Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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106 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
For the Price, it's not bad, October 30, 2008
I picked this Digital Photo Frame up at a local retailer for just under $50. For the price it's not a bad buy. I don't own any other digital frames, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but here goes...
Firstly, the black really does go with almost any decor. The bad thing is, dust seems to go very very well with the black. I find myself dusting this thing daily to keep it looking nice and shiny.
Next up is the input options, including SD, Memory Stick and USB. I'm pretty impressed that something this inexpensive can take any of those three formats, honestly. I've seen more expensive ones that can only take one or two. I have only attempted .JPG files, but you can supposedly use .BMP files as well. Most folks who are in the market for a digital photo in this price range will be wanting to use .JPG files anyway.
Thirdly we'll get to the transition/intervals when using a slideshow. I'm quite pleased that you can choose from intervals as short as 3 seconds to minutes, hours or even a full day. And the transitions are indeed programmable. So you can use a random transition (like I do) or one specific one of about 15 or so.
While I admit the screen quality isn't a great as some of the more top end products, it's just fine when you use it with a high quality file. Most of my digital files come off of an 8mp camera and they look quite nice on this screen. I do have a few that came off of my 2 mp cell phone camera and they are viewable, but not as pretty as my real camera.
It says it's wall mountable, but since there is no option to run it off of batteries, I don't think I'll do it. I just don't want a cord running down the wall, I find that quite unattractive.
All the buttons for functioning are on the back so as to not clutter the appearance of the frame. While I agree with that, what I don't agree with is the weird layout of the buttons. The arrows don't seem to be in order properly and all the other buttons seem out of order as well. This is not a problem if you are using the remote, so I highly recommend that you don't lose your remote! Also, the on-screen menu is rather confusing and the instruction manual included is hazy and vague at best. It's not a difficult product to figure out, but it can be frustrating if you just want a plug and play kind of item.
I have noticed that it's best to resize your images before you plan to display them on this device. It's a 16:9 widescreen format capable screen. The resolution is a 480wX234h screen. It's best to adjust for the height rather than width or you'll end up cutting off the top of everyone's head.
The internal memory is a capable 128mb. I've used up to a 2g USB in the input, I don't know if it'll take higher. I don't really want to use this to display every photo in my collection, so with what's in the internal memory and the cards I switch out from time to time, it's plenty large enough for me.
There is a Calendar option, but I'm not interested in that, so I didn't explore it much. I know that it's a monthly calendar, and you can use whatever picture you'd like for the photo (displayed on the top left of the screen) with the calender taking up the entire right side of the screen.
There is also a Split Screen option that will show 4 photos at once. I think this is too small of a screen for 4 photos and don't plan on using that option.
All in all I'm going to recommend this to anyone who wants a digital photo frame but doesn't want to spend a lot of money.
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36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
no frills digital picture frame, October 10, 2008
I haven't played with any other digital frame, but I picked this because of the price. I plan to bust this baby out only occasionally, and realistically, I'm not gonna hold the frame right up to my face to see. The picture quality is acceptable, the menu system is easy to use. The buttons are kinda funky and are placed on the back, so it'd be weird to pick things off the menu from the back. It has a remote control, so obviously the user would be encouraged to use that instead. I have no complaints about it, I loaded up my SD card with 1 gb of pictures, the menus are easy to use, and started the slideshow! I thought the picture quality would suck at 480, but the pictures look fine, they are probably a little grainy, but I like I said, if you don't put it up to your face, and you plan to look at it either mounted on the wall or from a table, it's totally fine. The colors are saturated, and there are menu options to adjust for the brightness/contrast/etc.
There's also an option to play music and video, I haven't played with those since the main thing was to display a photo slideshow, so if you are looking for that, this unit does it too.
so, all in all, a GREAT no frills cheap digital frame. can't complain :) and I won't cry if it breaks after a year's use.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasantly Surprised, December 14, 2008
I got this for about $40, and for that price it was a great deal. I'm using a USB 4 GB Kingston flash drive, and so far the viewer has been flawless. My pics were taken with a Cannon 400 PS, and were about 1/2 meg each. As mentioned by some other reviewers, it REALLY helps to resize your pictures. It markedly improves the images on the viewer. Specifically, I used the freeware FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER. For my pics converting them to 1200x900 pixels gave the best results for this picture viewer (and a side benefit was that the pics were now a little less than half their original file size). (ps. I still kept my original files as well for other applications.) It looks like if you start with small pic files you can try 400x300 pixels or 800x600 pixels...thos looked pretty good as well. Other sizes didn't look that good. Only a few knocks: 1. My pics are in many file folders, and when I select the 'random play' option it plays an entire folder at a time. At least it plays the folders randomly (and the pics within the folders as far as I can tell). I suppose I could get around this if I put all my pics in one folder. 2. The USB port is right next to the power cord...a little bit of tight fit if you have a bulkier USB drive...and the drive sticks out a little beyond the frame. 3. Power cord is not that long.
Other than that, its a nice little viewer. I see that as I'm posting this the price has shot up to $80. I would say if that's what the other 7 inch viewers are at then go with this one.
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