Customer Reviews

Sony DPF-D80 8-Inch LCD Digital Photo Frame (Black)

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After doing a ton of research, I settled on this frame mostly by process of elimination (and the fact that while there are not a ton of reviews on Sony frames, they are mostly all good). I eliminated many others because (1) most other frames are not in the 4:3 aspect ratio (meaning black bars on your pics); (2) most other frames have mediocre reviews (for example, no Kodak frame (the market leader) does better then 3.5 stars on Amazon over tons of reviews; and (3) many frames by lesser known brands appear to have serious and scary quality control issues that are ignored/not caught by professional reviews, but show up in user reviews.

This frame definitely costs more for the size and features, but the pics look awesome, and I'm confident that if there is a problem, I have a reliable company to go to. It was super easy to get set up, I put 350 pics in a folder, ran a batch resizer on them to get them to 800x600 (not really necessary given the amount of on-board memory on the unit, but the I figured my PC plus a good free resizer program would probably do better then the unit itself at resizing), connected the frame by USB cable to the PC and copied that folder to the unit and that was pretty much that. For the price, a bigger picture frame would be nice, but really the 8 inch screen size is great for your desk at work.

...bought this as a gift and combed my hard drive for images the recipient would like. found 600 of them. tried to copy to a 2G SD card, because frame itself couldn't handle that much data on its own (tried a batch resizer but that somehow prevented auto-orientation so half the pics were distorted- no good). kept getting an error (0x80070052) though, would only copy about 400 of 600 pics despite plenty of room. after some googling, i learned to format the card in FAT32 first (NTS or whatever wouldn't work in this frame). this is a dropdown menu option under 'file' when you have the card open on your pc.

well, this worked: it copied all the pics and the sony frame supports that format. after that, wow, frame is wonderful. great display, easy enuf menu to navigate, nice remote.

in researching my challenge i learned that this is a common problem. hopefully this post will help someone spend less than the two hours it took me to get things up and running.

I bought a pair of these after reading and studying many many LCD frames (although it is the first one for me to purchase). Quality of the image was most important - I simply do not care for putting mp3's or video on this, our family just needs to 'unlock' all the 1000's of pictures that reside in my PC.

The 800x600 resolution and picture quality is outstanding, and as mentioned the menu system is very straightforward. I bought a second unit for my in-laws (they live in China and do not speak any English) so having a unit that runs on 120/220V was important, as well as having menus in different languages (this unit has a lot of languages). I was even able to download a Chinese-language manual and print it out for the in-laws (they do not have a computer) so they should be all set.

After several days of playing around with it, there are a number of 'quirks' that took some research to figure out. First is the resolution - all my digital pictures are from a Nikon D50, that saves jpgs in a 3008x2000 pixel format, which is known as a "3:2" ratio (width to height). Well 800x600 is a "4:3" ratio, so either a setting in one of the menus to make internal adjustments is one way to go, but it will automatically crop all your pictures, or you will have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen (not a major problem but irritating nonetheless).

I found a simple program called 'Frame Size' that will batch process a pile of pictures, one crop at a time, as well as reduce a 3MB 3008x2000 file into a ~300kb 800x600 one. This way I was able to do a 'custom crop' and downsize each file to the exact 800x600 format for this digital frame, and then have each picture custom-cropped so no heads/faces were lost in the process.

Another quirk was how it views the 'date photo taken'. It uses the 'modified' date and not the actual EXIF date from the jpg! It drove me crazy not to have the pile of pictures not show up in order. I used a non-freeware 'Picture Information Extractor' to re-write the 'date modified' data from the EXIF 'date photo taken' and that solved it promptly, it worked in batch format. There are some freeware (one from Microsoft called Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 sounded promising) but it did not offer batch processing of the EXIF data editing.

The multiple options for viewing pictures and the varying time delays for the slideshow is great, and after figuring out the above-mentioned 'quirks' it now works the way I wanted it to. (It should have worked this way from the beginning.) I'm very pleased with the product though, so I believe it deserves a five-star rating.

This review is for the 8" Sony Digital Picture Frame (Model #DPF-D80). I specifically wanted this photo frame because it has the 4:3 aspect ratio and that is what all my picture are taken in. I didn't want to get any of the widescreen frames (16:9 aspect ratio) and have my pictures be stretched, cropped and/or have the black bars on the sides or tops of each picture. Also, I just wanted my pictures to be displayed. No need for video or music being played or viewing a clock. Just a basic digital picture frame and that is what this is.

So far I have loaded over 700 pictures on this frame using a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo that I keep inserted into the frame at all times. This frame only has 256MB internal memory (actually less with the software included on the internal memory), which isn't a whole lot. They say you can load up to 500 photos to the internal memory and I got to 441 pictures before the internal memory became full. More on that later.

I have had no problems with errors, pictures not downloading or pictures not being able to be viewed with this frame. What I do is download every picture taken with my digital cameras (or scan hard copies of pictures) and save them onto my computer. I then resize them with InfranView and re-save them on my computer. I then use Roxio Easy Media Creator to adjust the colors and sharpness before I do a final re-save to my computer. 75% of my pictures loaded onto this frame are in 1024x768 resolution and are each about 600-800KB in size. For that size and resolution I'm amazed I got close to the 500 pictures allowed on the internal memory. My computer does not have a slot for a memory card so I had to do some extra steps to get all my pictures saved on the memory card. I copied the most allowed pictures onto the internal drive of the picture frame and then exported them all to the memory card. I then erased them all on the internal drive of the picture frame and repeated the steps again. Now I view them all with the memory card and can keep adding until the memory card is full. The color and quality of the pictures are amazing. This is one of a few 8" frames that has the 800x600 resolution. All the 8" Kodak picture frames I was looking at were only in 800x480 resolution and was no where near as clear and vibrant as this Sony picture frame.

