The Digital Peripheral Solutions QD113P  4 GB Covert-Ops Surveillance Pen (what a mouthful) is a video and audio spy pen manufactured for Q-See, a company based out of Middlesex, U.K, who source their devices (they sell more then simply pen cameras) through their Hong Kong office.

We ordered two of these devices from Amazon and they arrived in  nondescript white cardboard packaging.

Diving right in,  the build quality of these devices is surprisingly quite poor.  The top lever button jammed on both devices after repeated use.  For professionals such as myself who rely on video when the moment is right, this is unacceptable.  After two weeks, one of the devices became completly obstructed and was not able to function whatsoever.  For the other pen I used a small knife and was able to widen the hole, however it is quite ridiculous that this would even be necessary.   At this price point and given the warranty they offer (i.e none) this is a product to steer clear of.   You can stop reading the review at this point, however for those still curious…

Writing ability of  the pen was clearly an after thought as the ink was dispensed poorly and unevenly.

The video resolution on this device is an under-whelming (given the $70+ it is being sold for) 640×480 with a supposed FPS of 30.  On playback however we were again disappointed as the colors were extremely washed out, FPS was closer to 15 AND the audio was out of sync.  Yikes.  This is a $1 pen camera masquerading as a quality device.  The still picture function (you can store up to 4000 on the 4GB card at max resolution settings) was also poor, utilizing a 1.3mb sensor.

Apparently we were not the only ones having issue with the battery (see amazon review), after 41 charges the device (the one that was still working) stopped holding any power.  Moving on…

Software performed without hiccup, working on all the OS platforms we tested.  The time and date application was not too complicated to set up and seemed to work correctly.  Playback was also simple and VLC media player had no problem opening the .avi files.

With no warranty, over priced sales point, poor build quality and features, the Digital Peripheral Solutions QD113P  4 GB Covert-Ops Surveillance Pen is the worst overall spy pen we have reviewed to date.  Steer clear.