Smartparts SP8EM 8-Inch Digital Picture Frame

by Smart Parts

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 2 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000VK7LBA
• Item model number: SP8EM
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #56 in Camera & Photo > Accessories > Photo Studio > Storage & Presentation Materials > Digital Picture Frames
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 30, 2007

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

SP8EM Smartparts 8-Inch Digital Picture Frame

The slim, genuine dark-wood frame and custom designed matting of the SP8EM offers a classic style that can compliment any room or office. The removable and adjustable stand makes showcasing your memories easy. Frame can easily mount to the wall or be place on a table or shelf.

8-Inch Display Screen
The large, high-definition eight-inch LCD screen shows-off your pictures with the same crisp quality that you receive from high-quality prints. The full color display offers vibrant, bright colors that provide optimum contrast, allowing you to view your pictures in their natural state. Your memories will be displayed exactly as they were when your pictures were taken.

Three Easy Steps
Displaying pictures in the digital frame takes three easy steps. Simply remove the memory card from your camera, insert the card into the frame and view your photos. There is no need to upload and edit your pictures on a computer.

Slideshow
Once the memory card is inserted into frame, pictures are automatically displayed as a slideshow. The speed of the slide show can be adjusted to various speeds and you can add different transition effects. If you have a favorite picture you want to show-off, you can set the digital frame to display one picture continuously.

Viewing Modes
The mode button allows you to adjust how your pictures will be displayed on the screen.

Normal view: pictures fit on the display screen without any stretching or cropping. Photos that are smaller than the size of the screen will be displayed with black bars on the edges.

Crop View: pictures will be enlarged to fill the screen without stretching them. For pictures that do not match the size of the screen, the top and bottom will not be visible.

Picture Files
This digital photo frame is compatible with JPEG files. Most digital cameras will save pictures in this format by default. Pictures that are not in JPEG format, such as web, scanned or RAW images, cannot be displayed on the digital photo frame. However, these images can be converted to the JPEG format for the digital photo frame using specific computer applications or the Optipix software.

Other Files
Frame is compatible with Motion JPEG AVI and MPEG-1 files which allow you to play videos on the frame. Frame is compatible with WMA files and has built-in speakers so you can easily sync music to any slideshow or still frame picture.

Connectivity
The frame has two USB ports – slave and host – as well as two memory card slots. You can use the USB host port to view pictures on a thumb drive or easily download pictures from your computer to the frame using the USB slave port. The frame offers a memory card slot for Compact Flash memory cards and a card slot for SD memory cards. You can increase the amount of pictures that can be displayed by increasing the size of the memory cards being used.

Memory Cards
Secure Digital - SD
Secure Digital High Capacity – SDHC
Compact Flash
Multimedia Card - MMC
xD card
Memory Stick – MS, MS Pro, MS Duo and MS Pro Duo

OptiPix Pro
OptiPix Pro is designed to help you find, optimize and transfer pictures to your frame. The software, residing on your computer, will guide you through 3 easy steps. Optipix Pro will help you:

• View your vertical photos the right way
• Sharpen your photos
• Find and transfer photos to your frame
• Fit more pictures on your frame

OptiPix Pro does not alter the originals but instead it will create copies that will be optimized and transferred to your frame. You can store up to 2,000 pictures to your frame using OptiPix Pro. The software’s installation file is preloaded on the frame. You simply register your frame on Smartparts website and you can start using the OptiPix Pro software.

More than a Frame
Use your frame to get the message out. With Smartparts exclusive OptiPix Pro software for Windows, it’s easy to convert and transfer PowerPoint slides, PDF files, and most picture and graphic files directly to your digital frame.

What’s in the Box
Digital picture frame, removable picture stand, remote control, USB cable, operation manual and AC power adapter.

