Customer Reviews

Panimage PI1002DW 10.4-Inch Digital Picture Frame (Espresso)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

After returning the HP 820A4 frame, it took me a while to buy me another digital picture frame. Not that there aren't many, but none of them are deemed reliable enough. Even the Sony's have quite many negative feed backs despite their high cost and positive reviews. So I didn't want to spend too much money anyway to end up with a clunker a year down the line.

Costco had this great deal on the Pandigital 10.4" frame with 1GB internal memory, I thought I will give it a try. The coupon would reduce the price by $40 and my cost would be $99. Not bad for a 10.4" frame with 1 GB memory. This frame also had a dark brown/black frame that suited our family room. The display resolution was 800x600, which is quite good. You need a 800x600 at least for those 8". However, as I watch the pictures I see they are bright and sharp. The frame has had wireless adaptability i.e., with an adapter it could go wireless. Costco also has this great deal - you can return almost anything within 90 days for a full refund; enough time to test out a $99 product.

The frame is pretty impressive. The colors are great though I wouldn't go gaga over it. There is a brightness control knob on the side. It can take either a USB flash drive or a mini-USB one. So I could use one for the wireless adapter and the other for a secondary source.

The random transitions are among the best I have seen even among PC screen savers. The frame can also play avi files and music mp3 files - nice, but not my requirement now. I just want to view our photos sitting and biting dust for a long time. Common, we haven't even seen our wedding photos for such a long time.

The menu system is fine; I am not so annoyed as some others are. The remote is tiny. The frame doesn't immediately respond to the click, making you click once more. But, don't do that as it will result in a default action on the screen to come up.

One biggie this frame doesn't have is auto-orientation. Many frames boast this, but I haven't see one that can perfectly accomplish the task. So, I have decided to live w/o this feature.

The remote doesn't have a ON/Off button which is a second minor nuisance. However, you can turn the frame on with a switch and run a schedule so that you don't have to worry about turning on and off reaching behind the frame always.

Overall I think it is a great bang for the buck given the size and features, notwithstanding the lack of Auto-orientation and a remote power on/off switch.

How long with this frame last; I only need to find out. I had an issue (Invalid Format) using a 16GB flash drive with the frame, but overcome it as outlined here - http://asharagam.blogspot.com/2009/05/invalid-format-error-pandigital-104.html

I bought this 10.4 frame and pandigital's pantouch 8 inch frame from costco ($99 for 10.4 inch and $80 for the 8 inch pantouch frame) to see which one I preferred. Overall the frames look nice and they both provide a good picture. However, I found the pantouch capability on the 8 inch frame to be a huge advantage --- it made it so much easier to just touch the screen to pick photos to import, move from one menu option to another---versus on the 10.4 inch frame where I had to keep clicking on the remote or one of the buttons behind the frame to scroll through features, for me that really made things cumbersome. It was like having a computer with just a keyboard and no mouse or scroll wheel.

Maybe if I had never experienced the pantouch capability I would have not had missed it, but after using it, going to the a non-touch screen frame just seemed so annoying. I bought 2 more of the 8 inch pantouch frames for both sets of grandparents, for them the touch screen was a huge convenience. It is nice to have a bigger screen, but the 8 inch is still a good size. And as I said before, the pantouch feature was the biggest selling point.

While the best of both worlds would be to get a 10.4 inch frame WITH pantouch feature, the cost would be well over a $100 and I was not looking to spend that much.

It took me some digging to find this digital frame. Most frames only permit the slideshow mode to iterate over the picture collection in seconds: ie 5s,10s,15s,30s,60s duration. For something that is mimicking a picture frame that, to me, was too often for something on a desk or nightstand. This one has both 24 hours and 1 hour options. I was looking for 24 hours, but it turns out that 1 hour is really cool.

I loaded up 300 of our pictures (very easy with no pc software. A folder mounted as soon as the usb was connected to the pc). There is an option to get a wireless usb to dump to the folders remotely. I didn't try that but the menu appears to have all the appropriate configuration of the wireless settings.

