Customer Reviews

ViewSonic 8-Inch 512 MB Digital Photo Frame with Wi-Fi

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this frame for one purpose: my sister and I have Smugmug accounts and we wanted our parents to have a frame that would automatically display new pictures when we posted them to our accounts. I tried several other frames and none could do this well.

The Viewsonic was easy to set up. Turn it on and the setup wizard begins - configuring your wifi connection. It worked with my (WPA2-PSK) secured wifi. Then I went online and signed up for a free FrameChannel account. The navigation of FrameChannel takes a while to get used to, but all the functionality is there.

I added the RSS feeds from the Smugmug galleries I wanted my parents to see. Then I went back to the frame and found (easily) in the menu where I would configure the FrameChannel account. This involved putting in my user name and a PIN code from the FrameChannel site.

Once this initial setup was done I went (on the frame) to "Pictures" --> "Frame Channel" and pressed the slide show button on the remote. Within a few seconds the first picture from my gallery displayed. It was a little slow, as the pictures were being downloaded by the frame, but there were not any errors. The quality on the display was good, not great, as colors were a bit washed out but the pictures were clear and not grainy.

It's great that I can add and remove RSS feeds to the frame on the FrameChannel site so that my parents never have to fool with that part and they will always have new pictures. I did send the frame in for an exchange because there was a piece of dirt under the glass that was visible in many of the pictures. It wasn't a major problem but did affect viewing so I've exchanged it for a unit that (hopefully) is free from defects.

This works excellently for my purposes and I'm glad to have found a reasonably-priced model that does.

I purchased this frame primarily for the wifi capabilities and being able to setup my parents with photo upates and 'surprises' from 750 miles away. However, on Christmas day we had no luck getting it setup on their Cox Cable-iMac-Airport home network. I repacked the unit with every intention of returning it for a refund but thought I'd see first if I could get it up and running on a similar setup at home. Again, no luck at first. Phone support isn't fun for me between hearing loss and peculiar accents but it was the last resort.

The primary issue was getting the unit past my wireless network security. The frame would "see" my network but not connect. Nothing the tech suggested was working but in between his directions it got me to thinking about other options to try. After being handed off to another tech who's final input was to say "it's supposed to work, I don't know what else to do..." I gave up and thought of one last option I'd thought of while on the phone. That is, to exhaustingly run through each type of network security (WPA, WEP, etc.) available on the Airport, relaunch my network then go back to the frame and try connecting.

The setup that finally worked was the security option that requires exactly 13 characters. (Sorry, I don't remember which one that is but it's the option most compatible with multiple devices while somewhat less secure.) At last the frame's antenna and globe icons were both active. Simple right? I would have thought the tech support staff would have suggested that up front.

Fingers crossed for the next time I visit my folks and try to setup the frame on their network. For now, it works well with the weather and news widgets; and with automatically updating photos from a FrameChannel account hooked into Picasa.

I could not connect to a router (DLink DI-524) using 128 bit WEP. After upgrading the firmware (necessary for wireless use), 128 bit WEP still didn't work. If I turned off security (not good) it would connect but only after re-installing the firmware. Turning on 128 bit WEP again, it failed to connect. I set up another router (NetGear WGR614)(I didn't want to mess with settings of my primary router). Using a 64 bit WEP key, the frame would connect.
After several e-mails and phone calls to tech support I got "It should work with 128 bit WEP key". Their thought was that the frame was defective and out of warranty. (I seriously doubt that it is defective). I asked if anyone there had tried and succeeded using a 128 bit WEP key. They said they had no hardware to test with but they could e-mail someone and see...I already had the answer on that ... It's supposed to work.
Using the working 64 bit WEP, I tried using Picasa. The Account manager had no entry for a password, and would not connect. Viewsonic tech support came back with "The code for Picasa is incomplete" and they had no known plans to fix it. I'm still trying to see if I can get Framechannel to work (I had to set up an account on Framechannel).
The manual is not very informative...I had to use a lot of trial and error to get where I am now.
I have to admit it displays pictures nicely (I used a 4 GB SDHC card and it read the pictures). I had also loaded pictures into the internal memory and they worked well (until the firmware updgrade wiped them).

I've had my VFP838-11 for about 6 months, which I bought elsewhere on sale.

I really love having my photos and those of others in the slideshow mode when I glance at it; they bring back great memories.

Pros:

I love having it on my desk at work and have set it up to get photos from Flickr from my account and from friends. I've also set up a FrameChannel account, which works pretty well (not all FC features are supported, such as channel by time-of-day). The images are sharp with decent color. The remote control works well and I've gotten very used to the menu structure. I was able to connect to a secured network, though entering the settings and password was tedious using the remote.

I'm pleased that it keeps all settings in memory even when you unplug it. It'd be disastrous otherwise, as I unplug it over the weekend.

Cons:

What I don't like is that the frame won't default to displaying photos via wifi when you turn it on. If you turn it off or unplug it, it defaults to what's in internal storage or a memory card you've inserted. You can choose which of those, but you can't have it automatically start showing, say, get your latest Flickr photos.

When it powers up, you have to hit Exit, Select Source from the menu, arrow down to Flickr, choose it, choose the Friends folder, then choose your personal subfolder (or someone else's), then choose the first photo, which starts it loading the last 500 photos from that account.

So I couldn't give this to my senior citizen family member and push new photos to her automatically. And she couldn't even get new photos from her computer showing without performing the above tasks.

Setting up a WiFi connection can take a while, waiting for it to recognize a network. It will not work with some secured networks, such as WPA2, which is what we use at work. (Thankfully we also have a public network that I can use for this frame.)

Summary:

Get this only if the person using it is comfortable navigating menus via the remote and has patience. I would get this again for me (if the price were right), but not for a non-technical person.

I don't want to repeat what others have already written. My issue with this product is concerning the menu. The menu is rather bright and portions of the menu on the top and right side of the screen are still visible while viewing pics and have burned into the display. I've used this 3-4 times and having the menu burn in that quickly makes this one to avoid.

I just want to do one thing: auto pull pictures of our daughter from a Flickr account. How hard could that possibly be to implement?

Well, first of all, this frame has no ability to log in to your account so you can only see public pictures. Really? Who develops these things? It didn't occur to anyone that someone might want to LOG IN to view pictures?

As an experiment, I made a couple pictures public and guess what? I still can't see them. I just get a thumbnail with a question mark in it.

It gets one star because WPA integration works fine.

Serves me right for buying one of these thing with no reviews posted.

UPDATE: New firmware allows pictures to be rendered from Flickr. The whole thing is still awful though. You can't automatically pull from the Flickr account, you have to navigate through the stupid menu system to do it or download all the pictures to local memory. It will periodically refuse to turn on too.

Maybe the FrameChannel interface is better? Beats me. Bad design, bad execution.

The screen is nice though.

This digital photo frame was bought for me as a christmas present with the idea that I would be able to access family photos on a flickr account. I set it up, and tried to connect to my wifi. Although it showed several wifi possibilities, including mine, for logging on, it could not connect. Every time I put the password in (which is a lengthy process using the remote!) it just kept telling me no wifi was available, check my router. I tried all the instructions in the manual. I even took it to work and tried to connect to the wifi there, no luck. After many emails from the tech support people at viewsonic they eventually had me return it for repair/replacement. They sent it(or another one) back.
The new one still cannot connect to the wifi. I think the technology has a long way to go on this product. You shouldn't have to be a computer expert to make a photoframe work.