simple gadget cleaning with lenspen products :: review

Last year I was talking with one of my photography friends about how in the world I manage to get so many fingerprints on my lenses (or filters) and how to clean them quickly, safely, and easily. He asked me if I’d ever used a LensPen. I’d never even heard of them before but I ordered one online that day. When it first came I honestly thought, “This is it?” It’s a small pen-shaped utensil that has a retractable brush that you can use to gently remove any loose particles that might be on your lens. Once you’ve carefully brushed that off, you take off the cap of the other end to expose a carbon tip. Rub the carbon tip around the lens in a smooth, circular motion until the lens is clean and put the cap back on. When you twist the cap back on, a carbon pad inside the cap rubs against the carbon tip, replenishing it for the next time you need to use it. Considering how much time my camera spends with small children, I keep the LensPen in my bag and use it often. I like mine so much that I gave several of them as Christmas gifts this year. I have a Canon DSLR and use the regular-size LensPen, but they have a variety of pen sizes – one small enough to clean a point-and-shoot camera’s lens and one even smaller that can easily clean the viewfinder a DSLR or any other little nooks and crannies.

After I fell in love with the original LensPen, I started looking at their other products and several of them ended up on my Christmas list. Two of the items I didn’t get were the SmartKlear (for small touch-screen devices) and ScreenKlean (for tablets) screen cleaners, but I was recently sent one of each to review. With all the swiping and tapping and pinching in and pinching out I do with my phone, my screen gets so smudgy. I hate, especially when I’m outside in the sunshine, how every single fingerprint shows on the screen. Oh! And don’t even get me started on what happens when I actually use my phone as…you know…a phone. Yuck! How many times have you finished a conversation and immediately wiped your screen across your pant leg or shirt? You almost have to to keep it “clean”. But the SmartKlear screen cleaner uses the same carbon technology found in the LensPen that doesn’t just smear all of the fingerprints around. It actually absorbs the oils from the fingerprints (or faceprint, in some cases) and leaves the surface truly clean and clear. My favorite thing about the SmartKlear is that it not only has the cleaning pad, it also has a polishing pad that you use after you clean the screen to give it that extra little something. Though the packaging never promises to keep finger prints away long-term, it does seem to help keep the screen a little longer. Although my screen never stays fingerprint-free for long, it’s certainly nice to have a baseline of crystal clear versus tee-shirt-lint-covered.

The ScreenKlean is a larger version of the SmartKlear cleaner (but with no polishing pad) and was designed for touch-screen tablets. My children use an iPad for school and holy smokes with the prints and smudges! We wash hands regularly in our house so I’m always baffled at how in the world they get the screen so incredibly messy with (supposedly) clean hands! Because fingerprints (especially icky, sticky tiny fingerprints) drive me bonkers, I’ve spent quite a lot of time wiping down screens the past few years. The ScreenKlean cuts through those fingerprints quickly and wipes them away to nothing in a few seconds. Just look at the difference!

Want a quick peek at these products (and a few other LensPen products) in use:

 

LensPen :: $14.95
SmartKlear :: $9.95
ScreenKlean for tablets :: $19.95

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