Customer Reviews

Smartparts SPX8 8-Inch Syncpix Digital Picture Frame

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

After doing extensive research on other brands, we settled on this frame because of the price and features. After we bought it, we were pleasantly suprised to learn it is rated the highest by Consumer Reports magazine, and now we know why.

The picture quality is excellent. I started off with a free frame (gift) from another manufacturer that had half this resolution, and it did not give my pictures justice. Upgrading to this frame made a difference in the world to my picture quality. Do not buy anything less than 800x600, or your pictures just won't look good.

My favorite feature about this frame is the auto-sizing software available as a free download from the manufacturer's website. All you do is download it onto your computer, and any pictures you have on your hard drive will automatically be resized when transferred to your frame using the software.

One user complained about how slow it was transferring from a memory card onto the frame. This is because the frame automatically resizes your pictures to 800x600. This does take a little longer, but saves you hours of manually resizing your photos for the frame, so this *IS NOT* a flaw.

The one and only flaw I experienced (and maybe I have a defective unit) was I spent 2 hours copying thousands of photos onto the internal memory in the picture frame. So, I went and took more pictures with my digital camera, and slipped the memory card into the frame. I hit "copy" so it would copy from my card onto the internal memory. Little did I know, and the manual *DOES NOT* say this, but doing this will override any existing pictures on the memory. You can imagine how FURIOUS I was when I discovered that the thousands of photos I had stored on the frame were completely wiped out, and in their place were the 13 pictures I had copied. Please test this feature out first to see if it is indeed working on your unit before you find out the hard way, like I did. I plan on writing customer service about this (and hope I can get someone who speaks understandable English)
and seeing if this is a known flaw. The workaround on this would be to load the photos on your card onto your PC, then load them onto the internal picture frame. This is a major inconvenience, in my opinion.

I have not tried the movie files feature on this yet because it does not support the version my camera uses, and I am too lazy to figure out how to convert the movie files.

The sound is pretty decent, and adding mp3's to the slideshow is such a neat feature.

I also love the motion sensor on this frame. I never have to remember to turn the frame on and off.

All in all, this is a wonderful picture frame for ease of use, picture quality, and overall features. I would have rated it a 5 if not for the one serious flaw I mentioned. As a matter of fact, if this frame did not shine in the other areas I mentioned, I would have rated it less than a 4 because of the serious flaw. But, it has many saving graces, so a 4 is suitable, in my humble opinion. I will post an update from customer service once I hear back from them. I hope it will be easily fixed with a future firmware upgrade, etc.

****UPDATE**** 12/22/07 - I didn't get anywhere with customer service, but found out on my own when you insert a memory card and copy it to your frame, IT DOES NOT wipe out your existing pictures as originally thought.
It just overrides them with the new pictures and will not display the old pictures until you delete the new ones out. At this point, the old pictures are not listed on any menu when viewing from the frame. You have to hook up your frame to your computer, and navigate around until you see a folder in the software called "Spart Pic Software." This is where the old pictures are placed. Why this folder is not on the frame itself is beyond me, and why you have to hook up the frame to a computer to even see it is even dumber. And why this is NOT mentioned anywhere in the manual is just even stupider! (Is that even a word?) This is still a major flaw in my opinion. Why can't it just simply add the new pictures into the existing pictures folder without creating all of these inconvenient problems???? This is something I hope they fix with a firmware update.

I can't believe that Consumer Reports recommended anything from this company. I got this frame for my husband as an anniversary gift in August, and I still don't have a working frame (I write this on November 16). The first frame never turned on. It was completely dead. I tried running the update that Smartparts wants you to do online, and that did nothing. I contacted the company and was told I would receive a new power cord. The cord never came. I called back and was told that the cord wouldn't have fixed the problem (which made me realize that this must be a frequent issue) and that they had no record of my phone call. They asked me to run the update again. Nothing. They emailed me a return label and I sent the frame to them for repair for replacement. I got my second frame, but they didn't send back the power cord, the remote, or the stand. Kind of tough to use a frame with no power source. After a week or so, I got those parts and the did turn on...for a day. The morning after I got it, I turned it on and got a white screen with thin, vertical stripes. I called and emailed Smartparts again. This time, the man I was speaking to asked me to stop venting to him (I am super polite on the phone...it's the teacher in me). He told me that my SanDisk was the problem. I tried fixing it by running the online update AGAIN, but nothing changed. He said it might work again if I got an SD card. I told him I was not willing to purchase a separate memory card for a frame that has continued to fail for me and is supposed to work via the USB cable that comes with it (which, by the way, they recommend NOT using right in the user's manual). I insisted that I wanted to return it for a refund. He refused to offer a refund, but sent me a return label after I pushed the issue. That was over a month ago. I still haven't received the third frame. I have contacted them twice about the third frame, and both times was told it would ship the next day.

Basically, I really wish that I hadn't ever purchased anything from Smartparts. Only one customer service rep. I spoke to was helpful. The others were evasive and frustrating. I have spent so much time and energy on getting this frame thing to work. I am taking the time to write this so people can go another route. There are more reputable companies out there who make similar products. I highly encourage you NOT to purchase an item from Smartparts.

