Customer Reviews

Samsung SPF-71E 7-Inch Digital Photo Frame (Black)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Apparently I should have done a little math on the resolution on this one before I trusted the picture and other reviews. I watched different deals on-line for about a week only considering non-widescreen frames.

Note: for those of you who don't know, widescreen frames are a bad idea for the consumer and a good idea for the manufacturer. A widescreen with equal diagonal measurement to a 4:3 screen has a smaller surface area, therefore cheaper to produce. However, since your pictures aren't widescreen there are black bars on either side of your photos unless you spend some time cropping and/or skewing each one of your photos. So, the actual viewing area is pretty close to 7". However, the picture is shown the same size as if you had a 4:3 screen at about 5 3/4".

Imagine my disappointment then to have my frame show up (very quickly) and when I pull it out of the box... it's widescreen. Although I wish this were more apparent in the product description I guess I should have been more skeptical before I bought the thing.

Other than the widescreen thing it's fairly straight forward to use. The built-in auto resize isn't super awesome. You'll probably want to resize and crop everything in photoshop or gimp before you put them on there (lots of fun if you're into that sort of thing).

Bottom line: It's pretty much a 5 3/4" screen, not 7"...

Since Amazon has grouped different sizes and specs together, to be clear, I am reviewing the Samsung SPF-71E Black 7-Inch digital photo frame.

I purchased this as a gift for my mother-in-law and am in the process of filling an SD card for right now. This is the second digital photo frame I have bought for her, and this one is much improved over the last one (made by Coby). What I didn't like about my Coby is that it would automatically stretch every picture out to fit the frame fully. The front also fell off of the Coby exposing the electronics beneath. This Samsung digital photo frame gives you the option to do the following:

Fit to width: It will enlarge every picture so it fills up the frame completely, but he downside is that it will in the process cut of the top and bottom of the pictures to do so. The aspect ratio is maintained so the pictures still look accurate, even if you are not seeing the whole picture.

Fit to screen: In this every picture will fill the screen, but pictures will not maintain aspect ratio, so pictures may appear stretched from side to side or top to bottom.

Auto fit and Original Fit: I can't tell the difference between these two options. They both fill the screen from top to bottom for all of my photos, leaving a black strip on each side unless they've been cropped to fit 16:9. So, the 7" black digital photo frame is widescreen (16:9), even though my camera takes 4:3 pictures. This isn't so much a problem for me because I edit, recolor, add text, and crop every photo. But, for those who want a more click and display experience, this is not the best frame for you.

Another downside is that this frame does not run on battery. I imagine if you are buying this for a parent that is on the road a lot, a battery operated frame would be more ideal so they won't have to carry along a power cord.

The swivel back is very nice and sturdy. I like it much better than fold out stands. Another downside that I see to this frame is that it is not wall-mountable. I honestly don't know if they make these wall-mountable, but if they did I would like to hang in on the wall by my desk.

I do wish the frame included a little remote so I could scroll through and adjust settings while looking at the pictures rather than turning the frame over to make adjustments.

I had no problems loading pictures directly onto the internal memory, but it doesn't hold much so you'll want to pick up an SD card. I bought the Transcend 4 GB SDHC SD Class 6 Flash Memory Card TS4GSDHC6E [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging].

The documentation is light and the 61 page instruction manual includes instructions in 19 languages including several Asian languages. I couldn't get the frame to pause for an extended period of time, it would pause for a while, and then resume the slideshow. I tried setting the pictures as a background, but they also eventually started back up as a slideshow. The speed can be adjusted to fast, medium, or slow. I eventually got one picture to stay by selecting "repeat one photo" after drilling down menus. It was an interesting solution, and the photo still shows the transitions such as fade, blind, cross comb, mosaic, checker, dissolve and more. You can also set it to show no transition effects.

For those of you who can problem solve and like to modify all of your pictures, this is a great frame. The colors are beautiful and it appears to be very well made. I would buy another one without hesitation.

Note this review is for the 7" Samsung non-wireless frame only.

I bought this 7" digital picture frame unknowing it is NOT 4:3... it's 16:9 (aka widescreen), because of unclear product descriptions by Amazon and a little bit of inexperience / naivete regarding this particular model.

So unless all your pics are 4:3 (NOT likely in the least) then you will have black bars on both sides of the photo when displayed using the default option (see below for further explanation). That is one downside, in my opinion, with dealing with this frame. Otherwise I liked it very much, high quality, good features, internal memory is adequate, and it was fairly easy to use, with the exception of the buttons on the back. Several others have the buttons on the front which makes perfect sense (why put them on the back where you can't see, when you have to read at the menu on the screen itself?). In fact, it's pretty awful. I have gotten quite good at using it, but since accessing the menus at times is a bit non-intuitive. For some people this will be frustrating, no doubt.

FYI you can only use AC power, and there's no internal battery to charge, or slot for AA's, which is a bit annoying since we can't put it on the coffee table in the middle of the room. This frame only uses USB or SD, so if you have your photos on another kind (Sony Memory Stick, xD, etc) you're out of luck. If you have micro or miniSD you must use an adapter (not included) to insert it into the slot. If you don't have this kind, and you're very lucky you may be able to find some adapter that makes it think it's USB or SD. However I wouldn't bet money on it.

