Customer Reviews

Sony DPF-V1000 10-Inch Digital Photo Frame

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Having upgraded from a smaller Philips digital photo frame, the Sony DPF-V1000 is a welcome surprise.

Before getting in to the meat of the review, I feel it's worth pointing out a couple of improvements in the product right up front.

A lot of reviews here complain about three common gripes:

- the illuminated Sony logo on the frame
- when you're in date/time mode, the frame only displays the date and time the photo was taken
- non-camera images don't display

I bought my frame on June 28th 2009 and all these items have either been fixed, or the other reviewers didn't read the manual far enough. The illuminated Sony logo can be turned off via the setup options now. There is a smorgasbord of date and time modes available too, most of which will display the current date and time rather than the date and time the photo was taken. And finally, the non-camera images problem seems vastly reduced now. I filled my frame with all sorts of images including straight-from-the-camera JPGs and ones that had been altered via Photoshop. Out of 400 images, only two didn't display, and they turned out to be TIFF images I'd put on by mistake. Otherwise, images taken from 8 or 9 different makes and models of camera all showed perfectly, as well as those taken from 5 different cellphone cameras.

So on to the frame itself - what's it like. Oddly, bigger than you might think. OK so you can read the dimensions in the product specs but when it arrives, the box is huge, and the frame is much larger than you might imagine. The quality of the LCD panel seems to be top notch with a bright, clear display and a pretty wide viewing angle. The screw-in "foot" which makes up the frame's stand is quite long (for stability) which means that you can't push this frame up against a wall when placing it on furniture - it's going to stand out quite a way. You can hang it on the wall though - it has keyed notches in the back for that purpose. The frame can be oriented in landscape or portrait mode and it auto-rotates the pictures to suit. The picture display itself can be "original aspect" which shows the whole picture with black bars padding the screen where necessary, or it can be "zoom to fit" in which case the image is zoomed slightly to entirely fill the display.

The frame comes with 1Gb of built-in memory as well as memory card slots for most types of card. There is one gotcha here though which isn't mentioned in the manual, and is buried deep in the product FAQ on Sony's website : when you connect this frame to your PC via USB, you can ONLY upload images to the frame's inbuilt memory. Any cards plugged in do not show up - you either need to load them up separately, or copy images to them using the frame's inbuilt copy tools. Whilst this isn't a biggie, if you don't have a separate card reader for your chosen type of memory card, it's a pain having to shuffle images everywhere. Having said that, 1Gb of onboard memory holds a respectable number of images - enough that you might not need an expansion card. Realistically, I think the card slots are there for straight-from-the-camera image viewing, rather than long-term storage.

There are plenty of setup options to keep the both the nerdiest photo frame enthusiast and the absolute beginner happy. One thing I was pleased to see was the option to set the inbuilt clock to 24 hour mode. Why anyone still uses AM/PM in this day and age is a mystery to me, yet so many consumer electrical products insist on the 12 hour format. Not so in this case. As well as the clock, there's a calendar built in too, and in many of the display modes, you can show the clock and/or calendar along with the photo. Another nice feature here - you can set the date display to American or rest-of-world - ie. month-day-year or day-month-year respectively. The clock has an alarm mode which can be turned on or off using a slide switch on top of the frame. Seems a little pointless to me, but then I have a clock radio to wake me up in the morning.

The included remote control is a nice feature. My old Philips frame had no remote so all changes needed to be done using the frame's hardware buttons. With the Sony remote, you can fiddle with the photo frame remotely, including all the setup and display features. It has hidden benefits too - for example if you've got the frame set to refresh every half hour and you decide you don't like the current picture, you don't need to wait - just click 'next' on the remote and on you go.

As with most digiframes, this one has an auto on/off function where you can tell it when you want it to turn itself on and off. It has a simple and complex mode of operation for this feature. In simple mode, you just give it an on and off time and that's it. In complex mode (the default setting) you can set multiple on/off times for individual days of the week. A little too much gravy for a photo frame if you ask me.

The slideshow modes have the usual array of fades and swipes, as well as sequenced or random image mode. For the most part, you'll typically end up in random picture mode, and random fade/swipe mode. The slideshow delay has several preset options from every 3 seconds right up to once a day for the picture change. Common choices like 5 minutes, 10 minutes and half an hour are all present and correct.

You can do some rudimentary image editing in the frame although any serious amount of image touchup is out of the question. It has a scrapbook mode where you can frame the pictures with backgrounds and other add-on graphics although it does seem a bit pointless to buy a large digiframe and then deliberately shrink the images you're displaying on it ....

In short - this frame has more than enough features for the technophile, whilst being pretty easy to just pick up and use for those who want to throw some photos on and be done with it. You can't argue with the clarity of the LCD panel either. All in all, a good choice if not a little pricey. Sure you're paying for the Sony name, but if they did an identical model with all the frills removed - ie. no touchup mode, no alarm, no scrapbook mode and no card slots, that would be a product with more mass-market appeal. That being said, I don't think you'll regret this purchase - it simply is that good.

So why 4 stars and not 5? Well the internet is full of people who either think product X is the best thing since sliced bread, or have an axe to grind with the manufacturer. Those two review types account for 5-star and zero-star reviews. Very few products warrant a full-on 5-star review because most products have one or more features that a chunk of the buyers won't like. So 4 stars is my rating here - ie. it's a bloody good piece of kit but it's not perfect. I don't think the perfect 5-star digital photo frame exists yet.

This review is about DPF-V1000. Unfortunately, Amazon mixes all the Sony digital frame reviews together, so the star rating is pretty useless, since it is really an average of the ratings for all the Sony frames. Anyway, here's my review....

