This is a pretty neat spy camera. Don't expect the results to be as good as a digital SLR, but for taking video and sound in a covert manner it is quite good. In attached video you can see and hear snippets of my evening out with the pen in my pocket. The video the pen takes pretty good quality but since you can't tell exactly where you are pointing the framing is difficult. The video has quite a bit of shake because it is taken while the person is walking or moving. In addition for the ladies the pockets are often on the part of the chest that is not flat so the camera lens will be pointing a bit up rather than straight ahead. In my video I got a lot of ceiling shots. Carrying this pen in the purse might be another option that will work in some situations better than a shirt pocket. Attached video contains the video taken with camera in my shirt pocket, I did not hold the pen in my hand so this is a realistic example of what the video would look like if I wanted to take video in a covert manner.
After I fully charged the camera, I was able to take video for 40 minutes. It is a little difficult to tell if the camera working or not. I could tell it was recording because it got slightly warm. When it stopped recording it got cool so I knew it stopped recording. When I got home I found two video files with a total recording time of 39 minutes. It is also hard to tell when it is fully charged or how long it take for it to get fully charged. When I charge it the indicator light is red, but it continued glow red even overnight when I think it was already fully charged.
The camera has no controls, it operates by detecting motion. The only thing you can control is setting the date to the current date, and this is done by createing a text file which contains the current date. A sample copy of this text file is present on the micro SD card. Just edit it with any text editor and modify sample time to current time. Save the file. The name of the file us userconfig.txt.
This pen camera looks very similar to a normal pen and it even writes well. It has a very short ink canister because most of its body is the battery and the camera.
The camera lens is right above the clip. The clip has a nice mechanism which closes the lens when you don't want it to take pictures. Very thoughtful!
The charging port and the port for Micro SD are revealed when you take off the cap.
The status indicator is a small light on the opposite side from the camera lens. If you are carrying the pen with the camera out then the light is facing you so you know what the camera is doing. To start recording you need to do a short press on the button on top of the pen. Another short press turns it off. A long press while it is on puts into motion activation mode. Note that the instruction refer to the color of the light is amber, but to me it looks like light green light. Do not remove the micro sd card until the pen stops saving the file which is indicated by status light being off.
The camera produces either jpg photos (1280x1024) or AVI videos (1280x720). The camera is 8 mega pixels. It can take TF card up to 32G.
Finally, if something goes wrong it is nice to have an escape hatch. There is a reset to manufacturer's setting pin hole on the camera. I was able to reset the camera by pushing it with the back end of a needle.
Overall, a very good combination of stealth and video.
You can find it on Amazon by following this link.
Ali Julia review ★★★★★
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