Customer Reviews

Hewlett Packard DF820A3 8-Inch Digital Photo Frame

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

An uncomplicated, clean, and easy to use product that will add plenty of great memories to my wife's desk.

Being a Mac user, I'm always looking for products that are simple to use and offer a clean design. The HP DF820A3 digital picture frame meets these requirements. Getting started was a matter of unpacking the product, supplying power, connecting the USB cable to our iMac, launching iPhoto, and exporting the images straight to the DF820A3. How much easier can it get?

Sure there are other products that allow for emailing pictures to your photo frame, or subscribing to a service but these cost extra. The DF820A3 can easily be refreshed by dropping in one of 6 different media cards (Compact Flash, SD Media, USB thumb drive, and others). My wife is able to copy/delete images from either of these sources (or her office computer) using the built-in thumbnail viewer. Want to make it even easier? Simply upload the pictures to our shared .Mac account's iDisk and she can connect the DF820A3 to her laptop using the supplied USB cable.

The DF820A3 offers some nice touches like additional mattes, a built in clock and the ability to display a "four-up", "three-up with clock", or "two-up" with clock and calendar" in it's native 800x600 resolution. What's more, it also supports MPEG video playback as well as MP3 audio playback which you can have playing in the background while the DF820A3 displays your images. Nice.

So, for under [...] bucks, the HP DF820A3 is everything I need in a digital picture frame. Clean design, easy to use features, and simple image uploading from both a Mac or PC.

Consumer Reports gives this, or at least it's df800 cousin, a top rating. If this is tops, then the category of digital picture frames has lots of shortcomings. For starters, the remote can't turn the unit on & off - that has be done via the switch on the back of the frame! Photos cannot be transferred onto the frame's onboard memory in blocks - they have to be done one at a time! One cannot just say "transfer all the pix on the inserted memory card". And the order of display, outside of the random mode, seems to be dictated solely by the order of loading, so put them on with care after planning! The display, on the other hand, looks gorgeous. Haven't tried the sound or video features yet, as it doesn't take .wma audio (needs MP3) or .avi video (needs MPEG) files.

This listing is ridiculous. First, the price is completely out of sight. Second, the revision level is--apparently thankfully--one level old. Third, the latest version (the A4) is not only a full $175 cheaper but works perfectly.

So do yourself a favor and seek out the HP model DF820A4 and you'll get the following--four replaceable double matte sets, a great mahogany frame, MP3 music playing facility, 512K of internal RAM, USB and memory stick sockets, an external power supply, automatic image rotation, extremely flexible setup, a clock and calendar with settable alarm, a usable remote control with a magnetic back, and terrific 800x600 resolution. The LCD looks perfect and there's plenty of brightness with a wide viewing angle--when placed horizontally, that is. The angle is sharper on the short dimension, so vertical positioning causes viewing problems, especially on the right side. In short, it's the best frame I've seen so far--Sony's products are classic examples of the company's formal, inflexible approach to standards, and are overpriced.

I'd give this a higher rating if HP could have gotten the simplest features right.

First of all, the screen looks great. Off-angle viewing is surprisingly good. I didn't expect room-thumping sound out of a pic frame, but music plays just fine at a low comfortable level with almost zero distortion. Customizing the frame with mattes works real well too. Now on to the lows.

C'mon HP, can't you get a clock right? I mean, the clock chip has to cost less than $0.20. Its a very basic feature that I can't believe that HP didn't get right. If you turn it off, the clock resets even though it is plugged into the wall. Leave the frame on and it drifts 2 hours in about a day! It can't even get the calendar right!!! So, forget the auto turn on/off feature. It won't work. Don't believe you will be different because these reviews are full of people complaining about it. Don't buy this frame because of that feature.

Also, the remote will drive you up the wall. You can press a button 1 foot away from the frame pointing directly at it and it won't do a thing. Then you move the remote over an inch and it works just fine for the next bit. Remote range is dismal but its the only decent way to control it.

The bottom line is, buy it for the screen, not the features. Turn it on and leave it on and you will enjoy it as we have. Try and get more out of it and you will be disappointed.

