Customer Reviews

Pandigital Pan Touch PAN1002W02T 10.4-Inch Digital Picture Frame (Black)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

To give some background before my review, I must have tried at least a dozen different photo frames in search of the perfect one, but I was never happy with any of them. I would buy one and play around with it, and I would always find something I didn't like and return it. But I fell in love with this one immediately, because it has literally every feature you could ever want.

First of all, it has touch screen controls which is nice because you don't need to fiddle around pressing buttons on the back of the frame which you can't see (like most frames make you do). It also has a handy remote control.

The screen is incredibly high resolution for its size (1024x768), and best of all it's a 4:3 format and not a 16:9 widescreen like so many other frames are! I never understood why they make widescreen digital photo frames, because ALL cameras take pictures in a staandard 4:3 format! So when your photos are displayed on a 16:9 widescreen, it either stretches the photo (which makes everyone look fat) or it chops off 25% of the picture at the top & bottom to make it fit. This frame displays photos perfectly without chopping or cropping or stretching. And the screen is a perfect size - not too big, and not too small.

As for functionality, it plays pictures (obviously), music, and even videos! You have the option of either inserting a media card (SD Card, MMC, USB Flash Drive, etc), or you can connect it directly to your PC via USB and transfer pictures into the internal memory. It has 512MB internal memory, which equald about 2,000 pictures. And if that's not enough, then you can insert an SD Card for more storage space.

When you play a slideshow you have a lot of different options. You can change the speed, the transition style, and shuffle on/off. You also have the option of playing music in the backround. And setting it up to play music is as easy as can be - all you need to do is put some MP3 files into the folder with your pictures, and it will automatically play the music files when you start the slide show (if you have the sound turned on). I have it set up with Christmas songs right now, and it adds a nice mood to the room!

It also plays videos perfectly without skipping or hesitation, even when they are big files. I played a 50MB movie clip that I shot with my digital camera, and it played flawlessly. Most other frames I have tried will skip or freeze up with you try to play a large file.

And the speakers on this thing are amazing! I only need to turn the level up to about 5-6 (out of 16) to fill the entire room with sound. If I crank it all the way up to 16 I can hear it throughout the entire house, and the speakers never get distorted at all.

And to top it all off, it also has Wi-Fi capability! (USB Wi-Fi adapter required, not included) You can connect it to your home wireless network, and the frame will sync up with an online Google Picasa account (which is free to set up, if you don't have one). I haven't used that feature yet, but I plan on setting it up. This makes it easy to let friends and family add pictures to your slideshow from anywhere in the world - you just set up a free Picasa account and give them the username & password, and then they can log into the account and add photos at any time. It's essentially the same principle as the "Cevia" service (which costs $99/year), but this is absolutely FREE!

Sorry for the lengthy review, but if you can't tell I am simply blown away by this picture frame. PanDigital hit a towering grand slam with this one. Don't even waste your time trying any other frames - this one has it all.

I needed a digital frame for use by/for seniors -- it had to have reasonable sized buttons and a simple interface. Pandigital frame is perfect for those users. On top of that the picture quality is almost 5 star -- the only distraction is that the viewing angle is fairly narrow but if the item is being handled or on your desk it will not matter.

I purchased a Phillips product first but the user interface was 'dumb', the external buttons were tiny, and no remote. I returned to Amazon with their amazing return policy and got the Pandigital.

The only drawback is the design for the compact flash card slot. It is too large and will allow the card to drop into the unit. I do not use compact flash cards so I literally put duck tape over the slot. SD, MMC,MS cards and USB sticks are no problem. It is a dumb design issue and will probably not be corrected.

I have had it now for about a month and would downgrade my rating. Customer support is not good -- they are third party support personnel that support a variety of other products and are not Pandigital employees or agents. The product has microcode flaws that are acknowledged but there will be no correction. Pandigital is a sales arm and the product is manufactured overseas based on somebody's specification. The support experience and product flaws definitely have changed my original good opinion.

Our company just purchased a half dozen of the PAN1502W02 frame, which has the redundantly mentioned "blue arrow" problem. The frames are for commercial use and the arrow problem is unacceptable, but fortunately, it can be fixed. Download the firmware from pandigital's website at[...]

