64GB Digital Voice Recorder - ZIPCIDE Digital Voice Activated Recorder with AI-Intelligent Noise Reduction, Voice Activated Sound Audio Tap Recorder Device for Lectures Meetings, Work, Interviews

I browsed around quite a bit before landing on this particular pen for my needs. I wanted something inconspicuous and discreet. This fit the bill on every count, so I decided to try it. I expected absolutely nothing, considering it was an inexpensive pen made by the usual no-name Amazon company. My expectations were happily incorrect.The sound quality is unexpectedly good. I wouldn't say it has some amazing level of "AI" (buzzword) filtration, like you would find on, say, the Audeze Maxwell (which is a ~300 USD headset), but that's to be expected on a product in this price range. If you have too much filtration, you're instead going to capture nothing, so it's a fine balancing act. I walked around in public locations, even loud stores, and surprisingly it could pick up individual conversations as long as they were more or less directed at me, with the pen clipped to my shirt. Absolutely no one even glanced twice at the actual pen. There will definitely be some noise due to handling the pen while recording with it, and bumping against it will cause noise, but it is not excessive.As far as usage, it's very simple to get up and going. Just pressing and holding the button on top will make the LED blink blue and red, and then finally blink red three times. At which point it will record. Pressing the button once pauses the recording and a red LED comes on to indicate as much. Unpausing is similarly done with one button press, and the LED shuts off. While it is recording, no LEDs are on at all. This might bother some people that want visual indication, but I like the discretion. Unpausing and pausing happens more or less instantaneously. It continues recording immediately after the red light goes off.When you take the MicroSD card out in order to look at the recordings it took, they are in some odd .wav format. I was able to get MPC-HC to play them, but regular Windows Media Player doesn't recognize the codec, at least not without a codec pack.One large surprise is that this is able to read exFAT format cards and doesn't even seem limited on the size of the card. I was able to put a 512 GB Sony MicroSD card into this device, and to my surprise it not only recognized but recorded to it. This is compared to a camera of all things that I got on here, which was limited to only 128GB cards formatted... in FAT32...Moving on to output file size, a 25.25 minute recording was approximately 35.6 MB. For my little excursion, that puts the average bitrate at approximately 23.5 KB/s. So the 512 GB card I have inserted into should store approximately 252.15 (very roughly, I likely misrounded and did not properly convert bits here and there) days of recording. A 64GB card would store about 31 days. So you could essentially keep this on for an entire month (battery allowing of course) and it would capture that entire month.Finally, the pen writes well. The replacement cartridges are very specific to this pen, so you might have issues replacing them easily, but one could likely find some ink refill kit out there, or simply take replacement leds that are longer, cut them off, and tie the plastic screw holds onto them. The pen certainly didn't have to write well, but writing well means that it will be even more inconspicuous during usage.I will update this if I encounter any QC issues such as refusing to charge, dying quickly, etc etc. I am quite fast to update and drop my rating if an issue arises. But for now, with my very limited usage, it has been excellent.

After two post-grad degrees, I have become an avid note taker. Though my academic career has slowed, I still take a lot of handwritten notes during meetings and lectures. Though I consider myself great note taking, I still miss things sometimes. Many meetings that I attend are not recorded and there is no rewind button when sitting there in the moment. It wouldn’t look good to continuously ask the speak to repeat something. This pen recorder is fantastic. It is discreet as a recording device as well as a high quality as a writing instrument. It truly is the best of both worlds. There is a slight learning curve with the recording. The red light / blue light takes a minute to get used to, especially when trying to pay attention to what you’re listening to while you’re writing. It would be easier to just click a button and automatically know its recording and maybe a separate button to know when you’re not recording anymore. The pen comes with a 64 Gig memory card, which is extensive for a recording device. The pen is comfortable to write with and writes very well. It comes with extra refills. My only concern is that I’m not sure how long they will last with the amount of usage I anticipate. The headphones is a great touch. The audio comes through clearl I made a great choice with this pen.

great recording pencil compared to the one that I've used before! Since I am a student it has been really important to keep up with lectures that my professors don't record. In the past I've been using my phone however, I have a professor who did not allow up to record anything in the class in order to keep up with "class attendance". However, I really need recordings to keep up with lectures notes so I had to get a recording pencil. This pen had a build in microSD chip that I could easily plug into a reader on my computer. This makes it super convenient and easy to use. I like how slim it feel and its grip on the hand. It's not too bulky and there was no way anyone could tell that it was a recording pencil.

First and foremost, I was completely surprised at how good the recording quality was on this pen. I expected it to be audible, but not great...I was wrong. As a pen, it's a little top-heavy (to be expected I suppose), which made my writing a little less neat. That said, it wrote smoothly and the ink didn't smear (which as a lefty is nice). I was really close to giving this a 5-star, but the build quality is just a little less than a 5. Specifically, you have to take the pen apart to access the charging port, SD card, etc., which is no big deal; however the smoothness of the two pieces going together was lacking a bit. Deal breaker? Not by any means, but it just plants the tiniest of seeds that maybe it won't last forever. Maybe it's a nit pick, maybe not. All in all though, it was a really close call between a 4 and 5.

This pen is awful. Do not buy it. First off the instructions are very difficult to read. Second, it’s very difficult to setup. I tried to do it 3 different times and it just recorded background noise. I thought it was recording and it was not. I do not suggest buying this pen.