Jakks Pacific has been a regular at E3 for a while now, though they are fairly quietly showing their products so that their name hasn’t quite spread as fast as the technology in their toys should have carried it.  When I got a glimpse of some of their goods though I arranged with my editor to give their products a look like we had some in the past.  It’s one of those little companies that has put out higher quality consumer products in a child’s design so that instead of pretending to have James Bond toys kids could have the real thing at a reasonable price.  So I got the opportunity to have fun testing the Spy Net Secret Mission Video Watch, the Spy Net Multi-Media Night Vision Video Watch and Spy Net Flex Neck Snake Cam.

Spy Net Secret Mission Video Watch:

This watch would have been a dream come true growing up and even as a grown adult my mind dances with possibilities.  The design looks a bit more like a kid’s design which is their primary market but they have made a band that is adjustable to all children’s sizes and large adult sizes as well.  There have been plenty of quality adult watches I have purchased over the years that didn’t fit or the face looked small.  As an adult it was around the right size for my wrist and the strap fit comfortably.  Before I get to the video aspect which is the main feature most people would buy this watch for I want to go over the tons of different features this watch has.  To start it has the time and date in a futuristic video screen but also can be changed to any time zone with the hit of a button.  You can also change the sound level (important) and the video level between low medium and high.  Once you have all this important but rather boring parts set it is time to have some fun.  Hit the Games Mode selection in the menu and you find your choice of Spy Net Defense or Spy Net Combat, two mini games built into the watch.  When you are done occupying your time with them you can move onto the amazing features which at first I thought might be a joke but upon testing turned out to be real: Spy Apps.  First comes the Lie Detector, in which you ask a bunch of base line questions and once a pattern is established you ask questions you want true answers to.  I found that it predicted my truth very accurately, when I lied it said there was a 90% chance I was lying and when I told the truth it gave me a 50%+ chance that I was telling the truth.  Now I have to go on record that I am a terrible liar, hideous really, and even the watch seemed to mock my abilities.  When I tested it on friends who were accomplished liars it was a little less predictable and explains while though this technology is fun, it isn’t perfect.  But heck we can always hope that our friends or children aren’t good enough liars to beat it right?

Bug Detector is the next trick on this watches list and it is one that works on a simple principle but people often pay good money for and this watch seems to work as accurately as the other models I have seen.  I would pass some rooms without any electronic transmitters and no bugs were detected.  Considering the unique nature of my former day job I would then walk into a room with microphone transmitters and the bug detector went off right away with a warning alarm.  Now admittedly the average person doesn’t have to worry about bugs but I do know that I have been in work places that were wired for video and audio surveillance so that private meeting locations to discuss sensitive issues could be hard to find and this watch could give some degree of comfort.  It probably wouldn’t detect a hardwired listening device (such as itself) but it is a little peace of mind.  As kids playing with it I imagine keying a toy walkie talkie and hiding it would work as a bug and become a game of hide and seek for the walkie in a yard or house.

Also under Spy Apps was Voice Manipulation which is a simple trick but a fun one, the SpyNet Voice Manipulator is even sold as a separate item by a couple different companies and can be a lot of fun.  To test it out I did a standard count in from a commercial break at my day job and recorded it.  I then ran it through the Voice Manipulator and then played it back for countdowns manipulated, the first time set to higher frequency.  My count time remained the same but my voice changed dramatically enough to not be recognizable by the crew.  After letting them know what I was up to my crew then listened to a deepened pitch of my voice, which is already deep and it sounded a bit like a slowed record playing of my voice but still difficult to recognize.  That application was popular with the crew, especially the ladies who had their voice changed almost to a man’s by the pitch change and a bit of change in their voice cadence.  How would kids use this?  They could pre-record things and call their friends and repeat them back with the voice changer or record a bunch of things and use them as answers to each others questions or quote famous movie lines and see how they sound in grown up male and female voices.

Now from the fun features of the watch to the reason people buy it, recording audio, still picture and video.  The Audio recording option is pretty straight forward and well done, the microphone is very sensitive and picks up both directional noise and environmental (omnidirectional).  It is a bit sensitive to contact which can be a little rough since it is in watch form but once you get the hang of it the microphone works really well in most situations and you learn to not keep it too close to your mouth so it doesn’t sound like you are… umm having cause for heavy breathing off camera.  So as audio goes the microphone is good and pretty standard.

Still Pictures is particularly good as well, even when the camera is in motion it has a very clean capture system that is quicker and more reliable than my cell phone which I found to be a bit of a surprise.  It also has a great light sensor that keeps the pics just right and the time lapse works perfectly and can be programmed to take at different times.  Examples will be included in the gallery at the bottom of the article.

