Customer Reviews

Pix-Star PXT8W002 8-Inch FotoConnect Digital Photo Frame with Wi-Fi

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this frame a couple weeks ago and set it up at my parent's house last week. I had no problems at all with getting it connected to the internet, setup was a breeze. My father has a Picasa account and had the frame displaying pictures from his web album in short order. We signed up for an email address on the Pix-Star website and my sister sent a pic from her cell, less than a minute later the frame dinged, my Mom said "This is going to be fun", and pushed a button on the remote and the picture shows up on the frame. All this happened within 20 minutes of opening the box!

Now for a comment about the service. A little later that day I tried sending a pic from my cell phone (Verizon) and it never showed up... I tried again the next day and copied my yahoo email account along with the frame and again a no show at the frame but I did receive it at my yahoo account. So, I sent a help request to Pix-Star explaining the problem and expected not much, based on previous experience with other company's customer service. However, with Pix-Star, I received an email reply that evening asking me to send a pic from my Verizon phone to their email address. A day later the problem is resolved, no generic 'maybe in the next firmware update' or 'Thanks for your feedback' reply, they just fixed the problem! Fantastic!

So, needless to say, I'm very happy with this frame so far, and expect it will provide much entertainment for my family for years to come!

I am an at-home mom with 3 kids-if I am writing a review- you know it must be good! I am not a big tech person or into the newest gadgets or gizmos, but 2 of my friends have this frame and after seeing it with titled photos and radio- on all the time- I knew my house could really use one!!

I set it up in my kitchen office area where the kids could see the photos of themselves and I could hear the radio! We are always in the kitchen it seems and we are always receiving a photo from friends, aunts, or grandparents. When I am on a trip with the kids, I email photos to my friends and family on my phone, and I put in ironic and ridiculous titles. It really is fun!

I am always intimidating when I buy a new device, and worried that I won't be able to figure it out and will spend hours on the phone with support. I usually have my husband do it for me. NOT THIS TIME! I actually took it out and plugged it in and used the buttons on the frame itself(I guess you can do it with the remote too, my girlfriend told me) it found our wi-fi right away and was on line! I sent a photo off my phone just to be sure and it made a sound and there it is!

I never thought I would use it as much as I have, and have so much fun! Beware- some people think it is funny to send some "inappropriate pictures"!

The Scoop: If the in-laws, parents or grandparents have no hope of working email, computers, or anything digital. If you want to be able to upload pictures directly to their picture frame, then this is the one and only item in the whole world that will do it.

How I use it: I set up a photo album on an online service called www.shutrerfly.com and have the photo frame synchronize to that. All I have to do is upload to shutterfly and they get the pictures on their frame.

Sounds easy? Yes it does! I bought the frame, configured it and then sent it to them. All they had to do was plug it in and connect the Internet.

Now for the CONS:
It has a lousy wireless card in it. I eventually had to have them hard-wire the frame to get it to work because the frame would randomly go from having 5 of 5 bars to zero bars. Every laptop in the house had solid signal, but the frame had issues.

Pros:
All their services are free - no fees - ever - for anything
Supports Framechannel, like all the rest of the wireless frames around, but adds the following
Connects to many photo services directly like Flicker, Shutterfly, SmugMug, Picasa, and a whole lot more
It has Internet Radio. OK, yeah, this seems pointless on a picture frame, but it was kind of nice to have the frame play their favorite radio station, KOIT from California, when the in-laws lived in a small mountain town in Colorado.
It can be programmed to turn on/off at specific times

I am giving this a three because of the lousy wireless card in it. If it had a decent wireless card in it, I would give this a 5.

I received this frame as a gift. Being not super tech-savy, I was unsure if I could get it up and running and if it would be something that would be embraced by the family. Boy was I wrong! It was very easy to program and connect to our wireless system. A few minites out of the box I emailed a photo from my Blackberry and POP, there it was on the screen. Now, most of my immediate family have one and it is wonderful to keep the grandparents up on all the kids activities and fun times. When I am traveling for business I send photos to keep my family updated and I add a funny caption (via subject line on email)-the kids love it! This is a great frame!

