Customer Reviews

IPEVO CSFU-01IP Kaleido R7 Wireless Photo Frame

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

 

 

I had seen a story on the Kaleido in January for CES 09 and I was struck by how elegant it looked. I purchased it and am giving my knee jerk review after having used it for less than a day. First the positive: It is a very handsome looking digital picture frame. The pictures appear bright and reorient themselves as needed if you pivot the picture frame. Pivoting the frame by the way, is pretty neat and gives the frame an overall different feel when you change its position. The installation of the eyestage and synchronization between my laptop and the Kaleido was also quick and hassle free.

Now for the down side, and what is really frustrating is that many of these things are rudimentary. First, there is no way to delete a picture directly off the Kaleido. You would actually have to remove the photos when it is synched with your computer if on the hard drive, or you would have to transfer your memory card to your computer if the photo is on your card. Second, it does not play MP3's, so you can forget about music accompanying your photo collages. Speaking of collages, this takes us to number 3 and personally the most unbelievable to me- There is no shuffle of photos. Let me repeat-NO SHUFFLE. That means your photos will always play in the order that they were taken since digital photos usually have an internal date stamp. The Kaleido knows the order of the photos you've taken, and will play them accordingly. Now this may initially seem like a minor quibble, but my son is 4 years older than my daughter, and I have taken hundreds of photos as any proud parent would. Without a shuffle this potentially means that I will not see a photo of my daughter for HOURS. The Kaleido has a cool albeit superfluous function where you can program the device to turn on and off at a certain time. I guess if I want to see a photo of my daughter, I can program it to turn on about 2 hours before I leave from work or open separate folders with different sets of photos and play as needed; but again, shuffling photos on a digital picture frame should be standard. It's like asking for volume control on a radio, they go hand in hand, or assuming a camera doesn't have a built in flash.

Customer service has responded quickly to my incredulous e-mails and the Kaleido can be upgraded, but I don't know if that means they can add shuffle or photo delete to this incarnation. The frame does chirp when you hit command functions, so I am optimistic that MP3 playing is possible, since it can at least emit sound.

Also if you download RSS feeds from websites, they cannot be deleted from your Kaleido, the messages you have all ready read can only be overwritten when you upload RSS updates. I guess this would not matter if you have the Kaleido at your desk at work (which may be an ideal place for it, but then again only if your office is wireless and you are alowed to use their servers for your personal use), but at home it's just extra clutter.

To sum up, the Ipevo Kaleido is definitely style over substance. It definitely looks higher end, but it should also perform higher end.

We replaced an early model Ceiva frame with the Ipevo, and couldn't be happier. The quality of the display is infinitely better, and the frame's styling is, in our opinon, the best in the business. We've loaded a Picasa album with hundreds of our favorite pictures, set the time per slide at 10 seconds, and have found ourselves watching, spellbound, as the photos wirelessly cycle through. Even though I'm not the brightest when it comes to technology, I found setup to be relatively easy, and had everything up and running within an hour. When I contacted Ipevo customer service by e-mail on a weekend to ask about a feature (transition effects) that didn't seem to be working, they responded within 20 minutes with assistance (Note: transition effects only work with Gallery...not Live). Although I was intially a bit hesitant to spend the money on this frame (I'm cheap as well as being technically challenged), I now consider it money very well spent.

There is a sea of picture frames out there and this is one of the better ones...Not only does it look cool but it has very good resolution for its size. It wireless capability and remote were pluses for me that I really wanted. Did I mention it works great with Mac? Some frames don't. The only real issue I had was there doesn't seem to be a way to have multiple photo albums, they all appear in one big MyGallery. You also cannot have some on the internal and some on the external. Oh and with a firmware update (it is expandable) you can shuffle the photos. My other complaints are minor: No ethernet jack (cannot use wireless at work and it can be slooow), no direct connect option. Also the internal memory is only 512MB. C'mon guys 2GB is $10 these days! All in all I highly recommend this frame.

Since my husband and I are expecting our first child, we bought 3 of these - one for ourselves, and one for each set of Grandparents so that they could always have current photos of us and our soon-to-be addition.

First thing that we noticed during setup to be very annoying with that it wasn't a touch screen, which, when you're adding in a complicated password to access wifi, can be very time consuming.

Next, You can't manage photos directly in the "EyeStage" software that it comes with - you can only add "channels" to this, which are pulled from other sources (RSS feeds, flickr, SD cards, etc).

