Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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578 of 582 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A decent frame for those with reasonable expectations, July 29, 2007
I received my frame today and have been playing with it a couple hours. There seem to be a lot of widely divergent opinions here, so I'll attempt to bridge the gap between the two sides. The frame is made of plastic, but is sufficiently attractive. It does not have that inferior quality, sold-only-on-TV look. It could be confused with wood from a distance, which is good. The frame didn't immediately recognize my SD card, but I popped it out and then back in, and it worked fine. The user interface is pretty clunky, but not so bad as to be infuriating like a cheap digital watch. After a quick look at the user manual and five minutes playing with the frame, I could make it do what I wanted.
The main area I was concerned about is picture quality. The resolution is fairly low - 480 x 234, which is pretty standard at this price point. This is a device clearly aimed at mainstream consumers - proud grandmas and the like. If you are a camera snob you should probably look elsewhere. This should be obvious, but it bears repeating. Your images are *not* going to look as good as they do even on an LCD computer monitor.
That said, most of my decent quality images look decent. Keep in mind this is a 16:9 wide ratio display. I put a couple images on the frame that were shot vertically, forcing the frame to shrink them substantially to make them fit. These shots looked pretty bad, and I ended up deleting them from the memory card. I also had one shot that was slightly out of focus. It looks okay on my computer, but looked pretty bad on the frame. Garbage in, garbage out definitely applies here. If your pics are shot with an inferior camera or they have other flaws, their bad points will most likely be magnified by this frame.
With the bad photos deleted, the ones I left on the frame ended up looking pretty good. Just don't be surprised if you can't get all your images to look their best. If you want your "wow" photos to wow others, you might want to spend a bit more money. But if you start with good looking images and just want something to set on your desk at work, this should be adequate. For the minimal price, I consider the frame good if not great; a reasonable choice for those with reasonable expectations.
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188 of 191 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
OK for this price range -- reasonable performance, August 4, 2007
This screen is reasonably-sized for most viewers (7 inches diagonally; horizontal and vertical dimensions are smaller of course), but elderly or sight-limited folks may find it difficult to see clearly. I bought this for my parents (aged high 70s and 80s) and loaded up lots of photos on a 2 GB chip. As stated by other reviewers, vertical shots are shrunk very small to accomodate the limited height of the screen. The wider than normal photograph 16:9 ratio means that horizontal shots will have the left and right sides of each image stretched a bit, causing some distortion on the sides (a person at the left or right side will appear to be much wider than someone in the middle!) Of course, this could be corrected by editing each photo, but who has the time? Screen resolution is not as sharp as a PC LCD screen would be. But, at this price point it seems to be a reasonable performer. My main gripe is the very short lead between the AC wall transformer and plug -- maybe 2-3 feet. Still, for me, it's a keeper until prices come down on larger and sharper screens.
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72 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good For the Money, August 31, 2007
The resolution is nothing to write home about, but unless you want to spend at least 3x as much money, you won't notice much difference between this and any of the other digital picture frames under $200 or so. About my only "complaint" concerning this unit is that there is no provision to run it on batteries, rechargable or otherwise. That is pretty common with these units though, unfortunately. I found a great SD memory card for this on Amazon for less than $20. All things concerned, this is a really good deal, and I am very satisfied with the purchase. Stupidly simple to operate. Would make a great gift.
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