I bought this frame thinking that I would like to have a frame to show my wife and kids some pictures of where I am when I travel for work, but it turned out to be the miracle frame for my parents to connect with our lives.

I sent them a picture when we were sailing on San Francisco Bay, emailed it from my phone, and then called them from my phone.

They said, "Those are fantastic pictures of you on the bay, when did you go sailing?"

I said, "You guys still don't get it. We are sailing right now! When you get pictures, it only takes 20-40 seconds from when I send it."

I also emailed them pictures direct from the ski slopes in Tahoe.

My parents have never felt so connected with our family (they live in NY). When I send them a new picture, there is a little chime implying "here I am!". They keep it in the kitchen so that they see them all the time.

Set up is incredibly easy, and many of the features are controllable from the web, so that I can manage the frame for my parents remotely.

I asked for this frame because of its wireless connectivity. I have over 800 photos stored on Flickr, so I really wanted a way to connect to those photos without having to load everything onto an SD card.

Looks: The frame is sleek and contemporary, with a brushed metal finish and a black border. The infared eye is rather large but I barely notice it. My husband thinks the eye is distracting. The back is black and includes all of the buttons that are on the remote, plus the SD card slot, USB, power adapter slot, on/off switch, and a headphone jack. The display is 8" and the frame itself is about 12" measured diagonally.

Wireless: The frame connected to my wireless network (802.11g with WPA2) with no issues -- except it won't connect when the frame is on my fireplace mantel. Every other location in my house is fine. It detected my network and I only had to enter my password and then click "Connect."

Screen: The display is really nice -- clear and sharp images, good resolution, almost too bright in some cases. The controls let you adjust brightness but not contrast. The viewing angle is limited; images begin to look distorted if you aren't viewing the frame head on.

Pix-star website: It's easy to set up an account and register the frame. I had some issues (see next section) when using Firefox on Mac OS X 10.6.1. When I switched to Safari, the website ran much more smoothly.

Photo services: I can only comment on Flickr since that's the only service I use. Initially using Firefox, I couldn't get the website to connect to my Flickr account. I switched to Safari and it connected to the Flickr API with no issues. Once connected, the website displayed all of my Flickr sets (albums) and let me select which ones I wanted to connect to my frame. Some of my sets contained several hundred photos; others only contained 30 or 40 photos. I selected all of my sets, thinking that I'd like all of my photos displayed on the frame. The frame would not connect with sets containing over 50 photos. It connected to my smaller sets with no problem. I ended up going to the Flickr website and splitting my larger sets into smaller sets so that the frame could connect to them. After the website has connected the frame to your sets, then you can choose which ones you want to actually play on your frame. You can choose all or just one or two, whichever you want displayed. I chose all, waited maybe 30 minutes, and then checked the frame. All of my albums showed up in the "web albums" section of the frame menu. On the frame, I selected "Play all" on the "web albums" section, and now it cycles through all of my Flickr photos effortlessly. One note: On the frame itself, you can either choose "Play all" or you can choose one specific set; you can't choose just two or three sets on the actual frame itself. You would do that on the website. My wireless network hasn't gone down since I've had the frame set up (less than a week), so I'm not sure what is displayed if that happens. Maybe it reverts to the internal photos that come with the frame? Also, when I add photos to an existing Flickr set, the frame should automatically update assuming I have that set connected and playing on the frame. I haven't confirmed this yet.

Conclusion: I would recommend the frame for those that have large photo collections online and, like me, don't want to waste time transferring photos to an SD card. Once set up, it runs flawlessly and looks really nice.

