Customer Reviews

Smartparts SP1200 12.1-Inch Digital Picture Wood Frame

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

 

 

I've been researching digital frames and after much confusion I made the choice to buy this one. I'm so pleased that I haven't had any problems, and the picture quality is excellent. After I bought this model I found out that it was rated the highest of models recently evaulated by Consumer Reports. I have thousands of photos on CD's, and the frame is supposed to hold 3,000 pics if you set them to be optimized by the frame software. I currently used the USB from frame to computer, to transfer the pictures from my CD's. As I take new photos I'll transfer them directly from the camera memory card.

The frame is made of wood; a beautiful stained walnut. The matting on the frame is a creme color, although it looks like peach on my monitor. Overall it's a well-made frame.

This is a great digital picture frame! We're really glad that we went for this size frame so that the pictures are easily viewed from a distance rather than being right up in front of it. We added 1GB memory stick to increase the amount of photos to store on it and it appears to be more than adequate to have a good size slideshow. We love how the frame fits in with our decor as well!

This frame does a nice job of displaying .jpg pictures. It only has 256mb of internal memory, but will display photos from a memory card you insert. I am currently looking at a new camera which can use SDHC memory and it appears this frame does not support it. Also, if you happen to include a file type which the frame does not support (it happened to me on a .gif file) it just shuts down and goes blank. You have to figure it out from there. The file formats shown as supported in the instruction manual under Technical Specifications are:
JPEG
AVI Motion JPEG
MPEG-1
MP3

My camera shoots MPEG-4 so movies do not display on this frame for us.

I too did extensive research before I bought the Smartparts SP1200 digital picture frame, but there is only so much you can find out until you buy it. The picture is very good, colors are great, and pretty much makes the cost worth it, but it is a very limited product otherwise.

For instance, it doesn't recognize directories on the memory cards you plug in. I got an 8GB Kingston USB thumb drive and had to dump all the pictures onto it (several thousand) without being able to split them up into seasons, or vacations, or years or whatever. Tech tip: make sure to copy the USB drive back to your hard drive so you have a copy of what you put on it, and so if something goes awry you don't have to re-do everything.

It also does not play back the pictures sequentially but jumps around a bit. I checked the web site (www.smartpartsproducts.com) and they just had a lame suggestion that pictures would play in the order copied. Not true. I had several multi-picture sequences, and though they were made and copied in groups they still did not play sequentially.

On the plus side I simply plugged in the thumb drive while it was turned off and after powering up it automatically started the slide show. It also plays the 30-second movies from my little point-and-shoot digital camera (.mov files) but will only play .wma files for music, and who uses files in that format?

The remote helps, because you can pause the slide show and go back and forth if you want to look longer. Speaking of that, the slowest speed for frame changes was about 11 seconds, and the fastest is about 5 seconds. It only has slow, medium and fast, so again not much flexibility there. The transitions are cool, and you can pick a random order or select one of your favorites to use all the time.

I got this so I could give it to my very tech-impaired mom (70 years old) so she could see more of her grandkids and great-grandkids. After a while I want to be able to send her another thumb drive so she can just swap them out and look at pictures to her heart's content. She told us she didn't want a bunch of printed pictures because they just get boxed and stored, but she should really enjoy this. We got the larger 12.1 inch screen because she has vision problems. I think this will do the job very well, considering.

I have been in the market for a digital picture frame for 2 months and finally picked this one up. I got REAL sick of lousy and vague reviews so stand by for a real deal review.

Things I will not review:

A. audio playback. It's a digital picture frame, not an iPod. So I don't even know if it works or not as I don't give a hoot about it.
B. video playback. It's a digital picture frame, not an iTouch. So I don't even know if it works or not as I don't give a hoot about it.

Cons:

It seems that every frame manufacturer sources the same janky credit card remote. The problems with them include limited range and angle of use, so get used to it. There is also an industry wide lack of documentation for them. Like for this model, to switch between the main and submenu options you have to press STOP. Makes zero sense and no instructions means you have to have a brain to figure this out. So if you have no brain, this will be an issue. If you do have a brain like myself, it's 15 minutes and some smarts to figure things out.

The inside of my glass looks like it was put on by someone with dandruff that just got done eating some Popeye's chicken. 4 huge thumbscrews holds the guts to the frame and 2 minutes and a cleaning fixed it. This was probably a solo issue as my frame was a refirb from overstock.com....paid $60 shipped for it....holla!

The embedded software shrinks your photos to best fit the frame. I installed it from the Smartparts website vs. the frame memory. It takes a long time if you have hundreds of photos, so I just did a test on 50 or so. It does work, but it janks up several larger photos. I wanted perfection. So I used ACDSee (google that software) to shrink the width and/or height of any photo that was too big. My defaults are now 3000 pixels wide and 1600 pixels high for the largest size. So far they all project perfectly when using a thumb drive as the source.

