Customer Reviews

Tao 2009 80011-bla Digital Photo Key Chain (Black)

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

If you're looking for an inexpensive but fun and neat gift for a relative, friend, office party, etc. then I would recommend this key chain as you get a lot of bang for your buck.

I must admit, I was a bit skeptical when I ordered this key chain photo viewer. What can one expect for $10? Well, this isn't a Rolls Royce, that's for sure, but it impressed me along the way.

The key chain comes in a very presentable box. I am not overly excited about the actual design of the key chain, but it is not bad. It comes with a rechargeable battery, a big plus. It charges through the USB port. The screen is lower resolution, but it is clear and bright. The color was satisfactory. It holds 99 pictures and you can run the slideshow automatically or manually scroll through them as you wish.

The included software is fairly straightforward. It assists you in uploading or deleting photos from the key chain. My favorite part is that you can pan and zoom a photo so that you get the exact shot you want before you upload it to the key chain. This is huge plus! Many photo frame viewers don't have this option with them.

I uploaded numerous funny and goofy family photos for my wife and she looks at them whenever she needs a laugh. She loves it and I'm ordering more for others. For $10, you can't beat it.

Well this little guy presents in a tidy little box good for gifting,along with a USB connector and instructions. The item is rather lightweight and made of an inexpensive plastic case. It would work nicely as a keychain but would expect this would be used more of a novelty item that would be carried to show a full slide show of pictures. I would expect if used as a key ring it wouldn't hold up to the daily stress of use being throw on counters or into purses or tossed around a lot. I gave it 4 Stars as It doesn exactly what is said it would do and did it pretty well. Now here is what I liked and didn't like about this item.

what I like about it first :
1. Surprisingly, with such a inexpensive item it has a pretty clear picture and colors seem true.
2. It does hold up to 99 pictures... Now that is pretty impressive.
3. Software is imbedded into the unit so no additional software to download
4. After you find your selected pictures on you hard drive ( not as easy as it sounds ) the cropping and loading is a snap. Finding the pictures is the difficult item as the software doesn't direct you in any way.
5. Slide show moves along at what ever paces you select . One of several options it allows
6. It has a Clock function.

Things that I am not as impressed with or plain disliked:

1. Picture of close ups of faces, people or animals are the only good photo's to place on this unit. Outdoor vistas or nature shots are too small to work well on this unit. It was a strain to try to see what was there.
2. controls were difficult to adjust for me, as they are on the back of the product and you have to be able to see what the front is doing to make the changes a little awkward to manage. I kept hitting the wrong buttons and had to start over again.
3. The plastic shell is not an attractive case. It makes it look like a toy and not a real working photo viewer


I think I would like to gift an item like this to a aunt who loves to have pictures of all the kids, grandkids and her animals to show to all her friends at card parties and the church function. I would load it up with lots of stuff, she will be delighted. I think this would a fun gift to give to a teacher having loaded it with pictures of some of the kids in her class.

All in all at this price point I think it is a fun, usable item That would make a nice stocking stuffer over the holidays or an inexpensive birthday gift tag... I would get a kick out of it if someone took the time to add some neat pictures for me to enjoy.like when I am sitting at the airport waiting, a nice little item to flip on and scroll through some friendly faces.

First, the good. This keychain is lightweight. I'm not one who likes bulky things on my keychain and I barely noticed this in my pocket. The battery is rechargeable and has more than sufficient capacity for my needs. It is easy to figure out how to download pictures from Windows XP. It has a clock and a slideshow feature. It holds 99 pictures. I expected the screen to scratch against my keys, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well it is holding up so far. Best of all, it is low cost.

The bad. There is no support for downloading pictures from Linux, my operating system of choice. The vast majority of you who don't use Linux may wonder why you should care, but it also means that future upgrades of your windows may render the keychain unusable, because it depends on custom software instead of widely accepted standards.

The screen is square, and like the rest of the world, all my pictures are rectangular. Worse still, although it lets you choose where the picture is cropped, the software doesn't let you put black bars on the sides, so sometimes things get cut off unless you put black bars using photoshop before downloading. There is also noticeable posterization. Both of these factors probably drove down the cost, but diminish the experience.

This keychain is a great idea at a great price, but the implementation just isn't good enough to sway me away from just viewing photos on my cell phone. However, it could be a great gift for less tech savvy grandparents or children.

I didn't have very high expectations for a photo displaying keyring that only costs about $10.00.

But I was surprised. This little gadget holds up to 99 photos, is easy to load with your photos and the clarity of the displays is excellent.
I have been letting my Granddaughter test it as well and she loves it and her friends are all amazed by it.

The one negative that cost it one star is that the download software hangs every once and a while.
I simply abort it and restart it and it keeps on trucking but it can get a little annoying when downloading a large number of photos at one time.

I have a caution here. My system has been sick for a while (Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit - SP2) and has had problems with even IE hanging up on me, so I can't definitively say that the hangups are the fault of the provided software. Once I get my system working right I will try a mass reload again and if there is no problem with the software hanging up then, I will update this review to reflect that fact.

Tao 2009 80009-blu Digital Photo Key Chain is a very nice key chain with LCD for the price. The build could be more solid but the nice brightness and contrast screen makes me forget about the plasticy construction.

