Otter heard the meeting. Gemini read the transcript. My notes got better when they stopped fighting

Two weeks, same meetings, both tools running. Otter transcribed live, flagged action items, and had notes ready before I'd closed the call window. Gemini got the exported transcript afterward with specific prompts — 'find every commitment with a date attached.' The outputs were different products, and it took me a week to stop scoring them on the same rubric.

Live, Otter wins on reflexes. Its real-time transcript saved me twice — once when I rejoined a call late and caught up from the live feed, once when a colleague asked 'what did she just say about pricing' and I had it on screen. Its immediate summary is 80% as good as my prompted Gemini version, available ninety seconds sooner.

Deep, Gemini wins on thought. 'Which of these action items contradict what we agreed last month' is not an Otter question. Gemini, fed two transcripts, found a real contradiction that Otter had faithfully transcribed and faithfully ignored. Analysis across meetings is a reasoning job, not a transcription job.

The costs are close, the accuracy is close (Otter slightly better with crosstalk, Gemini slightly better with accents in one-on-ones), so the deciding factor is workflow fit. If you live in meetings and need notes to exist by the time the call ends, Otter is the standing answer. If you run few meetings but need to squeeze meaning out of them, the Gemini route is stronger.

My setup now: Otter captures everything automatically and nobody thinks about it. Gemini gets pulled in for the meetings that mattered, maybe two a week. The transcript is a commodity — what you do with it is the product.