Windows dictation compared: Win+H, Dragon, Vox Manager

Most people asking this already have Win + H installed and have not noticed. It is worth starting there, because for a fair number of desks it settles the question.

Win + H

Press it in any text field on Windows 10 or 11 and speak. Free, nothing to install, recognition maintained by Microsoft, works everywhere a cursor blinks.

The limit is not the recogniser. It listens through the system microphone, and on most desks that is a laptop array or a webcam an arm's length away. At that distance you have to speak up, which is fine alone in a room and awkward with colleagues nearby. The same distance lets in the fan and the keyboard.

If you dictate a few sentences a day at a quiet desk, stop reading here. You already have what you need.

Dragon

Nuance has been building it for decades and it shows. Custom vocabulary that learns your terminology, voice commands for editing and formatting without touching the keyboard, and accuracy that radiologists and litigators still rely on.

It costs real money, the professional editions are a considered purchase rather than an impulse, and it is a large program to install and train.

If dictation is how you produce most of your text, and your field has words no general recogniser has heard of, Dragon is what you buy.

Vox Manager

Your phone becomes the microphone. It sits near your mouth, hears you at conversational volume, and sends the finished text to the PC, which types it into whatever window has focus.

It has no vocabulary training, no command language for editing, no macros. Recognition is whatever your phone already does. What it changes is the distance between your mouth and the microphone, and it is free and open source.

The table

	Win + H	Dragon	Vox Manager
Price	free	paid	free
Microphone	system mic, usually distant	whatever you plug in	your phone, held close
Works in any app	yes	yes	yes
Custom vocabulary	no	yes	no
Voice editing commands	no	yes	no
Source available	no	no	yes
Audio leaves the device	yes, to Microsoft	depends on edition	recognition runs on the phone

Why people quit dictating

Rarely because of accuracy. They quit because talking at a screen from half a metre away feels ridiculous with other people in the room, so it becomes something they do only when alone, and a habit that survives only in an empty office is not a habit.

Holding a phone near your mouth and speaking normally is a different posture. That is the whole idea, and it takes an afternoon to find out whether it works for you.