I respectfully disagree with the negative reviewer who didn't like how long it takes to transfer photos from cards. I don't find this characteristic bothersome (what's the rush anyway?), though I wouldn't mind being able to suspend the operation once it is started. But these are minor "problems." Overriding them, in my view, are the stunningly clear quality of the photos and the many options one has vis a vis display time, transition effects, and order of presentation.

This frame produces very sharp pictures. The transfer process is a snap. Plug in your SD card and then come back in a few minutes and your pics are on the screen. Anybody can walkup an add pics anytime they want. There is no need to use a computer. The image quality was clearly better than other frames.Great for the technically challenged who want to use this type of device. The motion sensor halps increase screen life by shutting the screen off if no one (i.e. no motion) is detected in the room.

This is the fourth digital frame I've ever purchased. Each time I decide to buy a digital frame, I scour the internet looking for the best one. The last frame I bought was an 11" SmartParts, and it was absolutely beautiful.

I almost passed on this frame because of the negative reviews. I soon discovered that there are negative reviews for all the digital frames. You really just have to decide what you want out of a digital frame.

This one has everything I was looking for and more.

First of all, the frame is beautiful. I really do not like the way it looks in the picture online. It is very easy to use. I bought a 2GB memory card, and when it's plugged into the digital frame, you can either select copy (to copy pictures onto the internal storage) or view (to just watch them on the memory card).

The slide show has a lot of settings. You can select the transitions that you want. You can set the display time as low as 1 second. You can set it to display 1, 2, 3, or 4 pictures at a time.

It's easy to use, functions well. Don't let the negative reviews scare you away. This is a great frame.

RECENT UPDATE:
Recent uses of the picture frame with my latest MacBook Pro doesn't seem to cause the problems I had before. So things might not be as bad and more cross-platform friendly now. Finder Cleaner is still there if you have a problem.

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ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW:

Originally I had trouble loading pictures with the frame crashing/freezing or only processing at best the first photo on the card. I called Smartparts tech support this morning at 9am and got through just after a short wait. After confirming that my firmware was indeed up-to-date, the tech narrowed my problem to the hidden files that Mac OS X leaves on media. He recommended the utility FinderCleaner to remove those files while ejecting the media so that they don't get in the way. After this...it had no problem with loading photos automatically.

Having seen other quibbles about the delay in loading, I think folks have to consider what this frame is doing when it is optimizing your photos. This delay is worth the benefit of not having to preoptimize photos or being penalized with storing only a few photos at full size.

It would be great of course if the firmware could be updated to handle these Mac differences and that the Optipix software could run natively on OS X. (To customize Album names and pictures).

Well that's my early review.

I got this frame for my wife as a birthday gift and we've been very pleased. After I got the frame, we downloaded the Smartparts Syncpix Frame Software from their website. It is pretty basic software but made moving photo files from our computer to the frame relatively easy. It does take a while to download photos to the frame, but being able to put hundreds of photos at your fingertips makes the wait worth it. We have thousands of digital photos and find this frame really helps us enjoy them all over again! Use the folder feature on the frame to load up sets of photos so you can shift the displayed pictures whenever you want. It took me about 3 hours to load up 400 or so photos of varying resolution. Also, be sure to update the firmware when you get the frame if you aren't on version 1.25. Check out the Smartparts website at http://smartpartsproducts.com/content/support/syncpix/index.php for instructions on how to update the firmware. The resolution and clarity of the display are great. You might have a few hiccups loading the photos and it will take some time, but I believe you'll really enjoy this frame.

This frame was really easy to use. Many reviewers rate this as difficult and confusing to set up. I had no problems. I placed all the pictures that I wanted on an SD card, put it in the frame, choose 'select all' and it produced a very nice slide-show. the Synchpix feature really optimizes every photo effectively. The video quality is the best on the market, look at other frames and you will notice the difference instantly. The auto off and motion sensor on feature is really good. (especially if giving to someone of low tech ability) And the 256mb memory is really extensive. The frame converts photos to the video without using much memory at all. I placed in a lot of 7 mp photos and didn't even dent the internal memory. It is no wonder that Circuit City cannot hold these in stock for more than a day. I shopped around for a good frame for many months, read many reviews and did a lot of research. Highly recommended.

This frame, highly rated in Consumer Reports, has a very high quality image and lots of capacity. Unfortunately, we could not get the frame to load pictures from a camera card -- it would freeze after downloading 10-15 photos. We were successful, however, in downloading photos directly from a computer after having loaded the photos from cards and a CD to the computer, but some computer literacy is needed to do this. We bought this for grandparents, and they love it, but we doubt they will ever be able to successfully load photos onto this unit themselves, especially with the trouble we had with the camera card. Do we recommend it? Yes; terrific images; the motion detector feature is excellent. But don't expect your relative/friend to be happy with it if they are not computer saavy and you aren't around to load the photos for them.

I purchased this frame before the Consumers' review came out. The picture is top-notch and the software is very capable, although a little hard to navigate around. It is also upgradeable, which is rarely the case for these products. I found that it took about 3 sec per picture to load, which isn't a big deal, although I had saved the pictures on a memory stick pro in the 800 format using Picasa album, which I recommend. I also recommend that one backup your pictures before doing anything with them, including loading them onto a memory card. The only other downside I noted was that the controls on the back of the frame are pretty cheesy and hard to use. The remote does a better job.

Overall it is an excellent product, and would be a 5-star except for the discrepancies noted.