like Letterly and Voicenotes allow us to capture every detail effortlessly, ensuring that no brilliant idea slips away. Let's explore how these tools can transform your productivity and unlock a new level of efficiency in your daily tasks.

Here is the interface of the first product, 'Letterly.' It adopts the overall structure of a diary or notebook, making it more approachable and casual for users.

Letterly: A product that focuses on capturing light ideas.

When you enter 'Letterly,' simply press the central button to start recording. The tool recognizes your voice with impressive accuracy and transcribes it exactly as spoken. Even if your pronunciation is a bit off or there’s considerable background noise, it clearly identifies your voice. Additionally, it accurately transcribes conversational speech in a very natural, everyday tone.

Without using the pro features, you can record up to 2 minutes. Upgrading to the pro version allows you to record up to 15 minutes.

Once the text is generated, the most important feature is the 'rewrite' button centrally located on the interface. This function refines your text into various formats based on your voice. Let's take a closer look below.

The 'Rewrite' feature refines recorded text into 15 different formats.

After writing a note, the most important button that appears is the 'rewrite' button. By pressing it, you can transform your text into about 15 different formats. The 'Magic' option is provided by default, while the other options summarize your content in various ways or adapt it to fit social media formats.

To show how well each format modifies the text, I transformed the same piece of writing into several formats. When I pressed 'Magic,' it corrected grammatical errors and smoothed out awkward expressions. It also automatically created paragraphs and accurately identified the main points of the content.

The formats vary depending on the options: Slightly, Significantly, and Structured. For instance, 'Structured' focuses on organization, adding bullet points and listing the content in a more structured manner compared to other options.

You can click on the generated note to edit the automatically created text.

When you request to change the format to meeting notes, you'll notice that the tone of the sentences is adjusted to make it easier to understand for others.

Additionally, when comparing a casual email with a formal email, the choice of words and format are distinctly tailored to suit their respective purposes, making them very practical for real-life application.

For individuals who write newsletters and manage short-form social media accounts, this tool is even more valuable. It significantly reduces the time spent adapting content for social media. The tool can quickly generate the same content, complete with emojis, in formats suitable for platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn.

However, one downside of 'Letterly' is that it sometimes fails to generate summaries in the correct language for English-written texts. This seems to be a current bug, but improving this aspect would help produce higher quality responses.

Perfectly recognizes other languages as well.

Lastly, I was curious to see if 'Letterly' could accurately recognize and transcribe languages other than English. I tested it with a voice recording in Korean and requested a summary.

Amazingly, it recognized and transcribed Korean perfectly, and there were no issues with creating and sharing the related summaries. Interestingly, some options that caused errors in the English text worked well in the Korean version, successfully generating the desired formats.

The biggest advantage of this service is its simple interface and the variety of text organization options, allowing you to conveniently record and transcribe on the go.

You can try it free for 7 days, after which an annual fee applies. During the onboarding process, you're asked about your primary use cases for the product, which seems to influence the suggested formats to better suit your needs.

However, there are a few drawbacks...

One downside is that even with the PRO upgrade, you can't take unlimited-length notes. You need to start a new recording every 15 minutes, which means going through the 'recognition' process again each time. This can be inconvenient for recording long lectures or extensive interviews. Additionally, the lack of a proper search function might make it difficult to find specific records as your notes accumulate.

Despite these drawbacks, the variety of intuitive tools for transcribing voice into text on the go is a significant advantage. If you need to accurately transcribe both short and long texts, 'Letterly' is an excellent choice. The AI clearly understands and performs your desired tasks accurately, making it a highly reliable tool.

Voicenotes: A voice transcription product suitable for long and formal texts.

Next, I tried the product 'Voicenotes' on the web. Unlike 'Letterly,' which is only available on mobile, 'Voicenotes' can be used across various platforms, including PC, Android, and iOS. The first screen also features a record button to create new notes. Unlike 'Letterly,' where notes are managed in a single document, 'Voicenotes' organizes recordings in a timeline format, giving it a feel more similar to traditional conversational AI models.

