Thank you viaim for sending us this RecDot to review!

I've reviewed quite a few different wireless earbuds over the years. For many of them, they share a lot in common with small improvements here or there. Most have just a few features to set them apart from one another. That's not the case here, with the viaim RecDot. While I didn't expect to like the AI features, I have to admit that despite my skepticism, there's really something useful here. The many features on offer really do set them apart. Thankfully, they get most of the basics right as well.

As earbuds, these are a fairly competent set. The charging case has a front LED that glows depending on charge level, and it's a slick, premium look. When you slide the top open (which takes a few tries to figure out if you've never opened them before) the earbuds are revealed, along with a glowing L and R icon. In the middle of the open case is a large button with what looks like a Record icon on it; more on that later. The buds are held in magnetically, which is a common design these days. The earbuds themselves looks sharp as well, with a glossy finish and a prominently displayed viaim logo. The eartips are translucent gray with a red accent inside; it's overall a sharp look.

The earbuds have a common airpod-inspired shape, where they have an eartip that goes into your ear canals, and a stem that points down, which makes it easy to grab and adjust them. On most earbuds I've tested that use a touch-sensitive control system, the area that's touch sensitive is on the outside of the stem. Interestingly, on the RecDot they put the touch-sensitive area on the front of the stem, in a little dimple area. I'm grateful that they make it easier to find where the touch-sensitive area is, though actually using it is a little tricky.

There are actually quite a few different touch gestures available. You can use pinch gestures, pinch and hold, and slide. I found slide to be the only one I can activate somewhat regularly, but even that's not super reliable. At least I don't often find that I activate them on accident, which is better than many earbuds I've used. Pinch lets you answer calls, play or pause playback, switch tracks, or change noise canceling mode. Pinch and hold primarily controls the recording features; more on that later. You can also have it adjust noise cancellation, or bring up the system assistant. Slide controls can only adjust the volume.

On top of slide controls, there is also voice control. Most earbuds that I've used use the phone's built-in assistant for voice control, but not here - you can actually say 'Play music' out loud and the earbuds themselves will perform the action. There are eight voice-controllable actions available. You can enable or disable voice control inside the viaim app.

I have to say that the viaim app is absolutely packed with features. Outside of the AI note taking (more on that coming soon, I promise!) the earbud section itself is still quite packed. Of course you can see the earbuds' charge level. You can enable or disable dual-device connection, which is a great feature. Unfortunately, I found that with this earbud, it would often choose one device at the expense of the other, so it wouldn't switch between them properly, and I eventually turned it off. What a shame, as I love the feature when it works properly.

The viaim app offers a staggering eighteen EQ modes, and a custom eight-band EQ on top of that. I found the default 'Balance' to be just fine for my tastes, but there are enough customization options to suit pretty much anyone. Thankfully, they have a nice and full sound out of the box, while detailed enough to satisfy most. My only complaint about the sound isn't the quality per se, but that the LHDC audio CODEC that they support for high-resolution audio (rather than the more common LDAC or Apt-X HD) is not supported on my phone, a Sony Xperia 1 VI. Apparently no Sony or Samsung phones support LHDC, but less mainstream brands like Huawei and Xiaomi do. From what I can tell, primarily Chinese phone manufacturers support it, which is a shame, as the technology itself seems pretty great. Thankfully, AAC and SBC still work just fine, even if it doesn't sound quite as good.

Like many higher-end earbuds, this has a sensor that can tell if it's in your ear. By default, it will automatically play or pause based on if you have the earbuds in. You can also configure a few other features based on if they are in your ears, like answering calls, or transparency/noise canceling modes.

One rather unique feature that I haven't seen before is that the app has an earbud fit test. What this does is it plays a few low-frequency test tones, and compares what the inside mics hear compared to the outside. If the results are satisfactory, then it says you have a good fit. If not, it will suggest that you change ear tips or reseat them in your ear for a better fit. I find it fascinating that such a feature exists, and that it works as well as it does.

The app never ceased to impress me, as it also includes things like 'Find device'. This lets you have the earbuds play a loud beeping tone so that you can find them in your room if they fell out nearby. How cool is that? Last but not least, you can adjust other earbud settings like enabling Low latency mode or prioritizing sound quality or connection stability. Lots of higher-end earbuds have those features, and I'm grateful to see them here, too.

I have a different standard for expensive audiophile earphones and wireless earbuds like these. They don't sound like expensive wired audiophile headphones, but they are most certainly good enough for most users. Honestly, I listen to podcasts more than anything else on my earbuds, or join phone calls. These did that quite well. When I do occasionally listen to music with them, they sound slightly bassy, but not offensively so. They have a generally pleasant sound signature, and get shockingly loud. I love that, as far too many earbuds don't get loud enough for some circumstances. These do the job just fine. For casual listening in my quiet house, I rarely had to raise them above 50-60% volume, leaving plenty of headroom.

For most earbud reviews, I would probably stop here, say how great they sound, and wrap this thing up. But these are not your typical earbuds; these are all about the AI. And I'm the first to admit that I'm a bit shocked (and careful) how quickly AI has taken over as much as it has. And while the viaim RecDot may be an early product with integrated AI as it is, I have to say that it's actually pretty impressive what they managed to do with the tech as things are now.