We purchased this mainly because Consumer Reports gave this the highest score of all the current WIFI digital frames. It would be ideal for us if our parents could just have this sitting on their mantle, hooked up to their own wifi, and I could remotely add/remove pictures for them to enjoy. Well, that's where the real problems start. I set up a separate flickr set that the IPEVO would link to. All worked remarkably well at first... updating with new photos almost instantaneously. Then, as we were chatting, my computer went into standby mode as its programmed to do if left untouched for a period of time. Suddenly the IPEVO stopped streaming.

Here's what is absolutely essential to know: THIS DEVICE WILL NOT WIRELESSLY STREAM PHOTOS IF THE COMPUTER THAT IT IS LINKED TO IS NOT CURRENTLY ON AND ACTIVELY RUNNING THE EYESTAGE SOFTWARE. So that means if your computer hibernates, gets shut off, is running an update, etc, your pictures will NOT stream. For us, this made it a complete failure, as my parents are not tech savvy, and certainly do not have their computer running 100% of the time, let alone once per week. We're going to look at other models to see if we can get what we're looking for - maybe the Kodak Pulse, which looks promising.

So very bummed.

I bought this frame so that I could use it to display pictures from an RSS feed. It does that - but only as long as you have the EyeStage software running on a computer in the same network. The frame itself just grabs streamed images from the PC - it doesn't do any RSS processing itself, so you can't use it standalone.

I'm an architect and I use this frame in my studio for slideshow display of my design work portfolio. The super crisp screen shows high quality images, and the look and feel is high end, exquisite and polished. Never thought anyone would come up with the design of a digital photo frame that actually looks and works professionally. highly recommended.

I spent a bunch of time trying to sort out the good from the bad when it comes to digital picture frames, although I feel like I still didn't end up doing a completely thorough job. (It's really time-consuming to collect all the relevant information about all of the frames that are out there.) I had a few pretty basic requirements including that it's easy to get pictures onto the frame (must not require moving around memory cards, or wires--pretty much had to be wifi) and that it doesn't show ads. (Beware: Although there are no ads forced on you with this device, there are with others and the "shows ads" property is sometimes indicated only obscurely, if at all. I'm not an authority on this practice, but I think anything associated with the "FrameChannel" moniker gives you ads.)

This frame has a bunch of options and controls--esp. when considering its operation in both "connected to its associated PC app" and "running standalone" modes--and it took me a while for me to get them clear in my head, and I'm a software developer who can often readily psyche out what other software developers had in mind (even when what they had in mind is sort of sub-optimal, which is sort of the case with this frame). And even with all that, I guess I'd have to say that the exact behavior I want isn't readily available. (What I really want is a frame that just automatically caches on / syncs to its internal memory a set of pictures that are on my computer--ideally identified in a form like "everything that I've given 3 or more stars to all of my / these selected Picasa albums"--and plays them at random.)

At times the frame's automatic random playback freezes on a single picture until I hit the "play" button again. And for reasons that aren't clear to me, it seems like using the on-frame buttons works more reliably than the remote, which is a bit of a nuisance. (I think there's some sort of bad "bouncing" going on with the remote, causing multiple button presses to be sent when you press only once.)

So you might think: "With all that, why is he giving this even 3 out of 5 stars?". The answer is, well, this is basically a good frame that displays pictures nicely and does basically what I want and it looks like any number of the other frames out there are worse.

I've tried out at least 7 different digital frames, and this is my favorite. I like the fact that you can rotate the display to view portrait- or landscape-oriented images, and the device's user interface is intuitive and easy to use. The software that you load on your PC, to control the live stream, is also really easy to use, and has opened up a vast array of images from Flickr and Picasa that I can select by keyword or "interestingness". You can also enter a newsfeed URL, although when I do that for Flickr photostreams the photos seem to have much less resolution than if I use the Ipevo's built-in Flickr selections.

It would be good if this was available in a larger-screen version, although I like the 7-inch for my desk top. Picture quality is fine, comparable to any other frame I've tried.

A very nice photo frame - Contemporary, very stylish. Firmware update through manufacturer's web site fixed most issues noted on other reviews. I have not tested the wireless functionality, but updated software is also available if wireless is what you desire. A bargain for $79.99.

Good Luck getting your Ipevo to work using all the capabilities that are adverised. Customer Support is only available online and it assumes that you have all additional items needed to make your product work properly. For example, you will need a flash drive and memory card, purchased seperately and are not included. And, you will need to download a current version of the software as well as the system firmware just to get it minimally operational. The only way you might know this is after you spend several minutes on the "chat live" system - which must be offshore as there significant delays in sending and receiving information.

The product is over-priced compared to other options that use the basic capability, and there is no indication that additional items need to be purchased to be able to fully utilize the product. There are several other better options that are easier to setup and operate.

I sent it back to Amazon and was happy to be rid of the hassle.