Customer Reviews

Matsunichi Photoblitz 7-Inch Digital Picture Frame

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is a good product. It is not amazing; but for this price point it is nice. This is just a Christmas present for my Mother in Law who loves pictures of my son, so this is perfect for that type of thing. If you are looking for a high resolution frame that will make your pictures look awesome, you are in the wrong place.

The picture quality is OK. The larger the objects in the shot are the better it comes through. Since it is low resolution, smaller items in the pictures look a little pixelated. So you might want to crop junk out of the pictures before you put it on the memory stick.

The frame itself is just a black plastic frame, so it will "go" with pretty much any decor.

It is really easy to use. I just pulled it out of the box, threw my memory card in it, plugged it in and the slide show started. There are a few features to adjust the slideshow to make it do what you want and there is a clock option on it.

So basically,
If you are looking for an affordable digital frame for a grandma (or an aunt, friend, etc.) that is user friendly and looks halfway decent; this is a nice option to consider.

But if you are looking for a beautiful, crisp picture display to show off your photography skills after your Italian countryside honeymoon, this is not the product for you. Check out the $130 Kodak one with the interchangeable faceplates if that's what you want.

I read a lot of reviews on a lot of different digital photo frames before I purchased this one as a fathers day present. I was concerned because of the talk about the poor quality or the low resolution. After some tinkering with file size and resolution of the pictures I loaded I was able to get perfectly crisp and quality pictures displayed (most of the time). You know what the problem was with the pictures that didn't look great on the display? It was because they didn't look great to begin with. As they say "garbage in, garbage out." Its not going to make a bad picture look any better, but it is going to make a good picture look just as good. I also think you need to consider the target audience. I am a graphic designer and work with displays, printers, and color issues all day...so yes I could be a lot more critical of this device. However, I am giving it to my father who is pushing 60. He will never know the difference in quality or contrast, nor will any of his friends that look at it. Just remember things like this when making a purchase like this. Good luck to everyone looking to buy one of these photo frames!

I bought this for my husband for Fathers Day. I collected pictures by email from everyone and put it on a 1GB card. To get the full benefit of the 16:9 display you need to be sure your pictures are taken in landscape mode. Otherwise they can be narrow in the middle of the screen. Still, it doesn't seem to bother him. He absolutely loves it! He keeps it on all the time on the table next to his recliner. Beautiful picture quality - much better than I had expected. And whenever the kids send us pictures or I take some he has me add them to his card. It plays a slideshow all the time. Adding pictures is so simple. Then you just plug the card in and it starts right up. Too easy. I am getting ready to buy our son one for his birthday and I am going to give my son-in-law one that is battery operated to take to Iraq when he is deployed in November. Don't hesitate to buy this for a gift. It's a no brainer :)

Not sure about the complaints listed - for the price you are paying, this is an outstanding buy. I was easily able to load over 700 pics onto a 1GB card and have them all display beautifully. For the most part, I loaded them as fairly high resolution - 1 GB gives you plenty of room - but if you are using a smaller card there are many readily available freeware utilities to change the resolution of a bunch of pics all at once.

I have no idea why some other reviewers have issues with pixelizing - for the most part, it is quality in and quality out - sure, the resolution is lower than your PC or a print, but it is not grossly distorting pictures.

Ultimately, I purchased 4 of these for various gifts - watch for specials when they fall below 60 bucks.

This is a really nice frame - looks like an expensive black wooden frame. It has an extensive setup menu, but it is really a no-brainer. Just pop the card in and the slideshow starts.

cons: Does not have a remote

Great photo fill technique. I used irfanview batch conversion to resize my pics to 800x600. Perfect display and the file size was @50-100kbytes each. I got 150 great looking pics on an old 16mb SD card. When I popped my camera 512 SD card in, I noticed it would even play a video on it taken from my Canon A630 camera too!! If I clicked on one they all would play one time through. You may be able to watch computer edited MP4 / AVI(s) this way.((from frame menu and no speaker sound) not during auto slide show mode though).

Two or three years ago, this would have been an amazing product. Now it is just fine for a stocking stuffer. If you can get a good price, it can make a nice gift.
The low resolution produces a somewhat grainy picture. But you can use low resolution jpg's and fit a ton on a small memory card that has outlived its usefulness for your camera in this world of $20 2GB cards.
It is very easy to setup and use. Stick in a memory card and turn it on. This is good since the instruction manual is written in somewhat broken English, despite the California address for the manufacturer.