Product Review - SAM Indoor/Outdoor Playpen
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Review 1 of 5
Place Purchased: Pets at home
Price: £10
Score: 9/10
Very spacious and useful. It is good for when you have to clean out your mice or just want to play with them. There are 8 large sides which are all colourful and the whole thing can be folded up to a small size for storage. It is a little expensive but is well worth the money. The bars are 1cm apart and can be bent a little to make quite an easy gap for a young mouse to escape through, but it is still a must buy!
Reviewer: AdorableMouse
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Review 2 of 5
Place Purchased: Petworld
Price: £10
Score: 7/10
Great idea to let the meeces out onto the carpet and run around at their own free will or to put them in while your cleaning them out. Its good because you can fill it with all their toys and create a mini adventure playground away from their cage.
Major downside to this is that all of my mice are able to jump up and over the top! So you can’t take your eyes off them for even a second - so much for having somewhere safe to put them whilst you clean them out! As soon as we put them in the pen, they do a lap of the pen then everyone has a go at scaling the wall and its a nightmare trying to watch four mice in there who are all going different directions to confuse you lol. Anyway they seem to enjoy it even it doesnt exactly what I want it to and keep my miceys safe!
Reviewer: Chris10
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Review 3 of 5
Place Purchased: 2nd hand
Price: £5
Score: 7/10
I originally bought this for my Syrian hamster but since her death have been using it occasionally for the mice so as to give out-time more variety. These come in packs of 8 but really the size you have is limitless if you have extra panels; unlike other types of playpen where you have no ability to expand.
The majority of mice are able to scale the upright bars and get out but as playtime should always be supervised anyway this shouldn’t be a putting-off reason! I find this playpen a good way to get to know new mice as unlike playing on a sofa/ bed you can designate how much there is for hiding in to bring them on.
The run un-clips and can be stored flat thus not taking up much space. For an alternative use the individual panels can also be used as cage shelving if it’s intended use isn’t needed.
*update 26/11/08* - I now use a few panels of this as a small hospital enclosure within the main cage for ill mice that are part of a group. This allows the ill mouse to interact with all it’s friends in close proximity where things still smell very much of home as opposed to a separate “hospital cage” with either one friend, or a daily rotation around the group. A square of 4 panels and then one as a 2/3 lid fits into the base of most larger cages: each panel is 33×23cm. One can also use a 6th panel attached with garden wire/ mini bulldog clips (easily releasable for frequent daily removals) to act as a full lid if the ill mouse is still capable of climbing.
Reviewer: Acapae
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Review 4 of 5
Place Purchased: Pets At Home
Price: £9.99
Score: 6/10
The Indoor/Outdoor Playpen consists of 8 interlocking, powder coated wire panels, each measuring 35×23cm and coloured alternately red, yellow, and blue.
Pros:
This playpen is reasonably large and secure enough for mice to have a (very closely supervised) run around, and allows them to play with large toys that might not fit in their cage. It’s also very easy to assemble and disassemble, and flatpacks for convenient storage.
Cons:
When I opened the box, I found the playpen was covered in a fine layer of dust and I had to give it a quick wipe before I felt comfortable using it. Also, some of the powder coating was already chipping off in places. Neither is a huge problem, but it didn’t leave me with a good impression of S.A.M.’s quality control.
The panels’ bar spacing is 11mm, but there is a 13mm gap where the end panels join, so a small mouse would be able to squeeze through there. And any mouse that can climb vertical bars will be able to scale the panels quite easily, so very close supervision is necessary to prevent escapees.
Overall:
If you have fast or difficult to handle mice, I would recommend getting a playpen like this for them so that they can still have some out-time with less risk of them disappearing behind the sofa. You will have to supervise them quite closely, though - the playpen doesn’t prevent escaping, it just delays it for long enough for you to usher the wayward mouse back in.
I’m not sure I can recommend this particular playpen over any others, though, since while there’s nothing particularly wrong with it, there’s nothing particularly right with it either in terms of quality of construction or security. However, I do feel it’s okay value for money since most other playpens I’ve seen cost a few pounds more but have pretty much the same features.
Reviewer: Cub
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Review 5 of 5
Place Purchased: Zooplus
Price: £10.99
Score: 10/10
I love this playpen. It’s great as it allows me to play with mice and gerbil at the same time. I sit on the floor near a corner with the playpen on my right. The mice go into the playpen and the space I make with my legs, the wall and the edge of the playpen is great for Pete the gerbil.
Usually as long as enough is provided for them to play with no one climbs up too much, although the boys are worse the the girls. Pete the gerbil can jump up if he wants to, but usually is too well behaved to do so.
The only thing that isnt perfect about it is the box, if it was just 2mm wider it would make it much easier to put away. But I have got better at making it fit into its box, so its not much of a problem.
This is a great buy as I use it everyday.
Reviewer: Heatherrrs
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