Advantages: discreet, serviceable performance, inexpensive, readily available, good fun Disadvantages: poor low-light performance, audio often adrift with video, high background noise a problem
The product reviewed here is NOT 'wireless'. THIS Swann PenCam is a tiny 'non-wireless' colour video camera housed in a ball-point pen. The device produces date and time-stamped MJPEG AVI files: 352x288 video at 12 frames per second and mono audio in PCM format at 8000Hz/128kbs - these figures derived from G-Spot. Right now the Swann PenCam costs fifty-nine pounds ninety-nine pence at Maplin.
For this sort of money Swann's little gadget gives very acceptable results in daylight. But under low/artificial light, performance is not so hot. What's more, the audio is usually out-of-synch with the video, and the built-in microphone 'gain' is rather high, meaning that, on playback, the voice of the person with the PenCam in his/her breast pocket could be slightly distorted. Excessive background noise, as encountered on public transport ...
Advantages: Great budget camera, very good picture quality for age/price. Disadvantages: Not manufactured anymore. See review for details of others.
This is a webcam from the German manufacturers " AIPTEK ". Not a company I had heard of when I received this as an unwanted gift.
A little history about the company from their site.
http://www.aiptek.com.tw/
1997: AIPTEK were founded in the Hsin-Chu city in Taiwan.
2000: AIPTEK created the World's 1st PenCam
2001: We introduced World's No.1 Point-&-Shot DV.
2002: We were awarded the iF Design Award for our Network Camera, ANC6000(W)
2003: We announced our first IPO.
So what will it do for me? I hear you ask well, in essence this is a webcam only, and thus you will not be using it as a digital camera, but along with Windows movie maker you can capture videos with it (640 x 480 Pixels, 704 x 576 Pixels). However the supplied CD software will only allow capture of single framed pictures.
PACKAGING ...
Huge zoom, Focus Tracking, Easy to use 
