Swann PenCam Viruses The Cheep Stuff On eBay.
By Mike Lipshultz

Hopefully if you are reading this you have read our article on “Can I Get a Witness”.  It is an article on what I call personal Video Surveillance Units or Personal Video Recorders.

I bought a few “cheep” units off of Ebay, and the good folks at Swann (www.swann.com) sent me one of their PenCam Mini Video Cameras that look just like a nice writing pen.  I quickly found that the other styles that looked like a lighter, or key chain and so on, just were not as easy to use as a Pen, that slipped into your pocket.  So for most of you, think about it, I believe you will want the “Pen” style.

In fact they have several different units.  Check them out at http://www.swann.com/s/products

First with the Ebay “Pen” style unit, it looked and felt as nice as the one from Swann, but as we used it, it was a “pain” to use compared to the ease of using the unit from Swann.  Also even though we did not need it, Swann offered externally good tech support.  You could even call them on the phone.  On the one off eBay… Well “who you going to call?”.  Some unknown company in Hong Kong?  Good Luck with that!  And forget about any real customer service.  Want to wait 3 to 8 weeks to get a replacement… You get what you pay for!  Stick with the Swann.  It was so much easer to use.  Better made, and so on.

I just clipped it into my pocket and turned it on.  If I needed to save the recording or watch it, the pen comes apart, and plugs into a USB port to charge or move the recording to your computer.  Swann includes very easy to use instructions and software.  And yes you can use it as a real Pen and write with it.  Swann even gives you lots of refill cartridges for the pen part of it! As I quickly wanted to not even bother with the ones off eBay, including the “look alike” Pen camera, and just stick with the much better Swann unit.  It became my favorite, so I’m not only telling you to get it, we are giving it an award!

Now I wanted to give it the “Editors Choice” award, but when I saw the reaction of the “other side” when they saw I had my own recording, all I could say was WOW, that was Great! Did you see the look on their face!

So Swann gets the WOW Award!

The WOW award came as somewhat of a shock (To Us) because we took a look at a couple of products a few years ago and said “WOW” what a product. This is the coolest thing we had ever seen, one day everyone will have this product! And this has come to pass for many of the products that we have given the WOW award to. The product that gets the WOW award is a total of all of the our awards.  Like the A-OK: works right out of the box; ON TARGET: Just what the consumer needs, and is a total WINNER!


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Last modified: December 04, 2012

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Editor: Tyler Harwood, Mike Lipshultz