Next problem, they saved the instructions in .docx format, but here are the text instructions:

1. Copy these two files "A08_08_19_PD_SAP15.img" and "boot_loader_bin.img" to a blank SD card.
2. Power up the frame. On the Pandigital welcome blue screen, there is a code version on the bottom left corner of the screen. It should say either "A08_06_03_PD_SH15" or"A08_06_13_PD_SH15". Make sure the code on your frame appears exactly the same as either of the above ones; otherwise, this upgrade procedure will not apply.
3. While the frame is operating normally, insert the SD card into the frame. Wait until the DPF detects it. At this moment, the HOME screen should show up with the SD icon on the top of the screen.
4. Use the LEFT or RIGHT keys on the remote to move the highlight to FILE, and press ENTER.
5. While in the FILE screen, move the file highlight to "boot_loader_bin.img" and press ENTER on the remote. The system boot code upgrade will be started.
6. When the screen shows "software upgrade completed. Please turn off the unit and restart again!" it means the boot code upgrade is completed.
7. Remove SD and restart the system by powering off, then powering on.
8. Press EXIT a few times to go to the Home screen.
9. Insert this SD card and wait until system detects it as before.
10. Move highlight to FILE folder, press ENTER to go to a file listing for the SD. Move the highlight to the file "A08_08_19_PD_SAP15.img", and press ENTER again to start the second upgrade.
11. Wait until DPF finishes programming and display the message to ask for restart the system.
12. Remove the SD card and restart the frame.Iin the Pandigital welcome blue screen, you should see the newly upgraded code version "A08_08_19_PD_SAP15" at the bottom left corner. This means the new code has been upgraded successfully.


Also, some have mentioned problems with photo order, but the frame will only read photos in the order they are saved, not the filename order. In windows, make sure the files save onto the flash/usb in order without any auto arrange or sorting.

Overall, these problems are annoying, but for the price and the overall picture quality, it is a great value if you don't mind investing some setup time.

The first frame that was delivered was dead on arrival (always shutdown with 20 seconds of being powered up). That frame was returned. The second frame that was delivered stopped the picture show periodically with the error message that it could find no photo files. Rebooting the screen was required to restart the show (or find any pictures). This failure occurred both with SD cards (multiple cards tried) and the internal memory. I did like the display when it worked. I gave up after two failures and went with another manufacturer.

I had such high hopes for this product but I was left disillusioned.
It is well made, well finished, very nice display, some good features some bad and some missing. So what is the problem? in a word, the REMOTE. The remote STINKS, it is LOUSY, it is a pile of horse S--T!!!!
At least 50% of the time it simply does not work. You can press a button on the remote and NOTHING happens, you can repeat the action 10 times with NO RESULT.
The "Greeting Card" feature is nice but I tried for hours to enter some text such as "Dear Brenda, Happy Birthday", my sister's birthday. I was NEVER able to get beyond the "a" in "Brenda", it would freeze but if you waited about 2 minutes it MIGHT UN-FREEZE. Mostly it DID NOT. Pull the power plug and start again, over and over and over again.
Now the functions of the remote can be duplicated with buttons on the back of the unit but the problem is that you cannot see the buttons without turning the frame around to check that you are pressing the correct one, this is NOT GOOD.
The screen for entering text is badly laid out and a very curious thing struck me, although there is a screen with many symbols such as !@#$%^& etc. there is NO comma. There is NO comma the commonest punctuation character in the English language. If anyone can find a comma please let me know where it is.
So what to do? I purchased another unit but, same old S--T, well it was marginally better, they are both going back.
Incidentally, I bought them at COSTCO for $99.99, how come Amazon wants $179 for the same thing????
Now this unit has the 10.4 inch screen, there is another unit with an 8 inch screen that has a touch screen, hmm too many "screens". I tried this out in the Costco store, much much better, the touchscreen that is I could not checkout the remote. I may buy this one for my sister and it is only $79.99.
Now to the features, they're not bad, I particularly like the ability to place images into pre-defined folders such as Home, Family, Travel etc but the pre-definition is the problem. It would be so nice and easy to allow the creation of additional user defined folders, LISTEN UP PANDIGITAL.
Now I will go back to Costco to return the 2 10.4 inch units and get an 8 inch touchscreen unit. Costco allows you 90 days to try the unit out and return it.
Hope this is of value to someone.

What are you looking for in a picture frame? If you want wireless you are going to need to pay up for their proprietary wireless stick. That is as far as I got with that... another ~30$. Do you ever crop your images or enhance the brightness / color / contrast? If so your picture is likely going to require re-saving as all PANDIGITAL frames are VERY particular about what attributes are set on the JPEG. Even though you may save as a JPEG /jpg it will either not show in the slide show or cause the frame to lockup on that pic. I had pretty good results with a freeware program call IRFANVIEW and its batch conversion utility. Batch convert the folder in attributes clear options like progressive JPG or keep old underlying data (deselect all)... output to a new location and then copy the converted files to the memory stick. This resulted in about 95+% success with the 800 some pictures. (took my PC about 5min in all) You will also want to downgrade your high megapixel pictures as their is a limit..(5MB I think) and IRFANVIEW can do that for you as well, just be 100% sure that you are saving to a new directory before you do this as IRFANVIEW can over-write existing files if you are not paying attention to all your settings. The remaining pictures have green zones appear where normally 75% of the pictures were saturated in bright green. A second batch converting fixed the green but the pain is that they look normal on your PC so you wont know until you run the frame what ones are corrupt. IRFANVIEW was recommended by PANDIGITAL tech support, and when I called I could tell not all reps had the same level of knowledge. No random feature... but I leave it on all the time. Do be careful with the COMPACT FLASH SLOT I see in another review where you could easily drop a SD car into it an then have a rough time getting it out again. I have not tried any music on this picture frame so I cannot comment on it abilities there.