I resisted getting a digital photo frame for a long time because of all the negatives I've heard about them. But, my wife's 60th birthday is coming up and I wanted to do a "This is your life" sort of thing with a slideshow going from her birth through today (scanning all of those old photos is a pain but it'll be worth it).

I scanned the photos onto my PC, had to touch up a few with Photoshop and then I copied them to a SD card. I plugged the SD card into the photo frame and voila, instant slide show.

Setup was very easy (most of the factory defaults are just fine) and the resolution is perfect for photos from a digital camera or from your scanner. The quick start guide and the user manual are well written and easy to follow. It's also an attractive unit; however, the remote is so small you might misplace it (but don't worry, there are buttons on the back of the frame).

I love this frame. It's so cool that it also has video capacity and shows movies I've made with sound. It's not that hard to use (directions take a few readings to figure out though). My mom loves it!!!

I received this DF820A3 as a gift at Christmas, and I must say that it is a gift that I have really appreciated and enjoyed. The eight inch frame size of this electronic pictureframe really lets you enjoy your favorite digital photographs. While the unit does have an on-board memory, I personally have found that it is much more convenient to simply use an old SD card, say, 2GB, and load it up on my computer, and then insert it into the pictureframe. (Let's face it, SD and CF media do not cost much these days, and they are getting cheaper by the month.) When I want to change the photos for a change of pace, simply re-load the SD card on the computer with whatever photos you want. So, for example, you can have a directory of Christmas photos for the holiday season, and other collections as may suit you. Thus, this is a gift than will never become passe' -- at least not until technology comes out with something even more dazzling.

The picture quality on this unit when viewed straight on is stunning. Like all LCD technology, as you start to view it from the sides, top, or bottom, the images become less clear. But this pictureframe is much better in this respect than my earlier-generation LCD Digital Photo Frame, and I think that most users will appreciate the beautiful quality that this unit presents.

Setting this Digital Photo Frame up is a snap. The menus are simple and intuitive.

Highly recommended.

This is great product and I am enjoying it very much. I recommend it as it is lot better way to enjoy your pictures etc.

I loaded up a memory card with several dozen pictures, put it on my desk at work, set it to change once an hour, and was rewarded with great looking pictures of the kids to brighten my day.

The next day I came in, turned it on, and saw the same pictures. Hmm ... oh, wait there's a "shuffle" mode. Voila! The pictures were in a different order so I saw different pictures the second day. Perfect!

But the third day, the pictures "shuffled" in the exact same order! So out of the 50 or so pictures on it I see only about 8 of them. If I want to I can always use the remote to browse to a different picture, but an hour later it again starts in with the same set I've seen a zillion times.

Too bad ... this would be great if it had true random mode, because the pictures look fantastic. But the firmware is apparently not updateable so I'll be selling this as soon as I find a frame where they put a little more thought into the firmware.

Some other notes: I was showing it to someone at work who said they would probably want to set it to change pictures a little more often, like every 15 minutes. I told him his choices were to change once a minute, once a hour, or once a day. He laughed out loud.

The fade transition is very cheap looking. It clunkily changes from one picture to the next in about 8 steps. A few years ago I had another brand (Portable USA) where the fade transition was gorgeous.

This is a great frame with a couple of issues.

1 - Random doesn't go though all pic's before redoing - minor issue.

2 - Clock problem is real. Opened the frame as suggested by the reviewer M. Abramovitz on April 10th. THERE IS NO CR2032 BATTERY anywhere, would be hard to miss since it's 0.8" in diameter. There is NO BATTERY.

EDIT: I have subsequently found that all HP frames in the group regardless of size have the clock problem and HP knows about it. IF YOU PLAN TO HAVE THIS FRAME TURN OFF/ON AUTOMATICALLY, DON'T BUY IT!

EDIT:EDIT: The comment on May 24th 2009 "R. Choate says: The dead battery (CR2032) is on the BACK side of the PC Board." The only things on the back side of the board are a few capacitors and a speaker pressed against the grill. No Battery.