Copying images to the frame is not too difficult, and most of the menu options are easy to understand, and provide a good deal of flexibility with using the frame. Using the different options (original size, fit to width, or stretch) you can manipulate the pictures to look the way that you want. Note original size is the default, but I prefer fit to width, that gets rid of the black bars but obscures just a bit of the top & bottom of photos. The only option better than the built in ones to make them fit is to crop them yourself, which most people won't want to do. There is also a rotate feature for manipulating vertical pictures into the correct position, since the frame won't automatically rotate them. Unless you're using "original size" (which shows them rightside up, but tiny), forget about seeing them at all. Still, you'll need to view these vertical pics separately from the horizontal ones unless you like turning your head on your side every few pictures. Again, the only other reasonable option is to crop them on your PC.

One more thing, the user manual is completely useless except for basically telling you how to plug it in, turn it on, and push the buttons. My jaw literally dropped, since I've had other Samsung products which explained every nuance of the product in great detail. The Kodak 7" frame I compared it to had much better instructions.

Origin: Made in China - though better quality than 90% out there
Warranty: average


Update: I ended up BUY-ing a Philips 5.6-inch LCD Black Digital Photo Frame model 6FF3FPB (black), also available as 6FF3FPW (white) instead, which was half the price and had the 4:3 aspect ratio. I wish I had found this one on Amazon in the first place, then I wouldn't have gone to all this trouble

I bought this recently. I've never tried another frame, but have seriously considered returning this one.
The good news is that the images look good, once you spend some hours to get it running.
The bad news:
1) As other reviewers have said, this is widescreen. If you don't pre-crop your images, you have black stripes on the sides of your pictures.
2) Unlike some other frames, there is no wireless connection, remote, battery backup, or ability to view anything but JPGs, no movies.
3) There is a clock, and both auto-on and auto-off functions. The clock loses its time and date settings if the unit is unplugged or the power goes out.
4) I am pretty good at figuring out gadgets, but I've never seen a menu system so confusing. There is nothing consistent about the interface, and I have to repeatedly experiment with the controls to choose the internal memory vs. SD card, etc. or to start a slideshow.
5) The manual is all of two small, poorly-written pages repeated in many languages. Functions are alluded to without any explanation.
6) When I called tech support, about the problem I refer to in #7, I was pleased that I didn't spend long on hold. The tech I reached was a nice enough fellow, but he knew nothing about the product, only what was in that lousy manual. He then passed my call along to a higher-level tech, who likewise knew nothing beyond the manual. Neither had the product there to fiddle with, nor had ever touched he product.
7) Now to the Mac issue: I transferred a bunch of photos from iPhoto. In my unsuccessful efforts to get a slideshow to start, both the internal memory and SD showed with nothing. Finally, I got some question-mark icons, which said "unsupported file format."
I finally figured out that these are icons for the data resource fork or whatever those extra files that Macs copy onto foreign media. Scrolling down, I finally found the real pictures.
It turns out that the strange icons weren't the problem, it just took a lot of esoteric button-pushing to get the slideshow to start.
I'd welcome comments on the question of whether my guess is right, that there are frames with a better interface.

This product had two pages of "directions" in english. However, these directions didn't tell you how to set up the frame at all. I even went on the products website to find some directions and the "how-to guide" was unavailable. After playing around with it for a half an hour or so I got some pictures on the frame but didn't like the image quality. They were not clear and didn't fill the entire frame without looking distorted. After my frustration set in I gave up and sent the product back.

This digital frame was a great affordable gift for the 2 Grandmas in our family. The price was very affordable. The ease of use is awesome - they can load the pictures on it themselves. Great gift idea!

I bought this product because of the brand name, I have a 42" Samsung plasma so I figured they could make a 7" screen of the same quality. I was wrong. It worked fine in the demo mode, initially, right out of the box, but when I put in my sd card the screen blacked out. I made several attempts,but it kept going out. I've read alot of negative reviews about digital frames, but I thought since Samsung was one of the big boys of electronics they would have no problem making a decent, working, user-friendly, digital frame. I returned it to Amazon for a refund. It was only $62.00, which was a very good price for a name brand when compared to other 7" frames on the market.

I would have liked to have seen the instruction manual for this product. It was poorly written, a single page only and I never have figured out how to set the clock. Fortunately, we did finally figure out how to get the photos to run and are running the frame constantly in the kitchen and are enjoying it. The other 2 things I wished were pointed out was 1. The frame has 120 MB of internal memory AND 2. an SDHD chip will NOT WORK with it. You need an SD chip. Unfortunately, I bought the SDHD chip.

The photo frame worked as advertised and was easy to load and update. Pictures were clear and crisp. I was not able to rotate the pictures and save them that way. This was a problem. I do recommmend this photo frame though.

Overall, I was pleased with the quality of the frame. Especially since it's at the low end of the price spectrum. The pictures come out very nicely and the 120 MB storage holds about 200 pictures, which is a lot more than I had expected. The only negative aspect is that it's not that easy to load the images onto the frame. You can't transfer them from a USB stick directly but need a computer. Also, there is no way to rotate pictures once they're on the frame.
If you're looking for a nice gift idea and are not expecting a fancy mini computer behind the frame, this is a good product.