Customer Reviews

Philips 8.5-Inch Digital Picture Fame (Wood)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I just received this in the mail. I think the feature set is decent, and it was able to connect to my PC without much ado. Transfer of images isn't too hard. You can load images from memory cards or directly from your PC (or Mac, apparently) via a USB cable. And it has good control options (frequency of image changes from 5 seconds to 1 day, effects for changes, auto on/off for weekends and 3 on/off settings for weekdays). I also like that it has different "fill" options for shots that are portrait when the display is oriented for landscape (and vice versa). It will take the full-size portrait and surround it with smaller portrait images to fill in the display, thus avoiding any cropping of the main large image. This is a particularly nice feature. You can also create separate albums to segregate the images that are shown...

HOWEVER, do be warned that the display measures 8-inches diagnoally, not the advertised 9. This isn't unusual for old TV sets, but it's a bit unusual to have an LCD screen overstated by this much.

Also, the leg on the back of the frame is a bit odd. It has two "pre-set" options that force the face of the frame to be too steep in my opinion. You can swivel it outside these "preset" ranges, but doing so too much causes the fame to tilt off-center. The user manual even recognizes this problem by stating you should only use the pre-sets. There is a mounting backet included, which is handy.

The frame plugs into an outlet and charges the battery. I'm not sure how long the battery will last, though. The cord is white, and the plug is a larger, cell-phone size rectangular cube (about 1 inch x 2 inches x 1.5 inches).

The colors in the display are good, but dark colors lose their saturation, so a dark blue looks almost black. But other colors have good tone and don't appear too bluish, an issue with many LCD displays.

I like the wood grain w/ silver frame, which is magnetic and snaps onto the front. I'm not sure if you can purchase other frames that snap on, but it seems likely.[...]

I bought 3 of these at Christmas in 2006. One for myself, and two for gifts. I bought the one for me after I received the ones to give away and I realized I had to have one. I have a Ziga that I bought a couple of years ago, and I've seen many others. Nothing I've seen comes close to this in terms of quality of the viewed image.

The frame is attractive. I have two of the plastic framed ones with different color insets, and one of the wood frame ones. The Amazon pic of the wood frame looks like gray wood, but it's brown like you might expect in reality. Both look great.

The picture is what's really great. Bright. Very wide viewing angle (this is where most others fall VERY short, including my Ziga). Vibrant colors. Very good resolution. 35mm aspect ratio so DSLR images fill the full screen. The human interface isn't perfect, just that a few of the options like the on/off timer could be a bit more intuitive, but it's not hard to use, just could be a bit better. The most confusing thing is sometimes it forgets your slideshow and you have to reselect the card of images, but really that's a minor thing. I think this happened only when we let the battery run down when it got unplugged one day by accident.

Having the built-in rechargeable battery is cool, too. My mom likes to unplug hers and sit and watch the images in her chair sometimes, and it's nice to have the battery for that. Lasts between 1 and 2 hours on a charge, and just plug it back in and recharges. Mostly, usage model is plug it in and just leave it on all the time. I think many won't ever even know there is a battery in the frame.

Looking at pictures on this is just great. I can't say enough good about the picture quality. Picture quality is 10 stars. Human interface is 4 stars. Frame attractiveness is 5 stars. Value compared to other choices is this is the best IMO.

The Philips 9FF2 is a quality digital frame. Never mind the diagonal measurement, the screen measures roughly 4 3/8" x 6 5/8" which makes for a picture size you can actually see from across the room.

Pros: good picture quality, easy to use, internal memory holds 80-90 cropped-to-fit pictures, plus it accepts CF/SD/MMC/xD cards, internal battery for when you want to go "cordless," stylish.

Cons: pricey, no easy-to-view battery meter, menu navigation could be much better, user manual is wanting.

Summary: This digital frame is a very good unit despite the minor annoyances and I do not hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking for a good quality digital picture frame.

Good quality. Attractive frame. Nice, bright picture. Very easy to use -- I had it up and running in 10 minutes, and I still haven't looked at the instructions. I like its ability to automatically turn itself on and off every day. Great way to display your best photos and take advantage of digital technology's ability to automatically rotate to a new photo in a slide show every few minutes or every day.

I have two complaints, though. The first is it's too expensive. At $300, it's twice the price I would expect given how quickly the price of LCDs are dropping. Second, the picture size itself is smaller than I expected. Somehow, an 8-inch picture sounds like a 8x10 size, but it's no bigger than a 5x7 picture display, and probably smaller. Works well on a desk or small room, but it's too small of a picture for a display in a large-sized room in your home.

I'm hoping the price will drop dramatically and the size increase by the end of the year. If it does, I'll buy one for my parents for Christmas and give them a memory card of photos of their children and grand children.

Tried and tried and tried uploading from a Mac. While I had no problem uploading, none of the photos appeared on the frame. Called tech support (which, incidentally, is in the Philippines) and, despite the fact that the manual clearly mentions Mac support, was told that Mac is not supported. He referred me to a FAQ, which does not mention the issue at all (their on-line support says to call Customer Support!) I asked to speak to a supervisor who said that it can be used with a Mac and she talked me through it (the same way I had done it) but still no photos showed. Fortunately (?) I have a PC and, using the Photo Manager software (PC only) I had no problem. So, if you only have a Mac, forget it.

Good:

- Great picture quality.

- Just plug in a SD from your camera and it displays the pictures fine, no need to configure anything or resize pictures.

- The embedded software offers great features, especially the photo transitions.

Bad:

- The flash based autorun software on the CD does not launch the installer or documentation links on Vista. Exiting the software Vista tells you that next time it will run the software in compatibility mode.