Product Description

The Smartparts SP8EM is a 8-inch LCD digital photo frame that supports JPEG photo files, MP3 music files, and MP4 video files. With a 800 x 600-pixel resolution and built-in 128 MB memory that can store up to 2000 photos, the frame is compatible with Compact Flash (CF), Secure Digital (SD), Multimedia Card (MMC), Memory Stick (MS), and xD memory cards. The USB 2.0 connection is compatible with Windows XP and Windows 2000. You can easily delete and rotate pictures, create slideshows, and move pictures between the memory cards and a computer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good quality, August 27, 2008

By 

Bradley Conte (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Smartparts SP8EM 8-Inch Digital Picture Frame (Electronics)

Pros:
=====
- Overall quality is excellent. Images are smooth.
- Back stand prop is very sturdy, as is the frame itself.
- Very bright and clear. (Has controls for brightness, contrast, contrast, and tint.)
- Remote control is flat and light. Can be stored with ease.
- Has many photo transition options.
- Can display one or four images at a time.
- Can display only one specific image if you want to.

Cons:
=====
- The one bug I've encountered is that (after a month of use) some images of a high resolution with a perfect 4/3 width/height ratio would be resized to something *smaller* than the frame's resolution and were displayed in the center. Basically, my rectangular images would be displayed in the middle of the frame with a ~40 pixel border of unused space. I've only seen this occur once so I haven't experimented with what causes it or how to fix it easily, but I converted all my 4/3 images size to match the exact resolution of the frame (800x600) and they display perfectly fine now. Note that it could just be a minor bug that can be fixed by removing the card and reinserting it. I haven't been able to play with that yet.

- USB transfer to inserted flash cards is painfully slow. Transferring .6 MB (one reasonable resolution photo) takes over 6 seconds. I would advise that you use your computer(/camera) to put all the images on the card that you want. Only use the USB interface to tweak the existing files, ie to remove and add a couple pictures.
- Slowest slideshow speed is about 27 seconds per picture. Not much of a con but I would prefer something more like one picture every minute or two. (A look at other digital frame specs seems to imply that all other frames have this same restriction.)

Notes:
======
- The digital screen has an 8 inch diagonal. The entire frame itself is 8 and 3/8 inches by 9 and 5/8 inches.
- If you have images of largish resolution (say greater than 1600x1200) that you have displayed vertically, this means that the 1600 pixel height of the image will be scaled down to the frame's 600 pixel height. If the fame does this, it will give a hint of a grainy look. If you care to, you might want to scale the image down using a smart software program to get a better quality scale, and then use that image. Not a fault of the frame, just a practical limitation. Scaling 3 -> 1 makes it hard to preserve detail, especially if the image has lots of detail (ie, a facial close-up with a flash).
- Following from above: If you have pictures that you think look grainy, try resizing them to the frame's resolution with an intelligent software program. It will likely do a better job than the frame can do.
- The default brightness and tint settings may be a bit high. This is most evident in closeup photos with a flash. You may want to lower those two default settings from their defaults by a bit.
- I haven't tested the video/music playback, so I can't evaluate their functionality.

The "cons" section is longer than the "pros" section, but that's because there's more detail to say. In no way do the cons outweigh the pros.

Overall I'm very pleased with the frame. I scoured the reviews of a lot of digital frames before deciding on this one, which had good reviews. I have not been disappointed. I would highly recommend this frame.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good.. not ideal, April 17, 2008

By 

Cyrus Murphy (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Smartparts SP8EM 8-Inch Digital Picture Frame (Electronics)

You can get all the praises from other reviews.. I'll be more critical and focus on the gripes:

- The screen is not really as sharp as I thought it would be considering it's supposedly 800x600. The pics are grainier than they are on my laptop screen.. and I've tried all kinds of pic resolutions. You can definitely see the black gaps between pixels.. and viewing angle is not that great. Its not horrible.. but I really thought I hit the jackpot as most resolutions on these things are 640x480 (I couldn't imagine having that res on an 8" screen)

- Slideshow intervals is not as flexible as I would like. There is fast (~5 secs), normal (10-15 secs), and slow (30 seconds?). I'd prefer to be able to customize by the second instead. So that I could set it to 30 second interval or 5 minutes.

- Interface.. is pretty outdated.. not the most efficient thing in the world to get around. Practically impossible to get anything done without the remote control.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice product--Poor customer service, January 14, 2008

By 

Richard Boesiger (Boise, Idaho USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Smartparts SP8EM 8-Inch Digital Picture Frame (Electronics)

This is a nice enough product but be warned...I broke a tab off the stand arm while attaching it to the frame (yep, it was my fault). I have emailed Smartparts three times now with a request to purchase the broken part. All three emails have been ignored. Apparently service after the sale is not in their book.