I have gone through several defective PAN1002W02T 10.4" 1024x768 digital picture frames (DPFs) recently because the slide-show would stop unexpectedly, return to its Home Screen, and produce the error message No Photo Files Found -- despite my trying different (size/brand) SD cards and the DPF's 512MB internal memory. Also I could not program the time of day for the slide-show to start/stop, despite the PAN1002W02T having menus precisely for this operation. Pandigital "claims" to have no knowledge of the defect (although others have posted similar complaints online) and, thus, has no firmware flash-fixes available to remedy it; a sad situation since the the display's image quality is quite nice (albeit a bit cool in color, as are most DPFs) and the problem should be easy to address. So, after receiving and returning several frames, I decided to end my frustration and simply go with another manufacturer.

I have several digital frames but this one has the most features. Bright clear 1024x768 screen. I like the 4x3 format because my main computer screen is 4x3 and my 35mm scans are 4x3. The sound is clear and video is smooth. I'm waiting for the Pandigital wifi/bluetooth dongle I ordered to be able to display my online Google photo album. I used another brand of bluetooth dongle and was able to transfer photos from my Blackberry curve to the frame up to 30 feet away. It is best to upload photos in 1024x768 as Photos look best in the native frame size of 1024x768 but larger and smaller images are automatically sized to fit the screen. It takes some getting used to operating the frame as the operation is different for touch screen, rear buttons and remote. I have had none of the failures others have reported except that the tiny remote would not function. Pandigital replaced my remote with a larger much nicer one within 2 weeks. It is not the fault of the frame but some of the photos and videos won't work. I didn't pay attention to the file format and uploaded MOVs and image files that would not display. They tend to lock up the frame. I converted them to AVI or DIVX or JPG and all files work perfectly. Angle of view is great in my opinion. It is as good as any of my computer monitors including Dell and Viewsonic.

UPDATE 1/7/12
I got the WIFI dongle and it does work but takes awhile to setup and several minutes to access the picasa account and display the photos. It will only display photos in the folder selected manually. This might be good for those who want to display a particular photo set and have different folders for different photo sets. I would rather have several SD cards with different photo sets than take the time to wait up to 5 minutes for the frame to connect to the remote account. The bluetooth and wifi are fun for gadget folks but not really practical. Photos look best if they are resized to the frame resolution of 1024x768 at 72dpi. I prefer the remote over the back controls or the touch screen.

I recently purchased this product from Amazon.com where it was selling for $125.00 off list. It was to replace a similar product of same size from a different vendor where the screen stop working after 3 years of use. This product is beautiful, it came with a cherry hardwood frame, as well as the black frame. I have a technical background, and found the instructions inconsistent between using the remote and using the touch screen. I find my self using the touch screen instead of the remote out of conveinence, yet... some functions you still need the remote to configure them. With some time, I quickly got the hang of it. One of the features I like about this frame is you can set it to go off and on at a certain time to save on energy. I have mine in my bedroom, so it sort of comes on before bedtime, and goes off after I am asleep. I use it like a night light. One of the cons besides the documentation was I though it came with a WI-FI connection, but for that to work, you need to purchase the network adapter at an additional cost. I have plenty SD memory cards, so it was not that big a deal.

You may like this digital picture frame better than I did if you are not too picky and really just want to use it as a basic slideshow viewing device (however read all the reviews talking about the "blue arrow" issue before you buy one of these)

I got this as a gift from my parents and really had high hopes for it...in fact I had planned to use the frame as part of a presentation I was doing on "digital signage" for small business owners - you see the idea was that I would recommend they create a slideshow of still images and play them in their store via this frame but instead of vacation pictures create "slides" announcing sales, giving helpful hints, customer testimonials etc.

The problem I had was that no matter what you can't get this unit to play the slides in the order you set, their internal firmware randomizes the order of playback even when you specifically instruct it not to do so. So, for me, this unit will not work for a digital signage application.

Next came the video issue. I could have maybe gotten round the still image randomization problem if I could have figured out their video playback requirements.

The documentation says you have to encode the video as an AVI using what's called the Motion JPEG codec...that's very difficult to do on a Mac...none of the Mac software I tried can export video in this format. PC users were reporting lots of trouble with this too.

This codec used to be popular with still camera manufacturers who discovered their digital cameras could also be used to take brief videos...but the Motion JPEG compression was never very good and most camera manufacturers have since abandoned it.

So, bottom line, I could figure out how to get video in the right format onto this device...I still have one more thing to try but it's going to be a long shot.

Oh, one more thing...the remote is terrible....you have to press it 8 times before the frame reacts.