I had low expectations for the rather generic Comulytic Note Pro, but it surprised me as not only the most useful all-around notetaker on available but also the cheapest after you consider the cost of a premium subscription.

The slim device, at 28 grams, is small enough to fit in a wallet or attach unobtrusively with the included magnetic ring to the back of your handset (note: it requires a special USB dongle to charge). The 64 GB of storage space and a 45-hour battery life aren’t massive, but both should be more than enough to handle a full week of interviews without offloading or recharging, all processed through OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini. The small LCD is helpful (and rare in this market), indicating when you’re recording and offering a recording duration. This makes it a lot more foolproof than other notetakers, which offer nothing more than a colored LED to tell you if it’s on.

The Note Pro supports 113 languages—sort of. It will record in a foreign tongue and offer a verbatim transcript in the native language, but insights and summaries are delivered in your language of choice. It’s not a full solution if you need a complete, direct translation, but if you just need the gist of a foreign news story or speech, Comulytic can uniquely handle it.

The proof is in the quality of the abstracts and insights provided. Of all the devices I tested, Comulytic’s summaries were the most insightful and least rambling (though better than its transcripts), effectively picking out the most relevant portions of interviews and pulling the best quotes from my conversations (perhaps too many at times). It was also the only device to correctly transcribe a punny product nickname mentioned in passing in one interview, indicating that a more sophisticated language model may be behind the scenes.

Comulytic isn’t perfect. It doesn’t transcribe in real time, it’s one of the slowest products at completing analyses, and I never got its “fast transfer” mode working, which meant all recordings had to be sent to my phone via a pokey Bluetooth connection, but these are minor dings against an otherwise solid solution. Best of all, for a limited time, the company includes a generous three months of premium service at no charge. Even if you don’t want to subscribe, the free plan, which offers three “deep dives” and 10 abstracts a month, is better than nothing.

Subscription costs $15 per month or $120 per year