iFlytek Recorder S6
Check out the link to the accompanying YouTube video at the end of this post.
The iFlytek AINOTE 2 did a pretty good job in my lineup of several different note-taking products, so I had high hopes for a dedicated recorder from the same company. It seemed like it would basically be a bigger Plaud with a screen and its own connectivity via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular networks. I was excited to try it out.
The iFlytek Recorder S6 is a relatively small device compared to most phones.
It has a 5.05" screen, 8 microphones, one 1W speaker, an 8 megapixel camera, one USB Type C 3.1 (according to the website) or 3.2 (according to the manual on the device itself) port, a 3010 mAh battery, 64GB of storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and a SIM card slot for 4G/5G connectivity on the go. It weighs 200 grams.
There are 4 recording modes - Speech (for large rooms and big conferences, 32kHz/16bit, uses top directional microphones), Meeting (medium-sized rooms with up to 15 people, 32kHZ/16bit, uses 360 degree omnidirectional microphones), Interview (32kHz/16bit, best for 2-person face-to-face conversations, uses top and bottom directional microphones), and Original (standard: 48kHz/32bit - best for concerts and recording music; superior: 96kHz/32bit - wider dynamic range is best for music production and high-quality podcasting; and ultimate: 192kHz/32bit - captures finest details and is best for high-end music recordings, professional audio archiving, etc.) which uses the top microphone.
Part 1: Using the S6 in Speech Mode
I put the S6 into the Speech mode recording setting with offline transcription turned on. The first test was to have the recorder record and transcribe the same Davinci Resolve training video I'd used for the YouTube video covering my previous tests and results (https://youtu.be/4vtb4cc6Cks). I loaded up the video on my iPad Pro and set the S6 next to it, started the video, hit record on the S6, and left them in the room together until the video was finished. When I looked over the transcription on the screen, it looked reasonable with what I knew of the contents of the video. At the end it had picked up some of the conversation I was having with my husband because I had not closed the door to the room the devices were in, but I figured that wouldn't be a major issue, especially since that had occurred after the video ended. The device will use its onboard transcription service if you have downloaded a language pack. I had downloaded the English language pack, so it was able to do on-device transcription with that pack. But to get the AI summaries, you will need to upload the audio for further processing. After acknowledging that I understood the implications of uploading the recording to the cloud, it began uploading the file. You have a choice of a few templates for organizing the transcription, including lecture, interview, education, media, etc., as well as a setting to let the AI pick the optimal format. I went with lecture first but was disappointed with the results, so I regenerated the summary using the option for the AI to pick the format. This result was better, but when I compared it to the results I got from the iFlytek AINOTE 2, I was still disappointed. It was a good overall summary, but it wasn't as detailed as the output from the AINOTE 2, which had enough detail that I could sit with it in front of Davinci Resolve and begin to work through some of the steps. The information in the S6 summary was much more generalized and the steps were compressed into bullets that didn't provide as much supporting detail. The S6 summary would be a good overall refresher of the steps taken in the video, but the AINOTE 2 summary would be more helpful in walking through the steps.
I wanted to give the S6 another chance, so I took it to church and used it to record and summarize a sermon. I recorded the same sermon with my Plaud Note and the two devices were placed on the seat next to me so both had the same recording conditions. With the 8 microphones on the S6, I had great expectations. But in this instance the S6 fell completely flat. It recorded the entire hour-long sermon, but what it recorded seemed to be mostly gibberish based on what I saw of the transcription on the screen. I went through the process of uploading the audio and generating an AI summary anyway, and the summary that was generated was indicative of having been able to interpret some of what was said, but it was clear that it didn't get enough detail from the recording to provide a true summary. Plaud absolutely wiped the floor with the S6. It was able to identify the 6 key elements of the sermon and captured all of the scriptural references. There were no scripture references in the S6's summary, nor was it able to capture those 6 elements. The Plaud summary also contained a list of assignments, which were takeaways from the sermon that the hearers were encouraged to put into practice. The recording from the S6 wasn't good enough for the AI to generate a solid summary. I downloaded the audio file from iFlytek's web portal, and I found it was a terrible recording with most of the words missing. It was no wonder that it wasn't able to provide a decent summary. I tried to take the recording from the Plaud Note and upload it to the iFlytek web portal but there did not seem to be a way to accomplish this. Then I tried connecting the S6 to my computer to transfer the file to it, but that didn't work either. So there was no way for me to try to take the better recording and use it to try a generate a better summary. It would seem that the S6 works best in a small group scenario when the people are all sitting together at a table or in a small room. I would have expected that the sound system in my church's sanctuary would have provided good enough audio for the recorder to pick up since it has always worked flawlessly on my Plaud, but the Plaud's recording was substantially better than that of the S6, regardless of how many more microphones the S6 has.
