Customer Reviews

Pandigital 8.0-Inch Digital Photo Frame w/2 Interchangeable Frames & 128MB Built-in Memory

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

I see all these bad reviews listed and I think to myself, "Did they get the same product I got?" I picked mine up from a major Big Box retailer, one you have to be a member of, and no, this one doesn't own Wal-Mart as well, it is the other big one! Better price than listed here also.

To the heart of the matter, I plugged in the included USB cable, my computer popped up a notice about new hardware being found, shortly after this, I opened My Computer and saw a new hard drive listed as Pandigital. This of course was the onboard memory of the Pandigital PhotoFrame. I moved all the shipping images off to a folder on my hard drive, then started copying photos from my PC to the Pandigital drive. While I was at it, I also copied over a few instrumental mp3 files. When file copy was done, I removed the cable, pointed remote at the PhotoFrame and clicked on Start Slideshow, to my amazement, the photos started cycling and the MP3 files played softly in the background. Using the volume control on the remote, I was able to set the volume just where I wanted it. The pictures are all very well lit, colors look true to life, just as if they were real photos. My 83 year old mom remarked, "How do you get the photos in there, from the back? She thought they were actual printed photos.

I think this is a very well thought out frame , better features than the highly touted Philips frames, and for a lot less money! The included decorative frames, dark Ebony wood or clear acrylic should go with almost any decor and the neatly designed remote fits right in the CompactFlash slot when not in use.

I used Photoshop to size all my photos to 800 x 600 (or 600 by whatever for portrait shots), using pre-recorded actions and automation features I as able to resize them all and compress them for best file size (used "Save for Web" feature to optimize all my photos). They all look great, and at these sizes, I could get several hundred photos on the included onboard memory of 128mb.

If you bought one of these before and were unhappy, try picking one up again, I don't think you will be dissapointed!

An onboard battery would be nice, but for most it will reside in one place on a table top, for these places, the enclosed A/C adapter will do fine (there is no battery power for this unit, A/C only!)

The included speakers were not too loud, but reproduced the music accurately and were loud enough to provide a soothing soundtrack to the slideshow. I watched for over an hour straight, amazed at how well all the photos looked.

If you have a digital camera, you owe it to yourself to buy a digital photo frame, finally your images are unlocked from inside your computer or those tiny flash memory devices. Most women I talk to say they hate digital cameras because they want real photos they can hold and see, well now they can.

I love my Pandigital frame!

I purchased the Kodak SV1011 and Pandigital DPF80-2 photo frames recently during my business trip to USA. Paid 169.99 for SV1011 and 139.99 for PAN80-2 (in store price excl tax, not mail order). Both models have universal voltage AC adapters so it works outside USA.

The SV1011 is not actually a 16:9 display. If you check the specification from Kodak website, the display area is 8.9 × 5.3 in. (225 × 135 mm) - that's 15:9. 800 x 480 also means it's a 15:9 display, unless the pixels are not square.

I am not a professional photographer but my main camera is Canon EOS 5D with a few L lenses. I capture in RAW and convert & scale the images to JPEG using Canon DPP s/w. For the SV1011, I tried scaling it to 15:9 800 x 480 and 15:9 1600 x 960.

The SV1011 has a serious problem with its scaling engine. When fed with images at its native resolution of 800 x 480, the picture looks very soft. I can also easily see jagged lines. When fed with 1600 x 960 images, the picture looks very sharp. If the image is not scaled to multiple of 800 x 480 (e.g. whatever native resolution that comes out from the camera), sometimes the image does not look good (again, scaling engine problem).

I don't have such problem with PAN80-2 - the scaling engine is perfect. I get the sharpest image at its native resolution of 800 x 600 (4:3). Testing with the images created for SV1011, the 800 x 480 images look sharp on PAN80-2. But when displaying pictures with blue sky (e.g. the PanDigital demo picture with the boy holding a kite with blue background), it reveals that the LCD panel of PanDigital does not have enough bits. I guess it's a 6-bit panel, but it does not have enough steps to display the blue sky smoothly. The same picture when displayed on SV1011 shows very smooth blue sky but the edges on the boy's shirt look very jaggy.

The PAN80-2 has better color/hue and contrast/brightness control compared to SV1011. Skin tones look pale with the original setting but can be adjusted. The skin tones on SV1011 looks too saturated and cannot be adjusted further except for brightness.

The SV1011 has faster USB speed (PAN80-2 USB is really slow) and better GUI for managing folders. The PAN80-2 does not show folders in memory card but just display all images from different folders.

The PAN80-2 has separate slots for different types of memory cards - I can load 4 types of memory cards simultaneously compared to 2 for SV1011. If the slide show is running on the SV1011 and another card is inserted, SV1011 automatically recognizes that and starts slide show from the newly inserted card.

After showing both DPF to my family, they all like PanDigital 80-2 better. If I want to buy another DPF, very likely I'll go for PanDigital.

I purchased two Pandigital 8" digital frames (model PAN80-2) as gifts for family members recently, and in a nutshell I'd say I am fairly pleased with the product. Here are the pros and cons as I see them after setting up the two frames I bought.

Pros
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a) Good picture quality, once you've tweaked the brightness, contrast, and color settings. Picture display is very sharp and clear. This is especially true if you resize your pictures to match the unit's native resolution of 800x600.
b) Menu is easy to use and navigate, in general. Make sure to read the user's guide, though - there are some menu choices that aren't immediately available from "slide show" mode.
c) Supports all major memory card formats as well as USB. The USB connection works well (at least, it has with my Dell desktop), making it easy to transfer pictures to the frame's 128 MB internal memory.
d) Plays MP3 music files (if any are present on the memory card or internal memory) while displaying pictures in slide show mode.

Cons
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a) The 128 MB internal memory would not accept more than roughly 25 MB of files when I tried to copy them from my computer via the USB connection. This happened on both units I bought. The only solution was to reformat the device as a FAT32 drive, after which the full 128 MB became available. This could be a big problem for non-technical people who want to use the internal memory instead of an SD or CF memory card. The workaround, of course, it to use an external card and forget about the 128 MB internal memory.
b) The workmanship and finish of the frame is not great. It looks kind of "cheap" upon close inspection, and there is substantial variability in appearance between different units. For example, the white inset border around the LCD screen was 2 cm wide on one unit, but only 1.7 cm on the other, such that there was a visible black border around the LCD screen on one unit that was not present on the other. It may not sound like a big deal, but think it demonstrates a lack of quality control on the production line.
c) The choice of slideshow speeds is too limited. There is only "fast", "medium", and "slow", where slow means about 10 or 11 seconds per picture. I would have liked a few more choices, especially on the "slow" end (e.g. a 20 or 30 second setting). "Fast" is useless, in my opinion, at about 3 seconds per picture.
d) Video playback doesn't work well and is not integrated into the picture slideshow mode. I could not get certain AVI files to play at all, and even if I could, the lack of integration with slideshow mode would render this "feature" pretty useless, in my opinion.
e) "Shuffle" mode does not work properly. It seems to be more like a pseudo "random" play mode, where pictures can be repeated before others are even displayed one time. In addition, the "shuffle" playback order is always the same when you start the slide show. For example, it will always display pictures 1, 16, 5, 22, 34, etc. in that order, which is not a true shuffle at all. If you turn shuffle mode off, then pictures are displayed in the default order they are stored on the memory device -- but this is not necessarily alphabetical order! Bottom line, you can't really control the playback order of your pictures, which I find to be moderately annoying.

In summary, this frame is a decent value for the money (I paid just under $130), but there are some drawbacks and quirks you should keep in mind before purchasing. Once you get it setup and working, you'll probably be very pleased with its picture slide show and music playback abilities. I would look elsewhere if you are interested in video playback.