Why this did not receive "5" stars is: small internal memory, very expensive for a basic digital picture frame and the frame easily attracts fingerprints. Also, to view your pictures as a slideshow via the shoot date doesn't mean so. If you have a picture taken in 1990 but you resized, changed the color or brightness in 2009 and then re-saved it.......the picture now has a modification date of 2009 and that is how the picture will play in shoot order. I haven't viewed my slideshow in the "Random" view, so I don't know how often the same photo would repeat.

The frame displays photos very well, and adjusts them well to fit the frame. The small remote control is powered by a little disk battery and is very weak. To use the RC, you have to be a foot or so from the frame and point it exactly at the lower right corner of the frame. I loaded the frame with pictures and gave it to my 85-year-old mother, who has zero chance of using the remote control successfully. The buttons on the frame are on the back of the right side. The on/off button is lit, so my mother can press it. But the other three buttons would have to be pushed by feel rather than sight, another impossibility for my mother. I loaded the pictures via USB from my computer, and stored them in the frame in a logical order. But there is no option for displaying the pictures in the order in which they're stored. You can have a slide show in reverse time order by modification dates of the files, or randomly. Randomly would alarm my mother. I chose the frame in part because it has a glass cover over the screen, so my mother can clean it. We've noticed no glare from the glass. I inserted the Sony memory card from my Sony camera into the Sony frame, and it was not acceptable. Apparently the frame does not deal with MagicGate.

PROS:
Outstanding clarity
bright screen
photo rotates with frame
Sony light can be turned off
600x800 resolution
Random view - photos appear in random order
Multi-image view.
Clock and calendar view
Remote control

CONS:
Small perimeter
Frame perimeter is not wood
backstop leans frame only about 10 degrees. Would prefer if it leaned back a bit more.

I highly recommend this frame.

After a disastrous bout with Kodak's latest photo frames, I'm happy to have found one that finally works without problems. I got the D80 on sale at Sears Canada for $169 and was half expecting I might have to return it, especially after reading that this model, like the Kodaks, may have problems displaying altered images. But so far so good. It seems to have displayed everything I have thrown at it, including over 2000 images edited in Adobe CS2. I suspect as others have noted, the issue may be with images saved as progressive jpegs. If you check your pictures with Irfanview, it will tell you if they are progressive or not and allow you to resave them as normal jpegs. Picture quality is indeed sharper than the Kodak frames, but to my eye not quite as bright and vivid. Still, overall, I think the sharpness and contrast satisfies my desires and I am currently running through slideshows of my own images, art images, pulp fiction covers and hundreds of wonderful photographs from the internet. The remote feels a little cheap and sometimes takes a while to scroll through the menus. I would love to be able to select images via folders and if Sony were looking for a firmware upgrade option this would be a great addition. To compensate, I have the memory and all the individual slots filled with different sets of pictures and select a different input when I feel like a change. Full marks to Sony for providing a basic digital frame that gets the picture right, that's what it's all about isn't it? This should keep me going until the next generation of OLED's hit the market in a competitive price range.

OMG after buying and returning 6 different digital picture frames I finally found the digital picture frame I LOVE! Of course I own a sony camera so that might make this picture frame make my pictures look awesome! I plug in my Duo and hit the pic. I wanted to upload and bingo - NO Problems! The screen is not dark, it does not chop off part of my photos, the pictures are crips and clean. The only down side is that you cannot zoom in on your photos.
But believe me when you have gone through what I have gone through with other digital pic frames that is nothing!

Per reviews, I splurged on this item and spent more for it than other comporable models. I am not dissappointed. As typical with SONY, the picture quality is excellent--bright, accurate colors. The software is fairly intuitive, though a little clumsy. We put photos from a MAC directly by pluggin in, and also by dropping pix from a Windows machine to a SD card, then from SD to the photo frame. The calendar and clock functions are nice for an office desk, but we use the "slide show" function the most for home use. Highly recommend this product if you want a high quality dig frame.

..The S-Frame is a nice simple hassle free digital picture frame. I had mine up and running in no time once I got my hands on it. I exported snaps directly from my Macbook (iPhoto app) directly to the S-Frame connected through a USB cable.

Now the Bummber!!
The picture frame has a Clock + picture display mode and a Calendar + picture display mode - Well nothing wrong with that......
.......BUT in the "Clock + Picture" mode guess what the clock displays - NO not your local time....it displays the time the picture was taken.......how VERY useful!!....duh!!

........HOW DUMB is that?????

Conclusion.
Good Quality Pic frame for folks who want a plain Vanilla pic frame with VERY VERY good display quality. Also has a collage mode - works well.
But do throw your plans of having a Clock + Picture display, into the nearest dust-bin!

Am I happy with the buy?.....YES VERY!
Have Frame ..Can Display.... Me Happy!