There are a lot of gadgets that use AI to record and manage meetings, but most take the shape of slender, card-sized devices. The Flowtica Scribe is different. It looks and operates just like a regular pen, but it also has all the expected AI features inside.
While it sounds like something James Bond would use to keep up with those important Double-O HR meetings, we’d like to say right from the start, this isn’t a spy gadget. No, definitely not, although we’ll come back to that in a bit.
I used the Flowtica Scribe for a few meetings, and in one challenging all-day event, to see how it performs.
6/10
- Type
-
AI Note Taker
- Color
-
Satin Gunmetal / Silver Grey
- Bluetooth
-
Yes
- Weight
-
34.5 grams
The Flowtica Scribe’s pen design is convenient and fun, but may need explaining in some situations. It records meetings, uses AI to transcribe and summarize, but doesn’t always do the best job.
- High-quality hardware
- Easy to use
- Long battery life
- AI errors can frustrate
- Pen design may need explaining
- Bluetooth connection issues
Price, specs, and availability
The Flowtica Scribe started out as a Kickstarter project, and an updated version is now available through Flowtica’s online store and Amazon.
It costs $159 for the Scribe with 20 extra nibs, or $209 for the Complete Set, which comes with the Scribe, a charging case, 20 nibs, and three months Premium membership.
There are two subscription tiers, if you decide you want more than the free 300 minutes of recording per month. The Premium plan is $15 per month for 1,500 minutes per month, and the Unlimited Plan gives unlimited recording for $30 per month.
- Type
-
AI Note Taker
- Color
-
Satin Gunmetal / Silver Grey
- Bluetooth
-
Yes
- Weight
-
34.5 grams
- Dimensions
-
150.9 x 12.7 x 16.3mm
- Charging
-
Magnetic / USB C
- Material
-
Aluminum
Flowtica Scribe design
Mightier than the sword
The Flowtica Scribe looks like a big, oversized pen. It has a clip for your shirt; you twist the tip to reveal the nib, and you hold it just like any other writing implement.
It’s made of metal, weighs just under 35 grams, and is 16mm wide at its widest point. Holding it isn’t like a regular pen, as the size is somewhere in between a pen and a marker.
So after a while, you notice the size and weight between your fingertips, and fatigue will set in. The balance is good, though, and despite the smooth finish, the body returns plenty of grip.
My review model came in an attractive case that holds and charges the pen. The nibs can be replaced, and there’s a space in the case for an extra one.
There are two buttons on the Scribe. The button on the end starts and ends recording, while the extra button on the body adds a marker to your recordings, ready to digitally highlight key parts.
The Flowtica Scribe looks and feels like an expensive product, and the build quality is good. Twisting the end to reveal the nib has a nice action, and sensibly, there’s an obvious cross-over point in the opposite direction, where you unscrew the end to change the tip.
Flowtica Scribe AI features
A note-taker in disguise
You won’t buy the Flowtica Scribe for the pen feature. The AI features are the selling point, and I put them to the test in a few different environments. The most challenging was a day of panel discussions, roundtable meetings, and individual chats.
Controlling the Scribe is simple, so you don’t have to think about it, and I love the button to mark key points in a conversation. It sat, unobtrusively on the desk, and when attached to my shirt.
Meeting recordings appear in the Flowtica app and generate quickly. The main view covers a summary, which is all standard AI fare. It accurately highlighted key numbers, provided a few explanations of complex terms, and broke it all down into sections and bullet points.
However, I didn’t always trust it. The problem is, the actual recording of the meeting isn’t very reliable. Listening back, the audio was sometimes clipped, and its transcription seemed to miss out on entire chunks of the conversation.
Worse, reading through the transcript — which I like to do, so I have the exact quote I’m looking for — it would often devolve into strings or letters and joined-together words. It did not inspire much confidence.
Flowtica also generates a pointless image showing supposedly key takeaways, and it heads up the summary page. I was further put off because the full-day event was all about technology in Formula One racing, which, in a few summaries, it didn’t mention at all. It made me think the AI didn’t “get” the point.
For one important meeting, I used both the Scribe and Voice Notes on an Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max to record it. I got better results from giving Google Gemini the iPhone’s recording and asking for a summary, along with letting it know the exact parts I was interested in so it could highlight them.
Flowtica recognized different meeting and conversation types accurately, but never identified speaker names in its summary, despite them being used in the conversation. All this didn’t make me want to use the Scribe during my meetings.
