Most AI note-takers on the market are priced like they’re targeting corporate expense accounts. Boya is going a different direction. The company announced the Notra Neo at IFA 2026 in Berlin, and the headline number is $79.99. That’s real money, but it’s also significantly cheaper than most dedicated AI recording hardware out there right now.
The Notra Neo is the latest addition to Boya’s Notra lineup, and the pitch is pretty straightforward: a compact device that captures your conversations and then lets AI do the heavy lifting afterward. We’re talking lectures, work meetings, phone calls, online classes. The kind of stuff people are already trying to record on their phones, but doing it in a clunky, disorganized way.
The device handles three recording modes, and it switches between them automatically based on how you’re using it. Ambient Recording picks up face-to-face conversations with 360-degree voice pickup up to five meters out. Phone Call Recording captures calls directly. And Bluetooth Recording connects to your other devices for online meetings, virtual classes, and video interviews. So whether you’re sitting in a lecture hall or hopping on a Zoom call, the Neo is supposed to cover it without you having to dig through settings.
After the recording, the AI tools kick in. The Notra Neo supports transcription in more than 140 languages, which is a genuinely useful number, and it can identify different speakers in a conversation so your notes actually make sense when you read them back. From there, it generates summaries and mind maps, so you’re not scrubbing through an hour of audio to find one thing someone said. There’s also an Ask AI feature that lets you search back through old recordings, which could be really handy for students revisiting a semester’s worth of lectures or professionals tracking decisions across multiple meetings.
Everything syncs through the Boya OS app and a web platform, so you can access, manage, and export your content across devices. Boya is also throwing in free unlimited cloud storage, which is a detail worth paying attention to because a lot of competitors nickel-and-dime you there.
On the hardware side, the specs that matter most for daily use are solid. Here’s what you’re getting:
- Up to 20 hours of continuous recording on a single charge
- 8 GB of built-in storage
- Free unlimited cloud storage through Boya OS
- Transcription in 140+ languages with speaker identification
- AI summaries, mind maps, and Ask AI search
The broader context here matters. AI note-taking is having a real moment right now. Apps like Otter.ai and Notion AI have made software-based transcription mainstream, but dedicated hardware has mostly stayed expensive and niche. Boya is clearly betting that there’s a big middle market of students and everyday workers who want something more reliable than a phone app but can’t justify dropping $200-plus on a recorder. At $79.99, the Notra Neo is positioned to test that theory pretty directly.
But the price alone won’t carry it. The real question is how good the AI summaries actually are in practice, how well speaker identification holds up in noisy rooms, and whether the Boya OS platform is something people will actually want to use long-term. Those are things you only find out after living with the device for a while. Still, the spec sheet looks reasonable for the price, and the inclusion of free cloud storage removes one of the more annoying friction points in this category.
The Notra Neo is available starting September 4, 2026, at an MSRP of $79.99. If you’re at IFA, you can check it out at the Boya booth in Hall 20, Stand 132, running through September 8.