Key takeaways after testing out SpeakON, an AI-powered dictation iPhone accessory

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to test SpeakON, a magnetic, AI-powered dictation accessory that snaps onto the back of the iPhone and refines transcriptions based on preset preferences. Here’s how it did.

‘The world’s first voice typing device for iPhone’

As I’ve written before, I find the idea of AI-powered voice-based interactions intriguing, particularly when it comes to the possibility of AI agents getting things done across multiple apps on our behalf.

And while we’re still a little ways away from seeing that promise play out in full, we’re already starting to see what those early building blocks look like in practice, especially through more focused, task-specific devices.

One such device is SpeakON, a magnetic dictation accessory that snaps onto the back of the iPhone and acts as a physical shortcut for turning speech into text directly in any app.

SpeakON can transcribe and clean up speech on the fly, adapting its tone depending on the app you’re using. Additionally, it can structure your thoughts into lists, or easily translate text from dictation.

I had the opportunity to test SpeakON, and I’ll be the first to say it: convincing someone to buy a single-purpose piece of AI hardware that many would say could just as easily be an app is a tough job, especially given how limited third-party hardware access to the iPhone still is.

Thankfully, that is not my job. My job is to relay my experience with it, which was surprisingly positive.

The good

Setting up SpeakON was extremely easy. The Bluetooth pairing worked flawlessly, and the onboarding tutorial was actually useful for learning how to configure the accessory in the SpeakON app and then use it as the system-wide input keyboard.

Once I added the SpeakON keyboard as one of my iOS keyboards, all I had to do was press the button on the accessory on the back of the iPhone, dictate an email, a text message, or a grocery list, and it would transcribe it while eliminating small flubs, filler words, and repetition.

The biggest strength of SpeakON, in my experience, was the Attune feature, which lets users select Casual, Professional, or Formal presets to adjust the text accordingly, depending on the app they’re using.

So while the user can set work and email apps to use the Formal Attune preset, they can select Casual for messaging or social apps. There’s also the option to turn Attune off altogether, in which case SpeakON simply clears the text for fluency, adding the correct punctuation along the way.

Another great feature is the auto-translate feature, which, in combination with the cleanup and Attune settings, did a great job turning messy dictations in Portuguese into polished texts in English.

In fact, translation shows up in several parts of the SpeakON experience. There’s a dedicated translation interface, along with a contextual button that appears whenever you dictate in a language different from the one set as your Translation Target in settings.

Supported languages include English (US, UK), Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional), Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic.

Another upside is the hardware itself. The magnet is strong, it feels good in the hand, it is super light at just 25 grams, and the button’s clickiness to activate the microphone is pleasant (the relentless haptic feedback, not so much).

Finally, the company seems to be moving quickly to address some of the issues I’ll list below, as they released a few firmware updates during my test period. In fact, the firmware updates went off without a hitch, which is always a relief when dealing with screenless devices.

The bad

SpeakON’s microphones worked nearly flawlessly in quiet environments, like my office. In noisier settings, though, they can require you to bring the device a bit closer for a more reliable capture.

The upside, given the situation, is that the user can just detach it from the iPhone and speak right to it from up close, like a hip TikToker speaking into a lavalier mic. But that sort of defeats the purpose of the device a bit.

Battery life was also an issue. The company told me that SpeakON should last up to 8.5 days on standby when connected via Bluetooth and up to 10 days when not connected, along with up to 20 and 23 hours of recording time, respectively.

That was not my experience, as I found that even when not recording, the battery would run out much faster. SpeakON does recharge quickly, but be sure to keep a USB-C cable handy.

But that’s where the frequent firmware updates come in, as they seem to address some of these shortcomings. This shows that they’re attempting to move fast to fix pressing issues, which is always a good sign for a new product.

The mid

According to the company, SpeakON is SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA certified, which is great news for privacy, since they indicate that the company has audited security controls in place and follows strict rules for handling sensitive data. But when asked which models they use, they declined to answer, citing security reasons.

They did, however, assure me that “user data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, and recordings are only processed to generate texts in accordance with our privacy policy. No audio is used for model training without explicit user consent.”

Another sticking point for some users might be the subscription model, which gates key features behind usage limits.

While the device itself costs $129, higher word limits and more frequent use of features like Attune are restricted to the Pro plan, which costs $108 annually or $12 monthly.

Finally, this takes some getting used to. From the ergonomics to the actual habit of reaching for that button on the back of the device, this may be a big adjustment for some users. It sure was for me.

And even though I wasn’t able to integrate SpeakON into my workflow as naturally and effortlessly as I’d like, this little device made me even more convinced that voice-based interactions show more promise than many people give them credit for. Hopefully, iOS will allow for them, even though this still feels like a bit ask.

To learn more about SpeakON, follow this link.

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