As of this writing, I've had the frame for about a week, and so far it's great. The frame looks very nice (I have the black one). The photos display clearly, and the frame fits nicely on our coffee table. I think a smaller frame would have been too small. So I am happy with the purchase.

I only give it 4 stars, though, due to these notes.

1. Odd warning in the manual. The owner's manual says this:
"Due to one of the characteristics of the internal memory device, images stored for a long time or read many times may be subject to data error when read too often." It has a similar warning about the memory card device.

This is odd to me, because it essentially says if you look at the photos too much, the frame may not work right. I haven't encountered any problems yet, but, as I said, I've only had the frame for a week. Still, if this is a big enough issue to warrant these notes in the manual (you can find a .pdf of the manual on Sony's site), it makes me a bit nervous. I'm not sure I would have purchased the frame if I had seen this ahead of time, but since I haven't encountered a problem, I'm not going to return it. We'll see how it goes....

2. Another note in the manual says that picture files edited on a computer may not display. I actually did have a problem there, because I touch up all my photos with Photoshop Elements then save them as JPGs. Some of those photos did not display. Sony tech support was of no help with this, but I did figure out a solution. So if you get this frame and plan on using Elements, here's an important note.

When I do a "Save As..." in Elements 6 and select JPEG, a window comes up called JPEG options. This window has a radio button called Format Options. I had the radio button selected for "Progressive." Apparently, this does not save a file that conforms to Baseline JPEG 4:4:4, 4:2:2, or 4:2:0 format--which this frame requires, so photos saved this way did not display. So I tried saving again, this time selecting the JPEG Format radio button for "Baseline (Standard)." This worked. So make sure you pick that radio button option when saving JPEGs from Elements. So far, taking that approach, I have about 400 jpg photos on the frame, and they all display fine.

3. One small issue regarding folder management. You can have folders and sub-folders on your memory card, but in the frames folder filter mode, you can only select single folders to display. For instance, I have a folder called 2008. It has no photos in it. It does, however, have a bunch of subfolders that do have photos. I'd like to be able to pick the 2008 folder and have a slide show all the photos in the 2008 subfolders. However, the frame will not let me select 2008. I can only select a subfolder inside of 2008--and only one at a time. Note that you can display all photos on the card, so this comment only applies to the folder filter mode.

So overall, I would recommend this frame--unless you found another that didn't have these issues. :) If I do run into problems at some point, I'll post a follow-up to this review.

I tryed other frames and they don't compare to the Sony. Other frames darken at the sligest viewing angle and have very limited features. The Sony frame has it all. It works from wider viewing angles, has excellant resolution, many transitions from frame to frame, HDMI output, multi card reader, 1 GB memory built in, scrapbook features,index views, clocks, calendars and combinations. Printing can be imposed on photos. The frame is well built, has remote control and the remote pickup window on the frame is invisible not like an eye loking back at you like most other frames have. The Sony is a little more expensive than the other frames but it also looks better and has many more features on it. I like the size of this frame much better than the Sony 7" frame I have for viewing from accross the room. It doesn't have a way to view photos with a battery, but a battery probably may not be powerful enough for any viewing time on a large display. I also like the fact that it doesn't have a large frame and a mat around the photo that is useless and doesn't look as nice. I highly reccommend the Sony Frame.

I bought this as a gift for my mom after my dad passed away. I'd previously given her a Philips photo frame, which I also own and like. I own a lot of Sony products and have had very few problems with them, so I was glad to know there was a Sony option now available, and it doesn't disappoint. I bought it "sight unseen" based on the Amazon reviews and I was very pleased with the purchase.

After a lot of research I decided to get this as a present and it is excellent. Very easy to set up, easy to configure (for example changing photo settings, switching off the Sony logo) and great quality display. I also got this because of the simple black frame look - very sleek.

Great frame, highly recommended.

I recently ordered the Sony 10" digital photo frame, because I was impressed with a smaller frame I had given as a gift. The 10" frame was even easier to work with and offered a few extra features. The image quality on both is excellent. I did engage in some extensive research before selecting Sony; I would happily recommend this product.

There are many digital picture frames on the market. Most no-name brands look OK from 4 feet away, but have seriously disappointing resolution at close-up. This sony has very good 1024-600 screen resolution and vibrant colors that hold up even when watched from a few inches away. Its stunning.

I managed to copy well over 1700 pictures into its internal memory and still have 220M of the 870M left. That is much more than the 1000 pictures that Sony claims. The device quietly reformats the incoming pictures into it a size. This happens without any noticeable quality degradation. I'm impressed.

Setup is easy, and the thing has many cool features such as auto-rotation. The main drawback is the $[...] price tag which is double that of a Chinese picture frame. Add another [...] and you could buy a netbook or a secondhand notebook computer that does the same and more. But if you can spare the have money, this is this the very good choice.

Outstanding picure quality and user-friendly instruction manual. It has a lot of features I may never use, but I am enjoying playing with them. A high quality frame that I am happy with and glad I spent a few more $$ on.

This is my third photo frame - it blows all its predecessors away! It is well worth the price. It pretty much does everything you would expect of a picture frame.

First, its large size (10") makes for easy viewing both from close up and from across the room. Second, the picture quality and resolution are as good as you would expect. Finally, it's easy to use and set up (for example, it has an easy to set graphical start and stop time for each day of the week - I have mine turn on in the mornings on Saturday and Sunday and turn on around 4 pm on weekdays).

This frame was an upgrade from a very good 7" Phillips photo frame. Both the picture quality and features of the Sony are superior.

I purchased this digital frame so that I could send it to my Mother in law pre loaded with pictures, I was so impressed with its phenomenal picture quality and many features that I ordered a second one for my wife the next day.