The body worn camera kit consists of a MPEG video recorder unit and a tiny pinhole camera where the lens looks like a normal black button. The idea of the unit is that you conceal the camera about your person or hidden in a bag for covert filming. Since the camera lens is hidden in the button, you’re able to place the camera where it has a greater field of view without attracting attention.

Pakatak kindly provided me with their body worn camera kit to review, and I must say that I am very impressed (and that doesn’t happen very often). In this review, I’ll highlight the best features of both the recorder unit and the camera.

Complete Kit in Aluminium Case
(Click to enlarge)

The first thing that struck me when I got the parcel was how cool the kit looked! The kit comes in a small and professional brushed aluminium flight case which contains the button camera, some spare buttons (for matching the camera to the rest of your clothing), the video recorder, a protective case for the video recorder, a mains charger, a USB cable, a video cable, some earphones, and an instruction manual. The case is lined with pre-cut foam so that all of the components are protected when in transit.

Closeup of Button Camera
(Click to enlarge)

The camera has been carefully mounted onto a button, and since it’s a wired camera it measures a tiny 20mm x 20mm x 22mm (including the lens). The camera also has a short wire with a microphone at the end of it, which is about 25mm (1 inch) in length. The cable for the camera is shrouded in a fabric sleeve, which leaves it looking more like a shoe lace or draw-string than a wire. This fabric sleeve is just another useful feature making it easier to hide the camera in everyday clothing.

All spy cameras need a power source, and in this particular case the camera gets its power supply from the video recorder! It’s a great touch as it means you only have a single battery to worry about. You just plug the camera into the video recorder and instantly the power supply, video and sound are sorted.

Button Camera and Recorder
(Click to enlarge)

The video recorder uses a high capacity rechargeable battery you would expect to find in a Nokia 3310. Using a standard rechargeable battery like this is more sensible than I think the manufacturers realised. I imagine their reasons were that these batteries are cheap to produce and source, therefore making the gadget cheaper to manufacture. For customers, it means you can buy spare batteries, charge them up, and then you can have an array of spare batteries for long operations in the field. Mobile phone batteries are designed to be used for high drain applications, which match the requirements of this camera and recorder gadget perfectly.

After a single button press, the video recorder starts to record video into the internal 128MB storage device. To save battery power, you can also switch off the LCD screen whist it is recording by just flicking a little switch. You can extend the storage capacity to use a SD or MMC flash memory card if you wish. To retrieve the video from the video recorder onto a PC, you just use the USB cable. When you plug the USB cable into the PC, it acts just like a memory stick, and you can transfer the files with a simple drag and drop operation.

Now here comes the feature that really clinched the deal with this bit of kit, and that’s the quality of the video. The camera itself is that different to any other spy camera, so it suffers in low light conditions unless there’s an ambient infra-red light source. However, in normal light conditions, the camera performs admirably. In terms of the recorded video, I’ve never been more impressed by MPEG video that has been recorded in realtime! The quality of recorded video is simply excellent! There was no blockiness caused by fast motion of the camera either, which is where all miniature recorders I’ve seen in the past have suffered.

The recorder itself has a number of other features that I didn’t feel the need to review, such as playing MP4 movies from the web or playing music in MP3 format. You can also plug the recorder into a television for playing back the recorded video.

In Conclusion, this has got to be the best covert video kit I’ve ever had the fortune to review. The quality of the video, the simplicity of the recorder and camera, the requirement of just a single battery to power the recorder and the camera, the use of a generic battery to allow spares for use in the field, expandable video storage with additional memory cards all contribute to making this kit worthwhile. And then there’s the impressive-looking aluminium case that just puts the cherry on the top.

For £200 I would say the covert button camera and recorder kit is great value for money, and it’s nice to see some spy kit that truly justifies a sensible price tag.

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