Flowtica Scribe app
Simple design, and the right features
The Scribe connects to the Flowtica app. I have used it with both Android and iOS, and the experience has been identical.
It took some effort to get the pen and case — yes, the charging case requires a separate Bluetooth connection — connected to the phone. Multiple tries, a message to the company’s PR team, and a few re-installs solved it. How? No idea. The Scribe’s connection has been fine, but the charging case has required pairing several times since.
In addition to the meeting summaries, the app also has an AI to-do list and reminder system. You can record these as voice notes, which are saved in the app, and can be set up so they appear as reminder notifications on your phone.
There is a search feature that does a good job of finding phrases and words in all saved meetings. The recorder recognizes up to 15 speakers — my meetings had up to six, and all were separated by the Flowtica’s AI — and supports 39 different languages.
I like the way you can add a photo of your own handwritten meeting notes to the app, and it takes this into account for both summary and search. I get that this also fits in with the Scribe’s pen design, but I want an AI note taker because I’m terrible at writing notes, so not everyone will find the feature useful.
The app design is simple, and as there are only a handful of features, it’s never overwhelming or hard to find what you want.
Flowtica Scribe battery and charging
Enough for a week
The battery in the Flowtica Scribe pen can record for 30 hours on a single charge, and the charging case enables a total of 100 hours of recording time.
Because the case costs extra, is it worth it? As I’ll get back to in my conclusion, the Scribe is a decent gadget to experiment with, but I’m not sure if it’s one for those who place a lot of importance on their AI note-takers.
Due to this, the Scribe and its basic magnetic charger will probably be perfectly sufficient for most. The case adds plenty of hours to the use of the Scribe, along with USB-C charging, but think seriously about whether you really need it.
Don’t call it a spy gadget
But do tell people you’re recording
The Scribe has an issue that I expect Flowtica would rather no one thought about, and it’s all to do with the familiar design.
“People see a pen, so the room stays natural,” the Scribe’s website says. It’s true, and ‘natural’ is a nice way of describing the situation.
During an all-day event with a host of other journalists, I used the Flowtica Scribe to record roundtable discussions. At one point afterward, we all compared our workflows, and the conversation turned to the Flowtica Scribe.
One person, who used a traditional digital recorder and a notepad, questioned why the Scribe needed to look like a pen. Surely, this would cause a privacy problem? Think about it. When the Scribe is on a table in front of people, no one would know it was being used to record the conversation.
There are no obvious flashing lights, and unlike a device like the Mobvoi TicNote, it resembles an everyday object that doesn’t usually record anything.
The Scribe did get called the “spy pen” by some people I showed it to, without prompting. Yes, it’s easy to transport, and it does have a secondary function as an actual pen, but the fact is it wouldn’t get a second look on a desk or in a top pocket, and that’s both a good and bad thing.
It makes me think of the problem with smartglasses that have a camera. The vast majority of people won’t abuse the camera or invade people’s privacy with it. But some ignore this and threaten to ruin it for the rest of us.
The Flowtica Scribe could easily fall into the same trap, to the point where I felt the need to explain what it did to people before a meeting. It’s something to keep in mind before buying, especially as concerns over privacy are seemingly at an all-time high.
Should you buy the Flowtica Scribe?
Not everyone is going to find a use for a device like the Flowtica Scribe. Yes, it does do a few other things besides record meetings, but its primary raison d’être, is recording, transcribing, and summarizing.
If you want a device to do these things, the choice out there is enormous. Your phone does it, innumerable AI gadgets do it, earbuds do it, and, like the person I met at the F1 event, a trusty voice recorder and notepad do it, too.
The Flowtica Scribe’s hardware is lovely, but I haven’t been as impressed with the AI functionality as I was with the Mobvoi TicNote, and found it less trustworthy than my iPhone, Voice Notes, and Gemini combo.
Thankfully, the subscription isn’t essential, and if you want to experiment with an AI recording gadget, the Flowtica Scribe’s hardware will make the experience fun.
However, if you take meeting recording and all the AI features that come along with it seriously, and it matters to your day’s work, the Scribe’s shortcomings will likely frustrate you.
6/10
- Type
-
AI Note Taker
- Color
-
Satin Gunmetal / Silver Grey
- Weight
-
34.5 grams
- Bluetooth
-
Yes
The Flowtica Scribe’s AI isn’t always as smart as the competition, and the design may cause problems in some situations. The hardware is well-made, and it is a fun alternative to more ordinary AI note-takers. However, it fails to elevate itself beyond being a fun gadget.
