Customer Reviews

eStarling ImpactV 8-Inch Wi-Fi Connected Digital Photo and Video Frame

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

When I received the frame I tried for ten minutes to get it to recognize the wifi router which was sitting on the same table. After about ten minutes it barfed some corrupted data on the screen and would not turn on again. The unit was totally dead.

I sent five emails over two weeks to eStarling via their support email (the only way to get in touch with them) and never heard back. I even opened a support ticket on their website and posted a comment in their support area and never heard anything. It was only when I opened up a claim with Amazon did they email me back and played dumb. I eventually got my money back.

Based on my experiences so far, I would recommend against anybody ordering this product or anything else from eStarling.

Aaron

This frame is absolutely ideal in many ways. The problem is that it rarely actually connects to WiFi. And if you get it to connect, don't you dare turn it off and move it to another network. It won't connect.

I bought this for my mother for christmas as an easy way to send her family pictures. But it has been a door stop since then.

The ImpactV works as advertised with one glaring exception: RSS feeds. The frame will download an initial set of photos from an RSS feed via the Seeframe.com website, but it will never get any subsequent updates. Disappointing if you are looking to use the frame as an RSS photostream display.

I have had my Impact V for about 6 months now.

First the Good: Despite what many have put in their comments, I found the unit easy to set up and I like the way they have integrated it with a website and they even have a program for my iPhone to enable me to easily upload pictures that are later downloaded to my frame.

Now the Bad: The frame has, for several months, a few times a week lost connection with my WiFi router. In fact, it has lost connections with 2 different WiFi routers (i.e. I swapped routers to rule out the router as an issue). This problem got worse and worse until the unit stopped finding any WiFi networks at all. This is a HUGE problem because the ImpactV is useless without either an SD card or WiFi connectivity. For some odd reason, although the Impact V has onboard storage, has no means of enabling me to display pictures stored locally, so I will need to buy an SD card to use the frame going forward. I have contacted their customer support, and I think they must be based in Asia and there must be one person running the company because I have gotten responses, but they are at least always one day delayed and come in the middle of the night. Some responses take several days. They suggested that I reformat the internal storage and upgrade the firmware. I did it all and nothing worked. They tried to convince me to take $50 and give up, despite having paid almost $200 for the frame! At this juncture, they agreed to send me a replacement, but I have not gotten it yet, so stay tuned.

Conclusions: When the frame works, it's great. However, given it's inability to store and display photos without WiFi connectivity or an SD card, be forewarned that if the WiFi goes, the frame is a step above useless, and I suspect that the frame is supported by a small company that might not be here in another year or so.

I chose this product because you could email images to the frame, and while that is sort of true, what I've also found is that it randomly skips images sent to its server, both directly uploaded and emailed. You can see the image on the sparse website used to manage the photos (kind of), but the random one just won't make it to the frame. And then there's no way to insert an image back into the sequence where it was intended. In fact there is no way to organize the images at all, and they don't necessarily download to the frame in the order that you uploaded them. So if organizing the photo sequence is at all important to you, go with another company.

There's no way to see just new images, so if you have 100 images on the frame, and email a few new ones, they just get added to the end of the rotation.

If you'd like any tech support whatsoever, documentation, or an 800 number, go with another company. There is not a contact number to be found anywhere, no documentation comes with the frame other than a VERY basic setup booklet, and if you dig around their "support" site, you can find a PDF of very basic feature instructions. If you have questions beyond that, you'll have to keep them to yourself. Emails so far have gone unanswered.

Don't even think of sending this to Grandma and Grandpa to set up on their own. I work online, and found this thing a royal pain and huge time-suck to set up. Once it's sitting in my parents house, there won't be any way to know which photos they've actually gotten because the frame randomly skips images that show up fine on the server.

No SD card was included, though there's a slot for one. And the included USB cable is a mystery since it doesn't actually allow you to load images to the internal memory. You can see a "local" and "web" directory when the frame is attached by cable, and you'd think you could load the frame by dragging images there, but you'd be wrong. I'm not at all sure how to get images from the live server to internal memory or to an SD card if we put one in -- no documentation on that whatsoever. If their site goes down, or the company goes out of business (which shouldn't surprise anyone,) you can expect the images to be gone, so back them up yourself.