The main draw of this product, outside of the decent earbuds as described above, is the rather impressive AI recording and transcription. The earbuds themselves actually have enough onboard memory for recording what's around you, even without the phone or app connected. When connected to your phone it can of course record even more. These earbuds can record in-person interactions, or digital ones like a phone call or zoom meeting. If the earbuds can hear it, they can record it.

Now it's probably important to point out from here that if you're not careful, you can easily violate not only your country or state laws (I happen to live in a state that requires both parties to consent to recordings) but also company policies if you use these for work, which is their primary intended use case. I have worked at companies with extremely strict data loss prevention (DLP) policies that would have absolutely not allowed me to use these earbuds for work. However, I was able to use them without issue during a meeting related to this ministry, since no such policy would be a problem there. So please, be careful and check your local laws and company policies before recording other people.

Thankfully, where otherwise allowed, viaim promises that your data is otherwise safe. All data and recordings are end-to-end encrypted, and no ads or other third-party sharing is taking place without authorization. For example, when you use AI features, they are shared with the requisite AI, and stored on the viaim cloud (more on that later), but with no one else.

When used properly, I found the AI features pretty neat. For example, I was testing them with my daughter who can speak pretty good Spanish that she learned from school (I cannot understand Spanish). Using the live translation feature, I was able to get not only visible translations on screen, but also audible translations through the earbuds. While it wasn't perfect and would sometimes hear things wrong, it's certainly usable enough that if I found myself in that situation, I would be very grateful to have access to these earbuds.

Christ Centered Gamer is a non-profit, and it has occasional board of directors meetings. I used this RecDot's recording and transcription feature to record the meeting, and to transcribe and summarize it for me. I also enabled the multi-speaker feature in order to see how well it could differentiate the six of us in the meeting. The results are a mixed bag. For example, it identified eight speakers, when only seven were in the house (and six were in the meeting).

To start the recording, I took advantage of the RecDot's area recording feature. I opened the case and pressed the big Record button I mentioned earlier. I also enabled real-time transcription and placed the earbud puck in the center of the meeting table we were sitting at. I left the earbuds in the case while the meeting was going on.

Looking over the transcript is interesting, because it got most of the main points of what we talked about, but it missed or confused so many words. Also, being AI, the summary hallucinated some things. For example, we used the CCG acronym, but didn't define it in the meeting (all members present know what it stands for). But the AI summary thought it means 'Christian Christianity Gamers', which I thought was pretty funny. However, the main topics of discussion from the meeting as summarized are pretty spot-on. There is also a 'Mind map' feature that does a great job of hitting on all of the main points of what we covered.

To summarize, the transcription itself has enough mistakes that it's only kind of usable. The AI summary and mind mapping features are legitimately useful though, even if the AI does make things up on occasion. I like what I saw overall, but it's far from perfect as thing are now.

I also tried using it to take notes a few times. When I was the only speaker and I had the earbuds in, it worked pretty well, though I hated how often I said 'umm' and things like that. I was going to try to write this review using it, but once I saw how bad I speak compared to how I write, I realized my writer's pride wouldn't allow that. Putting thoughts into words is something that forces thoughts to unite in a way that blabbing about something just doesn't.

On another note, one time I accidentally recorded myself using the earbuds while vacuuming and listening to a podcast. The in-room sounds are much louder in the recording than what I was listening to, though it's there if you turn it up. Since I listen to podcasts at a faster than normal speed, the AI transcription missed a whole bunch of words (well, most of them) but the AI summary was quite funny. It somehow figured out and noted more details that were in the podcast that the transcript itself didn't catch. I'm really not sure how or why that happened.

The viaim has three AI plans on offer. The first is of course the basic plan that costs nothing, which gives you up to 600 minutes a month. It also limits you to the cheapest AI models, like Gemini 3 Flash, GPT-5 mini, and Claude Haiku 4.5. The higher-end plans, like Gemini 3.1 Pro, GPT-5.2, and Claude Sonnet 4.5 are premium AI models and are only available on higher-tier plans. The Pro plan costs $9.99 monthly and increases the minutes available to 1800. The Ultra plan, at $19.99 per month offers unlimited minutes. If you are going to live on the transcription, translation, and recording features, the bigger plans are certainly worthwhile. For most users who will just record on occasion, the basic plan is more than enough.

One unexpected but interesting part of the viaim experience is that everything you record goes to the viaim.ai cloud. They do let you export your transcriptions and everything else directly using the app, which I really appreciate. It even worked with my favorite mobile-to-PC synchronization tool, KDE Connect. However, if you want, you can also just use the viaim.ai website. Everything in my account was there, and I was able to export anything I wanted right to my PC. I should note that when you first sign into the viaim app, it will want to create an account. In my case, I just used the gmail account my phone uses and it was seamless.

The viaim RecDot is a surprisingly useful piece of technology. I imagine that in the future most of these features may be something our phones just do for us, but for now, this unique hardware really can help. I didn't think I would like the AI features, and yes, they have room for improvement. But they work far better than I expected, and are legitimately useful for the right person. If you work in a large corporation, I would hesitate buying them for work without written approval. But if you get that approval, or if you own your own business, they can be a great tool to really help get those short and quick conversations documented and not lost or forgotten. Just make sure you follow all of your local laws and regulations!