Customer Reviews

Kodak Easyshare P825 Digital Frame

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I am looking at the frame as I type this and it is great. This is a gift for grandparents for Christmas so I am pre-loading photos for them. I easily dropped my photos I had stored on my computer into a USB flash drive. I turned on the frame and plugged in the USB drive and saw instant photos. Very easy. Now, the bad. When I first plugged in the USB I saw not only my photos, but some pre-installed Kodak photos. Who wants to see these with your personal photos? So, I removed the USB drive and tried to repeatedly delete them from the frame. No luck. The error message was incorrect for what I was doing. I assumed since these photos were on the frame I should be able to delete them. I was getting an error message indicating that deleting from a card or USB device is prohibited. OK, now I call Kodak tech support. Well, the p825 is Kodak's newest model so little help here and they considered it a firmware issue. So I thought I was stuck. I played with the frame for awhile and then decided to copy all the photos from the USB drive to the frame to see if it would over ride the pre-installed photos and it did! I have zero problems and it could not be easier to load. Yes, it has a white power cord, but who looks at a power cord? Overall, very happy with the frame and not too happy with tech support.

I bought this as a gift for my mom since she has too many pictures in her small living room. I bought an extra SD card to put more pictures on it. Very simple to use. I just put the SD card in the computer, transferred some pics to it, took the SD card out, put it in the frame, turned it on, and that's it! The 4:3 ratio is nice, so no stretched out or cropped to fit pictures. I almost want to keep it for myself. ;)

I came across this frame during Black Friday. It fulfilled three of my requirements: 8" frame, 800x600 resolution, and a random shuffle play option.

But then I set it up. First of all, there was not enough information for me in the Quick Start Guide. I had to download the Extended user guide (which is still very basic).

There is a definite pause between turning the frame on and getting a response. It took several tries to learn the process.

There is no cable to connect the frame to a computer. I had to use a USB drive and an SD card to transfer pictures to the frame. It is very time consuming to add, change and delete pictures using the frame controls. I agree with Gill, just buy additional storage device (USB drive, memory card) to load up pictures from the computer and then leave it inserted in the frame.

There are only three play options: five/ten/sixty seconds between pictures (each option has its own transition effect, which cannot be changed).

There is no on-screen menu. The screen is nice and bright, but there is no brightness control. There is an EasyShare software program download. But I am still trying to figure it out.

The border on my frame is a dark blue and the base of the frame is black.

I bought this for my mother's 80th birthday. All she has to do is turn it on to see all the pictures of her grandchildren.

The picture quality, especially the brightness, is fantastic. Everyone loved it when I previewed the gift for
my Mother at Thanksgiving.

Considering Kodak specializes in photos I was a little disappointed with the functionality of this product. Here are some of the issues we encountered:
1. You can only display photos horizontally since the small plastic stand can't be moved. And once you attach the stand, it can't be removed.
2. There are only 3 ways to load pictures onto the device. We decided to use an USB flash drive but that was a lot trickier than it should have been. Sometimes it loaded 1 picture, sometimes it loaded 3, and then other times it loaded all of them. It was like a weird game of chance. And during some of the times it loaded only a few pictures, it also caused a weird power outage on the device.
3. If the picture size doesn't match the size of the frame or they exceed the device's DPI it stretches the photo so that it appears weird on the screen.
4. You have to go online to download the product manual.

Don't get me wrong it looks good, and the pictures display very nicely and clear. But when you go through some issues just trying to get it to work, then it makes the device less than okay.

Okay, I read the review saying don't give this gift to grandparents. That scared me cuz I already bought the product and the gift giving was going to happen later today. So, I panicked and opened the box and took a look around. I put some photos on a USB stick and plugged it into the frame. I turned the frame on and viola' a slide show of my photos started. As long as your grandparents have arms, I think they will be able to use this frame.

The frame is black yet the power cord is off-white. Does not really match.

The P825 has a very poor interface to transfer pictures. The USB port does not work. This means that you can't just transfer your pic files form a PC to the P825's memory. The on-line instructions will tell you how to use the USB port with a 'remote'. Sorry to say the P825 does not come with a remote... The P825 will view pics on an SD card - if they are not in a file. Once again no easy way to transfer pic files from the card directly to the P825's memory.

For a different Kodak product there is note on the FAQ page with some instructions on how to move files over one at a time using a copy button. Pretty poor interface and support.