If you haven't yet bought this thing, go with another brand. I think Sony now has one with an email address as well. Estarling's product kind of sort of works, but not the way you'd expect it to for what it costs, and customer support is clearly not a priority for them.

PROS: Good picture quality. Large internal memory (though you may not be able to use it.)

Cons: No user manual (they say they plan to write one someday)
Pics can be be placed in internal memory (IM) ONLY by email (not from the memory card (MC) or USB). Six hours ago I emailed a pic (12-28-08) and it is still not showing on the frame. I have emailed pics before and they eventually show up so I do know how to do it. If eStarling goes out of business, I cannot use the frame's IM at all because you email them your pics and they send them to the frame. You MUST be connected to a network to view pics already in IM. When you power up the frame you MUST choose to display pics from EITHER the IM OR the MC.

Bottom line: Avoid this company. Other reviews are very negative on their tech support and willingness to accept returns.

I purchased the ImpactV as a gift for my parents. I was very much looking forward to being able to update their frame remotely with new pictures of their grandkids regularly. I was bedazzled with all of the product claims and very much looking forward to using it. Unfortunately, the execution of this product and service is deeply flawed.

I first attempted to set up the frame at my house so that I would be able to deliver it to my parents preloaded with some pictures. After about 10 restarts of the frame, I was finally able to get it connected to my local network. After it connected I was able to register it with the service, I finally thought I had things working.

Unfortunately, the service to go along with this frame is as bare bones as you could imagine. While it does seem to have quite a number of features, they are all minimal implementations with no thought behind them. Furthermore, they have significant limitations placed on them. For example, RSS feeds only update 20 pictures at a time.

After a frustrating few hours, I thought I had the worst behind me. Boy was I wrong. Once I packaged it up to take to my parents, I was never able to get it to work again. It didn't work at my parents house at all. All I get it is the boot screen. The same happened back at my house. As far as I'm concerned the device is bricked and completely unusable. While their support website does have some tips and pointers, it doesn't have enough information for me to be able to get it working.

So usually when you buy something, and it comes with no instructions, you either 1. check their website for a help section, or 2. call a 1800 number for help. Estarling has neither.

They made this thing sound sooo easy to use, yet when you actually try to upload pictures and the piece of garbage does NOTHING, dont be shocked.
I also had to sign up just to EMAIL customer service, and that was after I already signed up to activate my frame!
After signing up to email customer service, my CASE went untouched for DAYS till I finally figured it out myself.

The only way to view all photos is to frigging create a timed playlist will every single picture tagged ALL. Othrwise the frame or site drops some... or they magically vanish!

Also the video feature is what sells this thing... hahah. Only if and when video does show up, you have to hit enter on the remote. video will not play automatically. JUNK!

There is more, the automatic timed auto, on off feature does not work.

-No MP3
-NO INSTRUCTIONS, AND self help articles on estarling and seeframe site are useless, and written by someone not of the english language, so its very hard to get a clear answer.
-Customer service sucks royally
-photos play in a random order, and do not play as you have them up on the site
-does what it wants to do, not what you direct it to do from the site.

Not user frinedly at all. very hard, and very frustrating, even for someone who is pretty pc savvy.

Dieser Bilderrahmen hat eingebauten Speicher welcher per email oder upload über die Seeframe-Webseite mit Bildern versorgt werden kann.
Ins Internet wird der Bilderrahmen über WLAN eingebunden.

Die Benutzung ist denkbar einfach!

EInzigster Mangel, manchmal verschluckt sich der Bilderrahmen beim Upload von mehr als 100 Bildern am Stück. Dann hilft leider nur ein löschen des Kundenkontos bei Seeframe. Ich gebe die Hoffnung auf eine gute Firmware jedoch nicht auf.

I purchased this frame for my wife as a Christmas present and I have to see if it did what it was supposed to do it would be a great product. However it does not. It sucks at trying to pull RSS feeds and freezes after a couple of hours without fail. eStarling's support ignores any requests and I have not been able to get my issue resolved. After reading through the eStarling forums this problem seems like it is not uncommon.