Right after I purchased a digital picture frame (about to become my Mom's 90th birthday present), the
Pandigital PAN7000DW 7-Inch Digital Picture Frame (Black), I found an offer from Amazon Vine for a similar item,
Smartparts SP72 7-Inch Digital Picture Wood Frame with Beige Matting (Espresso). Oh well -- it gave me the opportunity to compare-and-contrast the two frames (which are similarly priced). *I* didn't know which of these gizmos was best for the purpose, and I dare say you're just as unsure, so maybe my experience can help you.
The short summary: both these frames do what they claim to: They display your photos. But neither of them will give you a heartwarming feeling. The ideas are sound; the implementation kind of stinks. Perhaps more-expensive units have a better user interface, but these two frames are somewhat disappointing.
Let's start with the positives. The picture frames both have a 7" display, which is big enough for sitting on a desk or coffee table, and the displays are bright and clear. You do need a power cable, which might limit where you set up the frame; I can't see hanging them on a wall. The wood frame on the Smartparts is slightly nicer than the Pandigital, but both are reasonably attractive. The basic setup is extremely simple: stuff an SD memory card into the frame and turn it on.
A 2GB card holds 1000+ photos, depending on image resolution. That's a LOT of pictures, even when putting together a huge "this is your life" collection as we did for Mom. I bought a 4GB card along with the Pandigital, which would hold about 5,000 photos, and I could have saved a few bucks.
One thing that isn't clear from the documentation is that you don't HAVE to use an SD card. Both units have their own on-board memory that lets you add a decent number of pictures. You'll need to use the USB connection to get to that memory (and I never DID figure out how to delete their sample photos, grrr); more on that USB connection in a moment.
The Pandigital frame will also play MP3s, if you like. I didn't explore that feature because (a) my Mom's almost deaf and would never use it and (b) there are probably better options for playing music. The Pandigital can also be used as a clock and calendar, though I'm "eh" on that option myself; perhaps you care.
Other options are more important, I think. The Smartparts frame has an option for showing multiple pictures at a time (photo of mom on the left, then Pop's picture on the right, then fade to a third picture to replace Mom's photo). It really does look good, except that a 7" frame is too small to show most photos in enough detail to bother with this. Depending on how you use the frame, though, this feature could be useful. (Maybe for advertising purposes, such as in a realtor's front window, where the detail is a bit less important?)
Both frames have a USB connection, so you can plug them into your computer (mine's a Mac) and easily transfer JPG files to the frame or to the SD card you already stuffed into it. (That's a good thing, in the case of the Smartparts frame, since the card is a real pain to remove.) On the plus side, it means that I could choose a photo in iPhoto and export directly to the unit. On the downside, the Smartparts USB connection was very flaky; it would disconnect itself randomly -- usually in the middle of a file transfer. I used colorful curse words. You're probably best off to use whichever SD-card reader you already use to connect with your PC.
But truly the worst thing about these frames is a terrible, awful user interface for adjusting settings and for interacting with the unit. Both let you control the slideshow from buttons on the top or back of the unit. The Pandigital's are on top, which is slightly more convenient, but both are hard to read without a bright light nearby. The Pandigital also has a remote which (nicely) has a magnetic spot to hold it to the back of the unit. However, I give Mom about 20 minutes before she manages to lose it; it has the right dimensions to be a dandy cat toy, so I'm not upset that the Smartparts unit (which I'm keeping for myself, in case that's not obvious) doesn't have one. Plus, the remote's controls are sticky enough that it takes a few button-whacks to get the frame's attention.
Anyway, they both work with "OK" and "MENU" sort of buttons, and then up/down/right/left arrows to make selections. But the menu design is so poor that it's never clear when you want a right-arrow or a down one. (I never did get the clock set correctly on the Pandigital. Perhaps more detail was in its documentation, but I can't tell you. Other than a "getting started" flyer, the doc is on one of those tiny mini-discs which I feared would disappear into the maw of my iMac's drive. The Smartparts printed documentation is a little more extensive, but not much; a missing CD promised a Windows app, but I wasn't going to use it anyhow.)
Please note that you WILL need to mess with the settings. For one thing, the Smartparts frame seems to need to be told EVERY TIME to show pictures from the SD Card rather than from its own memory. The default time selection to show each photo (5 seconds) is probably too fast for what you prefer, one both units. (The Smartparts has slow/regular/fast; the Pandigital unit has specific time measurements, ranging from 5 seconds to one day.) Most irritatingly, both frames assume you want to choose the "optimal" display setting (well it does SOUND like what you want, right?). However, that actually means, "Make sure the photo touches the right-and-left edges of the frame, even if it means I chop off the heads of the people in the picture." The Pandigital unit automatically shifts the photo display based on whether you arrange it narrow side up or wide side up, but I can't see moving it around that much.
Despite our trained expectation of 5x7 photos, I came to the conclusion that these gizmos ought to be square to accommodate both horizontal and vertical photos. In reality, if I were to get serious about displaying the photos, I'd crop the images to make them get along with the gizmos' formatting; I wasn't about to do that with the 850 images I set up for Mom.
Bottom line: Both of these digital picture frames will get the job done. One isn't significantly better than the other, so I can't tell you to choose the Pandigital over the Smartparts or vice versa. No matter which you choose, though, expect to spend some time cussing before you finish with the setup.
