Ideal for adrenaline junkies or ad-hoc interviews, Thanko has just released a very portable HD camcorder. The
HDMI Video Pen HD Camcorder is about the size of of the 1st gen iPod Nano or or perhaps closer to the high capacity
Flash Voyager GTR flash drives but packs 720p video recorder inside. Discrete spy-type recorders have always been very niche products owing to the terrible quality of the recordings. To get discrete size, resolution was sacrificed sometimes to the point of being unusable. This super slim camera is able to capture full 720p video at 30 fps. It can also capture 7 mega-pixel still photos.
Tucked in a shirt pocket, this would make a great hands free camcorder for just about any situation not just covert recordings. The tiny chewing gum form factor hides a few other key features as well. There's a standard microUSB connector for downloading videos and images, as well as a
mini-HDMI connector for viewing videos directly from the Pen. Even better the memory is expandable and swappable using microSDHC memory cards. A 16GB card should hold almost 7 hours of video but clips are limited to 30 minutes each. Recording time per charge is about 5 hours as well, so having a few cards that size handy makes sense. Charge time is a brief 3 hours to get a full 5 hour charge. Video is encoded in Quicktime .MOV format, hopefully the H.264 variety for compatibility. The only missing specification is audio. We don't find any mention of whether or not the Video Pen actually captures audio along with video. Thanko includes both the microUSB cable and a mini-HDMI cable for $120. Memory cards are not included so you will have to factor that into the purchase cost. 16GB microSD cards are only about $30 at present which makes it a little more expensive than other 720p digital camcorders but at least 300% lighter and smaller.
ION Twin Video Dual-lens Camcorder Ready to Ship
By Anthony Garland on February 21st, 2011