I've been looking at digital frames for a long time. I'd given my Parents a Ceiva frame almost 3 years ago and its screen clarity didn't compare to this one. (Note: their newer models are likely improved but I chose to stop paying for their subscription service.) The Pandigital 8" screen resolution of 800 x 600 is excellent.

I bought a different manufacturer's product for my husband's birthday in mid December 2006. It distorted the images and people looked shorter and wider - NOT flattering. We returned it and bought the Pandigital 8" as a replacement. We liked it so well we got 4 more for grown kids and my parents for Christmas. I've used it with either a compact flash card or a SD card and it has worked perfectly. Put the card in the correct slot, turn on the frame and the slide show starts. The photo shows up very well in either a well lighted or a dark room.

It's straightforward to change the slide show options with the remote e.g. length of time per image can be 3,5,10,30 or 60 seconds, you can change effects between images or have none, you can have the images "shuffled" or displayed in order. Another reviewer complained about the "shuffling" of photos. He just needs to turn off that feature. We usually like the shuffle on.

You can also use the buttons in the back of the frame to change display options but using the remote is easier. You can have multiple memory cards installed and choose which to view. I have both a SD and a CF card with different images and can switch between them or use the 128 MB of internal memory

I especially like the clarity and crispness of the screen in a brightly lit room, and the fact that I don't have to resize high resolution photos for them to display well. Lower resolution load faster but the frames supports up to 12 M pixel photos - as long as they're JPEG.

As another reviewer noted, the stand on the back doesn't seem very sturdy but so far, we've not had any problems. I just purchased another of these frames for my office last week. We are very pleased with this frame and recommend it.

Recently purchased this digital frame after buying several others for relatives. The size of the frame is nice but overall picture quality is lower than the phillips frame. Set-up is fairly easy, and you don't have to install proprietary picture software, which is nice. I will say I had a heck of a time getting my memmory stick recognized. It has a combo slot and it is not intuitive where to put the card in or even which way it should go. The directions say is will only go one way, but that wasn't the case. Overall this is a good frame for the size and price.

This is a great quality frame. The pictures are extremely clear, and you can adjust the brightness. It is compatible with most digital cameras, and it can connect to a USB (a plus that several other digital frames do not have). I give it four stars rather than five only because it run by AC adapter only. For a sleeker look, I would prefer battery-operated so as not to see the cord.

First off, although there are a few reviewers who say that the frame does connect to their computers, there are many, many more both on Amazon and elsewhere who say it does not. For me, it did not - Windows did not recognize the device. If you are willing to use a memory card rather than the internal memory, then this is a complete non-issue. Memory cards are cheap, so for me it was not an issue, especially since I wanted to load more pics than the internal memory would hold anyway. Moreover, if you want to use the internal memory, you can copy the pics from the memory card to the internal memory pretty easily, although only one by one.

Putting that glitch aside, this is a great frame. The picture quality is excellent - bright, excellent color saturation and fidelity, and good resolution. I've loaded it both with full-size 5MP jpgs and with them resized to the 640x480 resolution of the frame, and they both look great.

On the downside, there appears to be no way to organize the pictures so that you can display, say, pictures from 2006 only while not displaying pics from other years. I've tried putting the pics into separate folders on the memory card, but the frame reads them all at once, apparently in alphabetical order by file name (though I haven't confirmed that). One possibility is to use separate memory cards for each group of pics - the frame can accommodate, I believe, 4 different memory cards simultaneously, although they are each different formats -- CF, MS, XD, SD. You could then tell the frame to display the pics on one of those cards and not the others.

The frame automatically defaults to slideshow on powerup, and you have to use the remote to exit that mode and/or to get into the menu. Not a big deal. When the slideshow is stopped, you can page through all the pics on the memory card and select one for viewing without slideshow. You can then start the slideshow at any time, or you can manually move from one pic to the next. Slideshow works either with or without shuffle, with or without transitions (which are fine basic transitions) and with a variable display time of 3, 5, 10, 30, or 60 seconds (going from memory here, so I may be off a bit).