You can only use .jpg for pictures. I didn't try other types like .png, etc. If can recognize and not project the few .jpeg photos, I don't know as I have a big catalog of pics, but I assume it treats them as .jpg. I think it's silly it won't render other photo types, but this seems to be an industry standard. So if you have other types than .jpg you will have to convert them. I converted mine in Adobe Photoshop to be SURE, but there are free online converters and other programs to do this.

Slide show is rather fast. Once again...this is a common complaint for all picture frames. Even on the slowest setting it swaps out pics at around 15 seconds and that seems rather fast to me. There is also no random slideshow feature and this seems to be standard as well. I need to research and see if I can find a file name randomizer so that I can randomize the picture names once a week or so.

When you use a thumb drive for pics like I do, the end of the thumb drive will be sticking outside the frame unless you have one of those micro thumb drives. Not a biggie in my eye, but you can use one of the other supported card formats instead.

Pros:

Display is nice. Even with the default color/contrast settings it was nice and you can adjust them. Mine came with no dead pixels, but with ALL displays there can be one or three DOA pixels. 4:3 display format means real people can use it. Whoever invented 16:9 should be killed as NO ONE takes widescreen photos but that's another story....

Lots of features. I just wanted a digital picture frame that did slideshows. So those are the only features I'm using. I'm using a thumb drive and even honking 3 MB pics show up quickly, you plug the dang thing in and the slideshow starts. Simple. The other features are clocks, alarms, slideshow transitions...gimmicks I don't want so I didn't use/view them.

Cheap. Not sure how much it is here on Amazon, but I paid $60 for a 12" frame. That's gangsta!

The frame itself is pretty stinking nice.

Overall:

I'm super pleased with this purchase. I got sick of reading whiny reviews where people gave these products 1 star because they got a bum unit. If you use the imbedded software to make your pics fit on the internal memory or shrink big pictures, you WILL run into issue where the pics won't show up perfectly. Even using ACDSee and Photoshop, two TITANS of the industry, I ended up deleting some pics that just didn't render properly on the frame, so DO NOT expect plug and play perfection for your photos! But using the software or aftermarket software and some time, you can get 98% of your photos to show up perfectly. Just keep in mind that from UPS delivery to on your desk permanent display will take some time. I put 3000 pictures on a thumb drive and after editing through software, doing some deletions, removing duplicates using Unique Filer (freeware), doing test runs, it took me 2-3 hours and now I have the techniques down pat and a 99% perfect slideshow.

I purchased two units which work OK. However, I subsequently learned Smart Parts went out of business during April 2009. Their 2 phone numbers are disconnected while still listed in their website. FYI Tiger Direct provided a third party number; 1-800-999-9648, ext. 2148. This number is solely to be used for Warranty support only.

This digital picture frame is probably one of the best ever available in the market as far as the resolution and quality of the pictures and I do recommend it for that purpose. However, don't expect too much when it comes to the quality of the background music designed into the picture frame to play when you're watching your slide shows, you'll be disappointed!

I apparently got a bad unit because all images start to fade and turn into negatives/inverted colors after three minutes of a slideshow. I wrote an email to Smartparts support yet without reply. I will post what will they suggest I do and how will they behave to fix/replace the unit. In the meantime, I also got a PortableUSA PU-10WE which is amazing in terms of picture quality, overall looks and user interface. I would so far recommend the 10inch PU-10WE from PortableUSA over the 12inch SmartParts frame. Both have 800x600 resolution and about the same features. The 12inch unit is a lot larger than the 10inch frame but more because of the wooden frame around the display. In terms of space, I would not say that 12inch screen adds significantly to the 10inch. After being able to compare both sizes, I would go for the 10inch size rather than the 12inch.

This frame is fabulous. The picture is clear and bright and 12" so you can see it across the room. Black Frame with tan matting, comes with a remote. Uploading pictures is very easy, especially if you use the built in software that you can download the first time you link up to your computer. It compresses your pictures so I could put nearly 1700 pix on this frame! A very good purchase. Only negative is in the ease of use for use of settings.

I was given this frame as a Christmas gift and loved it the first day. Then after spending hours loading my photos it would not turn on any more. I called customer service and after a 35 minute wait I was told it was the power cord. They sent out a new cord a week later and guess what?! The frame will still not turn on. Now I have a dead frame with all my photos on it. I tried customer service again and after a 30 minute wait I gave up. Sure the frame looks nice but it does not show photos so whats the point?