We have become very good at having conversations and very bad at remembering them. On a busy workday, you can sit through meetings, speak with dozens of people, and still struggle to remember who said what by the time evening comes. Of course, taking notes helps, but writing everything down can mean you are busy documenting instead of actually listening. This is the problem devices like the Neosapien Neo 1 are designed to solve. Worn around your neck, it listens to conversations and turns them into transcripts, summaries, and action items that you can search later. Sounds cool in theory, right?
Well, I wore the Neosapien Neo 1 for two weeks, using it in a variety of situations, to see how well it handles real-world conversations. Here is my full review.
The Neo 1 is a 20-gram pendant that sits around your neck on a metal chain. There is no screen, speaker, or complicated set of controls. A double tap starts or stops recording, while a white LED confirms that the device is listening.
I initially liked the simple design of the Neo 1 because it does not look like a typical gadget. However, after using it for two weeks, I have mixed feelings about the build quality. The black paint on my unit has already started chipping under normal use, while the plastic body doesn’t inspire confidence. The parts around the chain have also started to loosen.
The chain itself can be annoying. It gets tangled in clothes, and many times, while taking it off, it gets stuck in my hair.
The double-tap control on the Neo 1 is a nice idea because you can start recording without opening your phone. But there is no vibration or sound to tell you that the tap actually worked. This means I often found myself looking down at the LED to confirm whether it was recording. For a device designed to let you tap and forget about it, this feels like an unnecessary interruption.
There is another issue that bothered me more. You need to keep an eye on whether the device has gone into sleep mode. The Neo 1 is supposed to be something you can wear and forget, but I found myself checking it occasionally to make sure it was still active.
I tested the Neo 1 on the Delhi Metro, and while the transcription was generally decent, it struggled in noisy environments. Sometimes, it picked up nearby conversations, making it hard to tell what I was saying from what other people were saying.
I noticed a similar issue while travelling in public places that have a noisy environment. I found that the device occasionally mixed conversations from other passengers and people nearby with our own. However, its performance improved a lot in quieter and more controlled settings.
The Neo 1 worked especially well indoors with very little background noise, such as during meetings. In these situations, it captured conversations more clearly and produced much more reliable transcriptions.
Hindi transcription also worked well in my testing. It was able to accurately capture proper nouns, including company names, which can often be difficult for speech-to-text systems. The company says the Neo 1 supports more than 140 languages, although I wasn’t able to independently verify that claim.
The raw transcript is useful when you need to search for something, but I found the AI-generated summary much more practical for everyday use. Instead of reading through an entire conversation, you get a short summary along with important points and action items. If you have two different discussions in one recording, the Neo 1 can also separate them into different memories.
For me, this was the feature that truly made the device feel like more than just a microphone. During closed-room meetings, I use it to quietly listen to the meeting details and later check the AI summaries that have been provided to me as a clear recap of the conversation. Doing so saved me a significant amount of time and made it much easier to stay focused on the meeting instead of worrying about taking notes.
The search function is probably the feature I would miss the most if I stopped using the Neo 1. You do not have to remember which meeting something was discussed in. If you remember the topic, you can search for it and find the relevant conversation. The app keeps things relatively clean, with transcripts, summaries, and action items presented without unnecessary clutter. This is particularly useful if your work involves back-to-back meetings, interviews, or events.
Despite everything the Neo 1 does well, I still had to use a separate recording device during important conversations. The reason is simple: it does not give you the original audio back. Once it has processed the conversation, you are left with the transcript and AI-generated information.
That is fine when you only need to remember what was discussed. But during an interview, sometimes a summary is not enough. You may want to hear exactly how someone said something, understand the context behind a statement, or check a particular word. I would like Neosapien to add a recording option, because having the original audio alongside the AI notes would make the device much more useful.
Battery life is another area where my experience did not fully match the idea behind the product. Neosapien claims around two to three days of battery life, but with regular recording, you should expect considerably less. For something designed around continuous listening, this can become inconvenient.
I also found the device going to sleep occasionally, which meant I had to keep checking it. That takes away some of the convenience of simply wearing it throughout the day. The good thing is that the Neo 1 can continue recording over Bluetooth even when there is no internet connection. It can then process and sync the information when you are back online. In my testing, the device took around 95 minutes to fully charge from 0 per cent to 100 per cent.
Pairing the Neo 1 with the app is simple, and the overall interface is clean. There is also a desktop app for Windows and macOS that can capture audio from your computer for services such as Zoom, Meet, Teams, and WhatsApp calls without needing a bot to join the meeting.
However, I did notice some syncing issues, and there were also moments when the device randomly went to sleep. Another limitation is that integrations are still a work in progress. I would like to see the Neo 1 automatically push notes into apps such as Notion or directly update tasks and CRM entries.
A device that listens to conversations will always raise privacy concerns. While the company says raw audio is deleted after transcription and that data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, its privacy policy also identifies several categories of third-party services that may process user data, including payment providers, logistics providers, AI partners, and cloud storage providers.
The company also says it regularly audits and tests its systems for vulnerabilities, although the privacy policy does not publicly identify any third-party security agencies or provide detailed audit reports. It further states that user conversations will not be used to train AI models unless the user explicitly opts in to such use.
The Neo 1 is an interesting product because the idea behind it genuinely works. I found myself saving time while covering events and searching for quotes, and the quality of its transcripts and summaries was better than I expected.
But there are too many compromises for me to call it a complete product. The battery life needs improvement; the device can go to sleep unexpectedly; the build quality doesn’t feel premium; the chain is inconvenient, and Android syncing needs more work. The inability to access original recordings is also a serious limitation.
At Rs 12,999, I would recommend the Neo 1 mainly if your day revolves around meetings, interviews, events, or conversations that you regularly need to remember. If you rarely have such use cases, you may struggle to justify the price.
For the Neo 2, I want better battery life, stronger hardware, a better form factor, proper integrations, the ability to work without the phone nearby, and most importantly, access to the original recordings. The Neo 1 has a genuinely useful idea at its core. Now, Neosapien needs to make the hardware and experience good enough to match it.