Update 2/25/10

I've been pretty frustrated with this frame for the last few weeks. It will no longer connect to my wireless network. When I try to go into the settings to change anything, it inevitably freezes. I have to turn the power off and back on to get it to unfreeze. Then if I try to do anything else other than play photos from my SD card, it freezes again. I can't change any of the settings, so my time zone is wrong. Even if I manage to get into the settings menu without it freezing, any settings I change revert back to default the next time I check. The automatic power saving feature can't be turned off. I've reset the frame five or six times and I'm not sure what else to do at this point.

Also, I'm pretty sure most of the reviews for this product on Amazon are fake. Bottom line is I should have done more research when I asked for this. I'm disappointed, especially since, when the frame was working, it was really very nice.

Exactly as advertiesed and just as easy. Had it online via WPA/WIFI in less than a few minutes. Frame configured with pixstar site in about 10 minutes with a new email address. Had pictures alerting and auto saving to picture frame via email in less than 1 minute. Within a few hours had local weather and news, along with other media showing up via Framechannel.
Will be sending this frame (along with preconfigured wifi router) to family for them to enjoy pictures from my blackberry anytime!
Do wish it had larger screen (looks like pixstar is already working on that)...

The frame got generally good reviews on Amazon.com, so I ordered one. When I received the frame, the frame was dreadfully slow to respond to commands. Worse, it could not be set up or configured without registering on the pix-star site. Registration requires input of the frame's serial number/MAC address. The website would not accept the S/N from frame we received, so the frame is completely unusable. Worse still is that emails to Pix-Star's sole point of contact (info@pix-star.com) yielded absolutely NO response. I am returning the frame without so much as having been able to view a single picture on it. What a disappointment!

The frame works as advertised. The display quality is average as far as frames go, the remote is very cheap and often requires 5 or more button presses before it works. The web access is nice but also very frustrating, the Pix-Star site is very very slow and I've only been able to login 75% of the time.

I've seen the cheap remote controls on lots of other gadgets I'm use to that and as a backup you can use the buttons on the frame the web site is my biggest complaint. I purchased and gave to my mother in another state with the intention of managing it from my home. This works pretty good when the site is up but in the 3 weeks since she's had it the site has gone down twice which forces her to unplug and power back up to reset the frame. Then just as irritating is that I can not always get logged in and when I do the site is so slow it can take 20 minutes to perform what should take 2 minutes. Frustrating when it's so obvious that this could be much better with a more reliable website. I know this is from China I guess the web server is there as well? They have a ways to go.

I would consider a different frame if I purchase any others with these features, Kodak, HP and one called Intouch have similar picture frames.

My parents can't leave home and their greatest joy is to hear from their kids and watch our pictures. We live abroad and see each other only once a year. There is Skype and e-mail which are helpful, but when it comes to sending pictures, for years my wife and I have been sending them in paper format through the post. We bought a couple of digital frames but the problem was, not being at my parents' home, we could not upload pictures to their frame. Then we discovered the Pix-Star frame. At first we thought: "that Wifi thing must be complex to set up and after a while it might loose the connection and not work anymore. And my parents are no geeks, they might find it hard to use. Plus, all those functionalities touted in one package, like a webradio included, for this kind of price - sounds suspicious." So we gave it a shot anyway and bought one Pix-Star Wi-Fi frame last year.
It changed everything. And the functions are for real. It's amazing: you just sit at your desk, upload your pictures to their website - a service they provide for free while all other picture management sites will charge you for that - and now my parents get their weekly delivery of pics straight to the kitchen table in a matter of seconds. We bought another one for another relative and the whole thing has become part of a family ritual. The only missing link now is one from the camera directly to the frame. Setup is completely intuitive. You don't even need the user's manual to do it. The only negative is that it's really long to input the network WAP security key using the remote control. Once it's done, it's really easy. Even a six year old knows how to operate the frame. All in all, a terrific product that's saved us a great amount of time. You want to buy one, but from Amazon exclusively because it took the other dealer we went through four days to ship. Not so with Amazon.