Video quality can be decent and adjusted between low, medium and high quality for the balance between record time and video quality.  The hard drive could be a bit bigger and eventually I wouldn’t be surprised if a version with a larger drive comes out or they make it so that it takes micro SD cards to give more options.  For projects 20 minutes of recording can be kinda short but for kids that is pretty good, especially around the house where when the camera is full you can just plug it into a computer and download it and clean it off.  This also works well for if you are doing one of the missions and just need to download them too and the number of pictures you can save is very decent, up to 20,000 on the lower quality which is an amazingly large amount and will get you through just about any night and gives you a nice long time for time lapse as well.

Spy Net Multi-Media Night Vision Video Watch:

This is the upgrade to the previous video watch so most of what was covered above I will just skip over and go over the new goodies.  The games mode has the two games mentioned in the watch above plus 7 new ones as well as new missions that can be downloaded from SpyNetHQ.com.  The Spy mode has also been added to so that now it includes a sound level meter like they used in “Mission Impossible,” a flashlight, spy detector which scans images for enemies and image overlay which allows you to put select captions on images such as “Wanted” or a target.  There is also a section where you achieve awards and ranks for completing games and missions.

All this is a lot of fun but if you are upgrading to this watch odds are you are doing it for it’s key feature: night vision recording.  This works remarkably well and the camera is equipped with night vision lights (in the human eye visible range) and they can be shut off to just use the low level light available (which makes it more discreet).  The design is slightly less obvious as well that it has a camera and microphone than the previous watch and when you turn on the night vision lights they aren’t extremely obvious and seem to illuminate around 15′ in pure darkness.  This was actually better than I would have expected from such a small source.

Spy Net Flex Neck Snake Cam:

This is definitely a James Bond or maybe even SWAT Team type of electronic!  We have all seen in the movie the SWAT commander sticking the little camera under the door to see what is happening before they bust it in or they guy who is wired with a camera that goes through his shirt button hole.  This is the camera for those moments, this is also a web cam, a great cam for peeking around corners or over the back of furniture, sticking out a window while driving, basically it is a little camera that can be used in any place that would be hard to get a normal sized camera into.  This is great for kids playing hide and seek, spy games, heck I think this would be great for playing paint ball, you could peek around a corner and see your target and shoot them without them ever seeing you.  It is a very affordable addition to the watches, it plugs right into the side of them to give you a visual display of what it sees and the imagination is the limits on what you can do with it.  The lower half is standard cord and the upper half is bendable so you can bend it into whatever shape will work the best for you.  It makes an fairly inconspicuous watch camera completely inconspicuous.

Drawbacks:

The watches are designed to fit a very decent size wrist but it does kind of look a bit like a kid’s watch.  I wore it a couple of days without anybody commenting on it though until I went to check the time and the video screen came on.  This really nice feature also draws attention to the watch though and it’s brightness can distract people and make them wonder why it is so bright and what other bells and whistles it might have, especially in low lighted areas.  I kind of wish the video screen came with a cover that could be closed down on it to make it less noticeable during recording.  Spy Record mode helps, it makes it so that you are recording without the image being on the watch face, just the time with the dots between the hour and the minutes blinking red periodically to let you know it is recording.  But the screen is still really bright, wish there was a dimmer function.

The Snake Cam has both a drawback and a plus in the sense that the edges of it’s video screen are rounded visually so that it looks like you are looking through a hidden camera, which can be fun for playing spy but a little less fun for using the video as part of a source for a longer project.

Last Call:

I already have plans for the whole year mapped out for use with the video part of this camera, I plan to particularly use it during October visits to haunted attractions where I can record without an obtrusive camera and time lapse in scare zones to get a feel for how they run over a longer period of time.  I have even thought of getting new ones in case I need more record time in one evening.  The Snake Cam can be purchased for under $20 which is a great price if it was only ever used as a webcam let alone all its other uses.  Shopping around can get either of the watches in the neighborhood of $50 which when you consider all the features and fact that you have a video camera and webcam that is completely portable, tiny and fits in your pocket or on your wrist they are a great deal.  Since they are both about the same price some people may ask why go with the watch with less features but if you have a kid the more features it has the more confusing it can be so they may want the simpler watch.  I will try to post videos from haunts and such using the cameras so you can see just how effective they can be.  I have a couple of examples below of picture time lapse and videos and look forward to making more!

[stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DhbDOT5rh5_Q img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/hbDOT5rh5_Q/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=640 height=360 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]

[stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DAmD1w4egRSI img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/AmD1w4egRSI/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=640 height=360 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]

[stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DufglK41cdcE img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/ufglK41cdcE/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=640 height=360 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]