A significant advantage of 'Voicenotes' is that you can create 1-minute voice notes for free, unlike 'Letterly,' which requires payment after the free trial. However, in my experience, 1 minute felt quite short. It might be beneficial to compare it with 'Letterly,' which allows longer recordings even during the free trial.

Another advantage of 'Voicenotes' is that subscribing allows you to create unlimited notes of any length. Although the monthly subscription is more expensive than 'Letterly,' the lifetime purchase option is relatively cheaper.

The voice-to-text auto-generation feature, followed by the text refinement functionality.

The core function of converting voice to text is equally impressive. A distinguishing feature of this product is the 'play' button located at the top left, which allows you to listen to the recorded audio. This feature is beneficial as it provides both the transcribed text and the original audio recording. However, given that audio is generally an inefficient method of record-keeping, it’s unlikely that this playback feature will be used frequently.

Personally, listening to my own voice can be quite uncomfortable, but I find it particularly useful for practicing English speaking. The automatic text organization and grammar correction allow you to check your accuracy without needing a native speaker.

On the far right, there are three main features. First, you can edit the automatically generated text. You can also add hashtags to categorize your notes, and there is a search bar at the top to help you find previous entries. If additional categorization features are important to you, 'Voicenotes' is a suitable choice.

The remaining button is for refining the text. There are six preset formats available, which is fewer than what 'Letterly' offers, making it a bit disappointing in that regard. While the options for summarizing points, drafting tweets, and composing emails worked well, the blog post format, which requires the most extensive sentence construction, took a long time to generate and sometimes failed to generate altogether.

It seems that the blog post format may not generate if the recorded content is insufficient for a full-length post. However, when I recorded more substantial content, it successfully created a conversational-style blog post. Even with less polished spoken input, it managed to produce a readable and coherent long-form article.

Additionally, to compensate for the limited preset options, there is a feature that allows you to directly customize the direction of the text output. When I entered specific parameters, the text was generated according to the provided instructions. However, compared to the default values, the customized text required more editing to achieve a polished result. While this feature offers the advantage of flexibility without format restrictions, it can be challenging to use effectively.

It also perfectly recognizes other languages!

When I experimented with Korean, it was recognized flawlessly. However, the text refinement feature was somewhat lacking. For example, when I requested to convert the text into a to-do list, it was automatically translated into English.

Additionally, there is an AI chatbot feature that makes it easy to manage various schedules and search through your notes.

One of the standout features of 'Voicenotes' is the ability to scroll through each timeline, allowing you to view your recordings conveniently.

Choosing a Voice Recording Service Based on Your Preferences

The choice between 'Letterly' and 'Voicenotes' depends on your specific needs and preferences. 'Letterly,' with its notebook-like interface, offers a more casual user experience and is particularly useful for social media enthusiasts. It allows users to create social media-ready formats with a single click, accurately capturing the intended message and refining sentences into a conversational tone, enhancing efficiency.

On the other hand, 'Voicenotes' is more suitable for academic purposes and detailed note-taking. It excels in recording lectures, refining long texts, and supporting scholarly studies. Its features include easy navigation, categorization, and integration with ChatGPT, making it a more comprehensive product.

Overall, the technology for converting voice to text is impressively advanced. While the text refinement feature still needs some improvement, I plan to move away from my habit of manual note-taking.

?? Personal Thoughts

A Feature that Overcomes Time and Location Constraints A CEO I previously interviewed managed a lot of work while commuting. He often used recording as his primary method of note-taking, which I found quite impressive. Reflecting on this product analysis, I realized that I would recommend these services to him if we met again. Although listening to recorded audio can be inefficient, having both audio and text would be useful for later review.

I believe this product could be a solution for busy users. As productivity demands increase, individual workloads grow, and efficiency becomes crucial. If you want to enhance productivity even while commuting or walking, these products could be very beneficial.

What do you think? Do you see yourself frequently using 'Letterly' and 'Voicenotes' for your note-taking needs?

I hope my insights have been helpful. ????♂?