The remote has to be fairly close to the frame and has to be pointed directly at it, but really, how often are you going to be using the remote from across the room?

The viewing angle is excellent from the top and sides, but much more restricted from below. This matters only if you plan to display the frame high up, in which case you'll need to hang it flat on the wall rather than using the easel leg, which angles the frame upward.

The frame itself is good looking and solid, but the easel leg on the back makes me a bit nervous. It seems to collapse slightly at the slightest push. I think what is happening is that the leg overextends, and then pushes back to the position it's supposed to be in. I'm probably being too nervous about it, but it is a bit of a concern.

I had hesitated in getting a digital frame, but got a great deal on this one at Costco, and am quite pleased.

I though I would be able to copy jpeg files from my PC to the internal memory using the included mini USB cable. The five drives(internal memory & 4 card slots) show up under My Computer but you can't access them. You can't copy to them. You can't open them. I put a CF card in the frame and can display the images using their slide show function, but the PC does not see the images via the USB connection. The only way to move images into internal memory is to manually copy each one using the remote. Very tedious.I wanted to preload the internal memory for Christmas and then just use a memory card for photo updates for my mother. So what good is the USB connection? The manual made it sound real easy.
12/11/06 Update - Finally talked to Tech Support. They said this frame does not work with a Dell computer. Both computers( Desktop and laptop) I tried the transfer on were Dells. I just connected the picture frame up to a Sony laptop and I can perform transfers. Pandigital supposedly is working on drivers for the Dell, but they don't know when the drivers will be available.

I purchased this frame as a gift for my parents. I made them a slide show for their 50th anniversary that was on a dvd but wanted to make it easier and more portable for them to watch. I then downloaded all the pictures I took at their anniversary party along with the slideshow. The onboard memory held all 260 pictures and there is still room for more.
I love the black frame as it will go with everything but there is another enclosed frame you could use if you prefer a change. I use photoshop so there was no problem adjusting all my pictures to the 800x600 size requirement. Doing that makes all the pictures load and run smoothly. I put colored borders on all my images that had to be 600x800 (portrait mode instead of landscape) and it makes it all the more colorful. I did not want my images to shuffle randomly as the order was important to me so I was able to turn that feature off. I also downloaded music to play along with the slideshow. I picked soothing piano instrumentals as the built in speakers are small and not meant to be used as a stereo-only as a low playing accompaniment to your images. I downloaded all my images from my computer with the included USB cable and it worked smoothly. The images are clear, nicely lit, and colorful. I don't know how it would function if you download right from your camera. I think if you load your images into your computer, do your color correction etc and sizing in a software program-you will get MUCH better results with your frame. If you can size your own images-it will make your frame run much faster and more efficiently. I kind of think of it like this-why download something that is bedspread size when it is really meant to run something pillowcase size?
Over all-I am really satisfied with the frame and have watched it all the way through the 260 pictures several times. The more I play with it, the more I don't want to give it to my parents:) Guess I will have to purchase one for myself.
I purchased mine after doing a good bit of research at Office Max. I bought it there because it was on sale the week I made my decision to purchase the pandigital frame. When I got there, they had several brands on display and they were all on and working. As soon as I saw the one I picked, I knew I made a good decision. I wouldn't buy one that is less than 8 inches because of the aspect ratio. Mom and Dad might receive this one-but then again, maybe not ;)

Read all these reviews as I was unboxing it (bought at a brick and mortar store near me)... I used a batch function to resize all the pictures I wanted to 800x600, copied them over - it was recognized like a charm with no effort whatsoever - and threw a few mp3s on there for fun. Disconnected, turned off, turned back on, and was pleasantly surprised to find a slideshow with my music underneath it! Recommend instrumentals, they go well with the show moreso than most other music. Recommend resizing the pictures, just so the frame doesn't have much to think about. And no proprietary software, no drivers, just plug in and work. To the guy who said it loaded a trojan on his system, that's flat wrong - there's NO files that get transferred from the frame to your computer at any point.