SpeakOn’s dictation device is a good idea marred by platform limitations

I constantly use dictation apps such as Wispr Flow, Willow, or Typeless to reply to messages and emails on both my Mac and my phone. But to do so, I have to use my phone’s mic or AirPods to dictate my messages, and they often don’t pick up what I am saying.

That’s why when Notta-owned SpeakOn pitched me to test a dedicated device for dictation, I was intrigued by its potential. Unfortunately, I had mixed experiences with the product because of its form factor and platform limitations.

Still, I think there is space for dictation devices like this in the future.

SpeakOn is a small pebble-like device that can stick on the back of your iPhone via MagSafe, just like Plaud’s AI meeting notetaker. The device is very light at 25 grams, so you won’t feel its weight, even if you put it in your pocket separately.

The device comes with a companion app on iOS, which is in the form of a keyboard, like other dictation apps. You can also use the app without connecting the device, if needed.

To get started, you press the button on the device to start dictating and release the button when you are done. The device has one mic and claims to capture audio within 2 feet of distance. The dictation works in any app as long as the software keyboard is active. The speech is automatically filtered as the app removes filler words and can format the text output as a list if needed.

One advantage is that the device does not use the iPhone’s mic and instead relies on its own mic. Other dictation apps need to keep the iPhone mic active based on the session time users have defined. The SpeakOn device can help you avoid that.

My gripe with the SpeakOn device is that, despite having dedicated mics, it doesn’t pick up the audio well — unless I bring the phone within roughly two feet of range. And even within that range, the mics often underperform because of the surrounding noise. I am hoping for better quality mics in the next version.

I also wish that double-tapping the record button could bring the SpeakOn keyboard to the fore if I were using a text keyboard. Or if I could start speaking without switching keyboards, but those are system-level limitations that are possibly hard to overcome.

The app changes AI editing and tone based on the app that you’re in, but you can also manually change that. I felt that at times, the edits were forced and unnecessary. For instance, when I said, “Does this app work automatically?”, the app converted that into, “Does this application operate automatically?” In another instance, the app turned the word “complex” into “tricky,” and turned “Sure, no worries” into “There is no need to be concerned”. I don’t want or need these kinds of edits. I eventually turned off its “attune” tone-changing feature to get better results.

I would have also used this device a lot more if it were compatible with Mac and I could dictate in any app.

Besides transcription, users can tap on the translate button to automatically translate speech into supported languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic.

SpeakOn says that the device could be used for 10 hours at a stretch and has a 20-day standby time. But in my experience, standby time was only a few days rather than 20 days. By default, the device never turns off. I would suggest tweaking that setting to make the device turn off after a few hours of inactivity to save the battery.

The device can fully charge from 0 to 100 percent within an hour. But you can always plug it in for a few minutes to get enough juice for many minutes of dictation.

The device is priced at $129 with a plan that lets you dictate 5,000 words per week. Other apps like Wispr Flow typically allow for 2,000 words per week on their free plan. There’s also a $12 per month plan for unlimited words.

SpeakOn has an early mover advantage in releasing a dictation device. But it needs to expand platform support and improve the software experience, because another company could easily source components and put them in a different form factor to eat up market share.