Part 2: Using the S6 in Original Mode
I had both the Plaud Note and S6 record an article read aloud by AI and this time I used the original mode with the S6. This is the only mode that allows you to specify quality for the recording - standard, superior, and ultimate. It defaulted to ultimate, so I left it there. As I started the recording, the S6 notified me that I would not be able to use the on-device transcription for this mode. I didn't think anything of this as the on-device transcription doesn't seem to be anywhere near as good as the cloud transcription. But when I ended the recording, I noticed I wasn't able to tap on the AI summary setting. I assumed this meant I needed to upload the recording in the files view, so I went back out to the files view and long-pressed on the file to select the option to upload it to the cloud. The S6 notified me that the file was queued for upload. But there was nowhere to see the queue that I could find and there was nowhere to see the progress of the upload. After more than an hour, it still did not seem like the file had uploaded. There was a little cloud icon with an arrow next to the file, but that was the only indication that the device had any intention of uploading the file. Other files I had on the device that had been uploaded had an empty cloud next to them and the tag "Transcribed". I noticed later that the recording had apparently been broken into two pieces with one piece going for 45 minutes and the second piece going for 26 minutes. It was the shorter 26-minute file I had selected for upload. I long-pressed on the longer file and also queued it for upload. No cloud icon appeared next to it. I checked back a while later and the cloud icon had gone away on the smaller file, so I checked the web portal again, but the file wasn't there. I even tried logging out and back in and it still wasn't available online.
My experience is that the S6 is probably not ideal for large lecture halls or big meeting rooms. It's probably best used in a small group setting such as a small team meeting or for interviews where there are only a few people sitting close to each other. And although the device can record high bitrate files, the storage and microphone limitations make the high-quality recording options less appealing.
Other Features
The S6 offers wired and wireless screen sharing and since I'm a Samsung DeX diehard, I have multiple setups that seemed perfect to try out the wired mode. I plugged the S6 into one of my monitors and watched while the device seemed to reboot over and over. Eventually, it did what appeared to be a full reboot that required me to enter in my PIN and the screen appeared on my monitor. The only problem was it looked terrible and basically unusable. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it looked normal. The connected monitor is a touchscreen, but the touch features did not work with the S6. You have to interact with the S6 itself. The UI doesn't rotate, so you don't get the benefit of using most of the screen. It's just like screen mirroring with an iPhone or an Android phone that doesn't have a desktop mode. Nevertheless, on my 4K OLED touchscreen monitor, everything looked very clear and crisp.
The device also has an 8MP camera on the back that can be used to record video with subtitle generation. The camera can also be used to take photos and those photos can be run through the device's optical character recognition (OCR) system to convert the image to text. I tested the OCR feature with a page of a tiny instruction manual and it deciphered the text perfectly. You can save the text documents on the device and upload them to the cloud server or transfer them to another device via the USB port.
Based on the boot sequence, the drop-down notification shade, the icons, and settings, I'd say this is a very heavily modified Android device. The manual makes reference to needing the Android File Transfer on the Mac, so it seems pretty certain that this thing runs some version of Android. On the About page, there is no version information related to Android. There is no way I see to install apps since you can't even sideload recordings onto the device via USB. I'm sure a hacker could work around the limitations that are in place here, but I'm not a hacker and I don't really need the device to run Android apps even though I think there are plenty of Android apps that are more capable than the ones pre-installed on this device.
The software overall seems unfinished. The clock on my device is stuck in a different time zone than where I live and three separate trips to the settings did not reveal any place where I could fix this problem. The recording interface looks fine, but figuring out all the settings isn't instantly intuitive despite the occasional pop-up that attempts to inform you of some fact you need to know. If you don't know to long-press on some items, you'd never figure out how to properly manipulate your files. There should probably be more menus so it's clearer what you can do on each screen. I've already mentioned that while you can mark files for uploading to the cloud, there is no way to see whether they are uploading or how much longer it might take for the upload to complete. Even on the web portal you don't get any indication that files are being uploaded. And even though there is that Android-style notification shade, there are no persistent notifications to let you know the device is doing any file operations in the background. There are menus on-device for loading up the manual and frequently used functions, but these pages aren't available unless you are online and there does not seem to be any way to download them for offline use.
Conclusion
I cannot in good conscience say that this device is worth the $469 retail price. It does not record better or provide better summaries than Plaud or the Anker Soundcore Work, both of which have substantially lower prices if you are looking for a dedicated device and do not want to or cannot use your phone. It can provide offline transcription in real-time on a decent screen, and it can record video and add subtitles, but this is also something you can do with a smartphone with AI. It does offer screen mirroring, but many smartphones can now do this as well. There's nothing that it offers that isn't available on your phone or another device that works better or offers better value.
I had hoped the S6 would produce summaries that rivaled Plaud and that it would be a more well-rounded device I could recommend to people looking for something with the AI summarization capabilities of the Plaud Note, but wanted to take advantage of the video recording and connectivity options of the S6. I think for anyone who is serious about recording audio for professional or even semi-professional purposes, you'd be better off with a professional handheld hardware recorder like the Zoom H6 Studio. If you are a student or a person that attends many seminars or conferences, you may want to consider a small tablet like an iPad Mini or one of the specialized e-ink tablets designed for note-taking. That way you could combine text and ink notes together and get more educational value from the experience. The cameras offered on most tablets are about as good as the camera on the S6. For better video and OCR capabilities, use your phone. You could also buy a used or refurbished phone with a note-taking app that you use specifically for recording and note-taking purposes if you want something small like the S6. There are myriad ways to spend money that I think would ultimately be a much better value than the S6.
YouTube video:
