Review of The Hi-Res Video & Audio Pen
Recently we received in our new 1280 x 960 8Gig video pen recorder with audio. So I had an opportunity to sit down with this product and give it a good old fashion testing, by that I mean I dropped it and instantly broke it……Yes that was a terribly lame joke
This pen is a larger pen like a Montblanc pen its a bit taller than its predecessors by maybe a half an inch or so, it feels solid and its got some good weight to it, so yes it can double as a paper holder on a windy day. Not a whole lot has changed as far as use time goes, it still only runs for about 60 minutes on a full charge, upside is a full charge only takes 45 minutes now as opposed to 2 hours.
Some other neat features of this unit are as follows:
- 1280 x 960 record resolution at 30fps
- 2 mega pixel portable camera future along with web cam functions
- Audio detection recording
- Can store 30,000 images
- You can charge the unit while recording
So I tested all three functions of this pen starting with the video. It was straight forward, click the button once on the top of the pen and it turns on the unit, click it one more time and the blue light begins to flash and your recording video. Playback was just as easy, plug it into the USB port with the provided USB cable and download it, no software required, video was clean and the audio was surprisingly better than I would imagine giving that the older models where nothing to get excited about audio wise.
The second function I chose to test was the the cameras snapshot ability. Now I am happy they added this feature to the pen because I get a lot of customers who have asked for this. The camera is 2 mega pixels so nothing super hi-res, the picture quality was decent, but for those spies who want to be able to read letters on 8 x 11 in Times New Roman 10 you will be sadly disappointed. Once again super easy to download to the PC.
Lastly I tried out the audio detection recording function otherwise know as voice activation but I like to fondly refer to it as noise activation. That’s exactly what it did any noise it heard it woke up and recorded the video footage, I was surprised by how well it worked, I didnt have much faith in it and honestly its not exactly built for this function, although neat its still a pen with very limited battery life, ya you may say toss it on the table and let it go, sure do that and get that fantastic sideways shot you always dreamt of along with half the table blocking out the picture.
Now the real cool part of this unit is that you can record with it while its plugged in charging, none of the other pens we carried previously could boast such a feature, yes I know its still limits you but hey its a step in the right direction, use your imagination or find a neighbor hood kid and use his!!!! Still though that’s very cool it allows a new user of this device to plug it in and get the hang of it before heading to his or hers appointment.
Now I know most video pens have the time and date stamp function but some of them are very difficult to set, I found this to be one of the easiest to use, there is a software disk that comes with the unit on the disk it has the date and time setup file already saved on it, all you have to do is set your date and time save the file then plug in your pen and load the date and time file right on the pen and your done.
Overall I was happy with this pens performance. I liked the new hi-res at 30fps and the ability to take snap shots, I felt the pen was pretty simple to operate, I was disappointed that this pen was a bit larger in length than its cousins, I do also like that the button is flush along the top of the pen instead of sticking out like the older pens do. Its a meatier pen than some of the previous pens and its a bit weighty which could cause problems when placing it in a shirt pocket, super easy to use though and in the end thats the most important feature of all. I would not shy away from using this pen.
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