Pros:
1. Screen is brightness and contrast (and the color is also vivid)
2. Good battery life
3. Hold up to 99 photos
4. Easy to use (downloading photos etc).Plug and play software is very friendly and intruitive.
5. Comes with a nice box (great as gift item)
6. Slideshow mode available (and you choose yourself how many second before displaying the next photo)
7. Can also be charged with ac adapter (but AC adapter not included. USB charging cable is included)
8. It includes a clock

Cons:
1. Screen only 1.5 inch (should be bigger, like 2 inch and fill in the black frame around the LCD screen with more LCD screen)
2. If screen can not be bigger (maybe for cost reason), then make the key chain smaller (i.e. don't make the frame area that big)
3. LCD sharpness/details is not as good as LCD that you find in digital cameras (but better than many cell phones LCD)
4. Plasticy construction but light (and will scratch the keychain if you put a lot of keys on it but since the price is low, you shouldn't worry or care if it gets scratched)
5. Can't scroll the photos or zoom-in the photos (i.e. put a big photo and scroll/zoom-in to view the entire photo)

Overall, for the price, it's a very nice Digital Photo keycheain, and a great gift item.

Sidarta Tanu

It wouldn't work on either of our computers. Not compatible, I guess. One is a Windows 7, the other is Vista. I sent the keychain back. I did try to get a hold of Tao, thinking maybe they could help me figure it out but they never responded. Don't waste your time or money on this product.

This is a great little photo keychain that anyone can easily use! And it doesn't cost a whole lot either! Kids will love it, as would anyone! I'm going to get a second one for my mom so she can carry pics of her grandkids around on her keychain. Holds almost a hundred pics so she'll be happy with that!

Just plug the unit into your computer with the supplied USB cable and the software starts up automatically. The software easily helps you add your pics and you're ready to go in no time. You can do minor editing and cropping to format the pics for the best viewable area on the keychain. No need to waste time doing special formatting with another program. This one handles it all, fast and easy.

Looks like digital keychains have finally entered the 'impulse buy' price range. This really is a neat little thing and would make a great, inexpensive gift for most anyone. I think I just found my stocking stuffers for everyone on my list!

I really love this Tao!

Pros:
1. Manual is written well - clean, English directions - no issues here.
2. Rechargeable battery! no need to change cell battery, just connect to a computer with the included usb cable. While the manual says the display will say it is charging - all I see is that it says "connected to computer"! This was the only discrepancy I saw with the manual.
3. Good battery life
4. Close to a hundred photos - not bad for this size and price.
5. Excellent software; as soon as you connect to the computer (vista/xp/windows 7) it opens up a window which allows you to browse your folders for the photos to download (to the keychain), allows you to select part of the picture you want to download (a rectangle you can move on the picture), a zoom in/out of the picture before resizing to fit the download size. I was able to browse most of my pictures in my computer (taken with an 8megapixel digital camera with the highest resolution possible with an 8 megapixel), and select it for download - the software shrunk the size (read - resolution and image quality!) and take it in.

Cons:
1. Display quality - very low resolution (obviously can't expect anything more from this small size display).
2. LCD screen itself is a little off color, low contrast/backlighting.
3. Included clock display could have been improved (the fonts and size used for that is not great).
4. cheap plastic look - for the money, they could have improved the looks at least!

I can't give 3.5 here and so made it to 4.

This is a really neat thing!

The first thing that came to mind, that even though it's cheap, it came in a very presentable black box. So this can be given as a gift without feeling embaressed.

Second of all, connecting to and charging from the computer is a breeze (battery is rechargeable). And once connected, an internally installed software program allows you to select photoes, edit them, and input them into the chain. You can add up to 99 photoes, and interestingly enough, even though some of the ones I uploaded were 2-3 megabytes in size (b/c they were taken at 10MP), the program automatically converted them "down to size", and hence no extra memory on it was eaten up, I was impressed. Everything took to no more than 5 minutes to set up and completely master. It was a breeze.

The keychain itself is relatively large for a keychain. It is about the size of a small matchbox in lneght and with and depth. I have so many keys on my ring that I won't fit my keys into my pocket anymore if I were to tag this thing on, but nonetheless I can just hang it somewhere and have it list through the photoes as a nice reminder.

By the way, the picture quality on the screen is really great! And it is surprisingly lightweight.

This is a wonderful gift item for grandparents and new moms and dads! The pictures were vivid and the screen was just large enough to show a good size picture without being too bulky.

The software automatically prompts you to manage your photos when it's connected to the computer. From there you choose up to 99 pictures and it saves the pictures and thumbnails of the same kb size. You can also crop, zoom in, and rotate pictures to get your desired image consistency for the key chain. I tested the compatibility with both Windows 7 64-bit and Vista 32-bit. The software worked flawlessly with both operating systems.

The back of the key chain has an easy to use menu where you can set options such as a slide show, analog or digital clock, back light intensity, and more. It automatically comes preset to the brightest back light, and I found it to be very bright, vivid, and easy to see the pictures. You can also set the key chain to automatically turn itself off to conserve battery life.

I also thought it was very well made compared to a photo key chain I bought a couple of years ago. The screen eventually scratching is a given, but I trimmed the lcd protector that it came with and plan to buy some protective film (the type used on ipods and cell phones) that can be switched out every so often to keep the screen nice. Since this is very customizable, easy to use, has a great picture, and is affordable, I highly recommend it.