Another feature is a screen auto-shutoff for nights and optionally for weekends (ostensibly for people who have it in an office and want it off for part/all the weekend). I really like this feature as well since it's pointless to waste electrons illuminating the living room in midnight unwatched displays.

There is a auto shutoff of the screen after a configurable 2,4,8 hours of use but that was not something I needed and meant in the afternoons the screen would go blank.

Note that it's not clear whether that when it goes to "sleep" that the next photo in the morning is the randomized/next or whether the screen is off and the pictures are still progressing in the slideshow without displaying. It's also not clear whether the randomized display goes though all options before reshowing.

There is a the downside, the menu can be a challenge. There are four different modes, pictures, sounds, video and calendar with picture display. I tried to do it by guessing and gave up and did a RTM (read the manual). To set the schedule you must go to the calendar mode and edit the scheudle. Then leave the calendar and go to the slideshow. When starting the slideshow a "schedule" icon appears temporarily in the lower left hand corner, if you press enter, the schedule is activated to auto-shutoff. The slideshow duration is on the main config menu (keep hitting exit on remote). It's not intuitive but the documentation online is clear.

There's many other features I could be using but am not (like sound and video). Note that I called before pickiing this frame, apparently the other pandigital frames do not (as far as I know) have the 1 and 24 hour options on the slideshow. They, however, have a touchscreen to move to the next frame which this does not (although nice if it was being presented to a group of folks, it didn't make sense to me since the remote moves to the next frame easily enough).

So in short, the ergonomics of the menu interface could be improved, but it's awesome and now a permanent fixture in our house.

It's really nice to finaly see all the pictures which have been hanging out on our harddrive without a 60s second "flicker" from the corner of the room.

At this point I've experienced at least a dozen different styles and brands of digital frame. Some have been really good, but overpriced; others have been junk. This one comes out near the high end of the scale.

PROS:
+ Solidly built and nice visual design.
+ Setup and operation is simple and straightforard.
+ Excellent image quality for an 800x600 resolution frame; clear, good colors; bright.
+ Reasonable internal memory capacity (ad now says 1Gb, although when I bought mine it was advertised as having 512Mb)
+ Auto orientation works! (Rare in some brands...)
+ Nice range of features

CONS:
- Haven't figured out yet how to get slideshow to display pictures in a particular order; don't know yet if this is possible.
- big honkin' plastic bulb on the frame-end of the power cord makes it hard to conceal the cord if you mount this on the wall.

Finally, not really a con, but a critique I have of many of these frames: I wish there were some intermediate display times available for slides.
You can set 1, 5, 10, 30, or 60 seconds; and then 1 or 24 hours. Would have been nice to have maybe 5, 15, and 30 -minutes- available as well. For my application 60 seconds is a little too fast, but and hour is much too slow.

Overall, though, this frame looks and performs as well as frames selling for 50% more. At about $80 this one is priced about right, and it's worth the price.

I bought this specific picture frame and paid extra for it specifically for its promised WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities. Unfortunately, all the technical specs fail to mention that those features require the additional purchase of a USB adapter. Even more frustratingly other companies' USB Wifi adapters don't work, it has to be Pandigital's adapter, which by the way is no longer sold on their website or Amazon.

So in short, the promise of being Wifi capable is a straight up lie.

Nice frame and easy to figure out how to use. Only four stars for this reason: it says you can load pictures directly from your computer on to this frame using a usb cable, but it did not work for me. (I even thought the cable came with it, but it did not). I finally purchased my first flash drive ever and easily loaded about 300 photos to it from my computer and then easily transferred them to the picture frame.

I prefer this larger picture frame to view pictures. I had purchased the 8" version of this same frame for my mother-in-law as a Christmas present. I loaded many pictures on it. I was able to use a mini-usb cable and transfer directly from the PC to the frame with the 8" version. Not sure why this bigger frame leaves out that option. Other than that, the whole set-up is the same, so I liked it because I had figured stuff out with the smaller frame first.

Overall, I like the how the frame looks, how it performs, good picture quality, I like the random photo scrolling option and the transitions used from photo to photo. Plus the instructions and loading pictures was rather easy. Would recommend.