Now way to tell how much of the P825's memory is still free for additional pictures.

This is not a product that you would want to give to your parents or grandparents and expect them to be able to set-up on their own.

There are no slots on the frame to mount it on a wall. Desk top only.

Picture quality is ok. Viewing angle is a bit limited.

As advanced amateur photographers we had been looking for a better way to share pictures with family, especially with older relatives who don't have computers or access to the Internet.

We looked at digital frames for several years, trying out different demos in stores. All of them were, in my opinion, overly complicated. They wouldn't start the slide show on startup, they had complex menus, and many required the use of a remote. We wanted something simple for our less tech savvy family and this frame fit the bill perfectly.

The "workflow" is simple and easy. Copy pictures to a memory card (we use SD), put the card into the frame, then hold the power button for 1-2 seconds. That's it, the slide show starts automatically. Now that the frame is set up, keeping up with it is just as simple. We will add and swap out pictures from the "collection", copy that to a new memory card, bring it over to our relative's house, then swap out the old for the new.

Though the frame has an option to copy pictures from a card to the internal memory, I don't recommend it. Save yourself the time and effort and just use memory cards. Keep a folder on your computer updated with a collection of pictures. Copy those to the memory card you will keep in the frame. Organizing, managing, backing up, and post processing digital pictures is already a lot of work: why add more complexity to share them?

It's easy for less tech savvy relatives because all they have to do is power the frame on or off with the power button in the back. There are no menus to get lost in and all the settings are done with manual switches that are difficult to accidentally change.

This frame isn't just for the technically challenged. I have a different EasyShare frame on my desk at work. Photoshop, Lightroom, and Camera Raw are already enough effort, I don't need a remote, a menu, a USB cable, or a hundred settings to get pictures to look great on a digital frame.

The bottom line is that pictures do look good on this frame. I've see our pictures on at least 5 different LCD monitors and prints from various sources: the colors, saturation, and brightness are all over the place. Well I am very happy with the brightness and the colors on the Kodak frames. They look how I want them to look.

This frame isn't perfect, but if you spend all your time looking for perfection you'll never buy a digital frame (or any product). There are three transition speed settings and each is unfortunately tied to a specific transition type. I don't worry about this because I set it to slow. This speed has very simple and smooth transition and shows each picture long enough to appreciate it and not be distracted with constant changing.

There was a power outage when we were testing the frame out. The frame was turned off but when I went into the room the frame seemed to have turned itself back on. We don't know if this will happen with every power outage or if it was just an anomaly.

The last thing we noticed is that one (out of 100) of our "portrait" pictures was flipped sideways when displayed on the frame. The picture looked correct when reading the memory card on a Windows machine. It may just be another anomaly that occurred from some of the post processing work I had done.

Overall, this (or any Kodak EasyShare frame) is a great frame for anyone who wants simplicity, ease of use, and something that displays bright pictures with pleasing colors. Anyone will appreciate how little effort is required to use and maintain it. You'll be thankful that you can spend more time capturing memories than trying to get them onto a digital frame.

UPDATE: All Kodak EasyShare frames appear to turn on immediately when they are plugged in. This may be a minor issue if you live in an area with repeated power outages.

I bought this as a gift for my mom, along with a USB memory stick to make loading pictures easier. The frame itself is quite attractive and the pictures look great. We loaded it up with pictures of the kids and then spent 30 minutes watching it before boxing it up to ship. The use of switches on the top rather than some sort of on-screen menu is nice. The choice of time between switching photos is decent, but unfortunately each speed is associated with a fixed transition effect (fade, wipe or pan/zoom). Several of the transitions where rather jumpy and unpleasant, which made we only want to use the speed with the nice transition. It would be nice to select the two separately. Overall very happy with the frame and ordered another one to gift to another relative.

I gave a lot of study to digital frames and it was hard deciding just which one to buy. I finally decided that what was important to me was having really good picture quality. I wasn't disappointed. The pictures are very sharp and the colors are rich. For me, I wasn't interested in a frame that has all kinds of bells and whistles. I just wanted one that would play pictures off a flash drive, and show them in order or at random. And in those modes I didn't want any monkey business -- like repeating sections of pics over and over instead of truly progressing all the way through. As far as I can tell, it performs well on this. This frame does not have remote, and other fancy things, but that's good --- less things to go wrong. The frame is not particulary stylish; it's kind of plain. But I can live with that. So I will give it a 5 star rating because it answers my needs very well.