- The photo manager software is very poor. Slow to respond, difficult to use, can't delete pictures or albums, returning a cryptic error in poor English that there is not enough space. Avoid the photo manager software and just copy pictures directly to the SD card.

- 2GB Kingston SD card was not accessible from Vista, but the frame displayed the pictures on the card fine. A 1GB SD card worked fine.

- 4GB Kingston SD card hanged the frame software. A 1GB SD card worked fine.

Conclusion:

The image quality is excellent, but the photo manager software can be SD card incompatibility is disappointing.

I've purchase three of these frames, two for gifts and one for us. They work great but the human interface is confusing until you figure it out. It has internal memory but it is preloaded (partially) with Philips stuff that I did not want, so I deleleted all of it to have enough room to store photos. The quality of the pictures with the Philips frame is very nice, and we have ours running for a few hours a day, a couple of days every week. I bought another brand before I bought my first Philips frame and had to take it back because it was dead out of the box.

I bought this frame for my 60-yr old mom. I had it shipped to me and loaded it up with 40 pictures. First, let me say the quality of the product is superior to any I had seen at the "Big Box" electronic stores. I investigated several different frames before deciding on this one. There are only 4 buttons on the back and they're pretty easy to manuever. The included software was easy to use but there are a couple of glitches. Make sure when you load the photos into the album, you select them in the order you want them to appear. Once they're entered, you can't change the order. Also, it does take a considerable amount of time to load and navigate through the software. But the final result is worth the effort. The screen resolution is fantastic and watching the way the photos transition from one to another is worth the price of the frame. When mom opened the box, all she had to do was press the ON button and it began the slideshow. She was thrilled and promptly put her camera memory card into the frame's alloted slot. You can set the speed for when photos change, 5 seconds to 24 hours. It has the ability to turn off at a set time each day and resume the next morning. Overall, it's a winner by a trusted name in electronics.

I read every review that I could and finally picked the Phillips 8" even though it was more expensive due to the poor write ups the other digital picture frames were receiving. I agree totally with everyone that the transfer software from the PC is a piece of junk. Very poor for such a well known company. Even with all that, I was ready to keep the frame but within two days the leg which swivals to allow a landscape or portrait view, failed and the frame would not even stand up. I am in the process of returning the frame to Amazon now. To their credit, since I bought this as a gift for my wife, they have extended the return period to Jan 31, 2007.

I ordered this frame to give it for xmas to my parents. Once i've received it, i was surprised by the impressive size of the box (i thought amazon had shipped a slow cooker instead - slightly exaggerating) which was a nightmare to bring with me to Europe. Anyway, the design of the box is nice and pretty 'design', so i forced myself not to complain too much.

Comes Christmas day. My parents open the box and love it. They were always complaining that they never really had a chance to browse their thousands of digital pictures. Here was the perfect tool for this.

I demo it by taking the SD card from their digital camera and instantly watch the pictures on the frame. Even I was amazed by the simplicity of the process (open the camera, take the SD card off, shove it in the frame and switch on > instant slideshow)

Once all the presents open, we decide to transfer the pictures from the PC on to the Frame (actually, on a Sandisk 128 SD card i had stuck in the slot). So we install the software that comes with the frame on a CD (PC only). I have to say that the Flash User Guide is pretty neat. But the Philips Frame Software to transfer the pics is the WORST PIECE OF SOFTWARE EVER.

i'm pretty good at computers, but this was beyond human understanding. You would expect a simple dual-panel interface, one to visualize the images on your PC and the other one to check the ones that are transfered on the frame. Or just thumbnails of the photos on your PC with a checkbox besides each one to choose the ones you want to transfer, with a graphic showing the space available on the SD card. Has anyone checked iPhoto, Aperture, LightRoom, Adobe Bridge, Picasa, Flickr, Moo... the good examples of great photo management softwares are everywhere. The one provided by Philips feels like it is 1995 again (no exaggeration here).

It was just impossible for us to select the images to transfer, using the Philips software. And i work in design and i'm pretty proficient with computers, so i can't imagine a lambda user.

So I found a workaround. Selecting the pictures in the regular File Explorer in Widows and copy them in a Folder on the Desktop, then transfer this folder (good luck to find the desktop in the Philips Software) via the Philips Software. IT NEVER WORKED! The application kept crashing after 10 pictures, or 12, or 17. Never ever we could transfer more than 10% of the selected pics.

After (honestly) 4 hours, i decided to burn a CD with the pics, shove it in my Mac (Powerbook) and connect the frame to my Mac. Using a simple drag and drop, i managed to copy the first 10 images and then the copy froze, and after a couple of minutes, the frame was squeaking like a mouse stuck on a glue-trap. That was so so scary. I disconnected the frame but it kept making the spooky noise. My only option was to reset the frame, using a pen to press the small Reset button.

I tried over and over and over, it kept doing the same: freezing and squeaking. Geez, i was so so mad, i was ready to take the huge box back here and send it back to Philips/Amazon for reimbursement. But my parents were so much into the frame that i didn't want to break their heart. So i decided to copy the folder picture by picture!!! It took me FOREVER!!! But it worked for most of the pics (10% of the pics would display a big X instead of the pic, even after trying to copy them multiple times).

So, except if you like technical challenges, do not buy a Philips frame. They're deeply bugged.

I have tons of ideas to make this frame as easy to use as an iPod. Simple inexpensive ideas (like iPhoto plugins, Sync folders...) to make this product a hit. But today, this product sucks, sucks, sucks. And the resolution is pretty bad, the pixels are huge and the contrasts too high > burnt effect on the pictures.

Don't hesitate to contact me with questions about this.

Now, move over, there is nothing to buy here (yet).