I purchased this to play a video file. The item description says that it will play .avi videos. After 2-3 hours of trying to get this to work I tried calling pandigital customer service. After 40 mins. of being on hold to talk to someone I got disconnected. Called back and waited 45 mins. for someone to pick up. Talked to someone who said he couldn't help me and would have someone from tech support contact me. Called again the next morning right when they opened and got the same message at the beginning that "we are experiencing higher call volume than normal". After 40 mins finally talked to someone. After going back and forth and being put on hold a few more times they eventually told me that the picture frame does not support AVI files but instead needs to be converted to MJPEG format. They told me that it must be a misprint. After downloading a few different converters from the web this still will not load on the picture frame. I will be returning this to Amazon and never will purchase anything from Pandigital again!!!

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my father this year. I set it up for him before shipping it off to him, including loading up a couple hundred photo's on an 8GB USB drive. Then I watched it for a couple nights. No failures occurred or wierd technical issues, that was a relief. The most surprising thing to me was the clarity and crispness of the display. I have a 16:9 version of this same frame that I bought a year ago and the image display was noticeably better on this new one than on mine. I almost sent my dad my old one and kept this one! For under $70 this was by far the best deal I could find on a 10" digital frame and it was a bonus to me that it is in the 4:3 format rather than the 16:9. Most people do not have a still camera that shoots 16:9 images so we're left with black space on the right and left of every image. I don't understand why 4:3 displays got so hard to find the past year. I also don't understand why a 10" digital picture frame would cost more than $50. My computer monitor is much higher resolution and is 21" and only cost $120. I guess that's why the digital picture frame companies are adding so much stuff that I couldn't care less about, to justify the high cost. I don't need a calendar, I don't want speakers, I don't want 50% of the "features" they are putting on these things. I just want it to be able to play hi-res images in a true random manner. That's it. Compared to others on the market, this is the best "value" I've found anywhere. One thing I did notice is that, like my other frame it seems to get stuck in a loop or something becuse it starts repeating images fairly quickly. I put about 200 images on the USB drive. Within 10 min it was already repeating images 2, 3 even 4 times. I'm not sure if there's a setting to deal with that, like "no repeat", but I didn't find one. Some images just never displayed at all. I have the same issue with my other, older frame. It would be nice if they spent less time & money in developing alarm clock, calendar and other worthless features and figured out how to truly randomize the images displayed. I think anybody who buys a digital picture frame probably has a cell phone, computer, wall calendar, alarm clock etc. And with how many people have smart phones now, all those features are already there. I just want pictures and lots of 'em to look at whenever I want.

I would recommend this frame to anyone considering. If you're thinking of saving money and getting a 7" frame, I would caution you. I bought a 7" frame for my dad a few years ago. He kept saying "I wish the image was larger". That frame quit working earlier this year, so now he has his wish - a larger image. I didn't like looking at such a small image myself either. The resolution isn't high enough to make the picture look very good. It's not like looking at a 4x3" print, it's much lower image quality. If you can afford it, go for the 10". You'll be glad you did.

I had intended this photo frame to be a gift, so I took it out of the box and tested it first. I loaded it with an SD card containing several hundred photos, plugged it in, turned power on, hit ENTER to start the slideshow. At first, I thought there was a bad connection of the power, so I made sure power cord was securely attached to the wall and the unit. Finally, after seeing the front of the unit from just the right angle, I realized that it was already on and the slideshow playing. I immediately went to the settings and tried to correct the extremely dim display. I tried increasing the brightness, but that appears to be only a relative setting that has an effect comparable to adjusting it in Photoshop. It does not increase the overall luminousity of the screen, so it's useless. I even tried viewing the frame slideshow in a dark, windowless room and still found the luminousity to be woefully inadequate. I even tried hitting the "restore settings to factory default", just in case they'd been corrupted somehow, but this did not improve anything. For this reason, I'm sending this unit back immediately.

This absolutely a very good personal or gift item. All the features are attractive and working fine.
Only remote control is little bit tiny.