Smartparts 8.4" Digital Picture Frame - Walnut

Good quality picture

Strengths: Auto copy of pics from camera memory. 800x600 nice pics. 256 MB memory. Good looking wood frame.

Weaknesses: User interface w/out the remote is not very friendly and takes time to get used to. Not sure my wife will be able to do more than plug in her SD memory card.

Summary: I've bought this for my wife as a Christmas present. I've just spent a couple of hours with it putting in pictures of hers and some that I've taken with her in them. Since it will be used by her to view her camera pictures I have concentrated on that and did NOT download the software they say to use.

I may try out the USB connection after she's had it for a while as I'm sure I'll end up with all too much hands on with it since she refuses to deal with anything that isn't "plug and play."

Pictures are NOT "optimized" (decreased in resolution) if you merely transfer direct through the USB cable. So they suggest using the camera memory card or if using USB their software.

I had a problem trying to load some jpeg images of older pictures of hers when I copied them to an SD card and inserted it. Some would hang up the picture frame with no indication of what the trouble was with everything just stopping. I put the SD card in my Canon SD800 and discovered that though they looked fine on the computer they were unreadable in the camera so deleting those solved that problem.

When I put the SD card in the first time the images were copied to the "General" folder. I'm not hopeful that my wife will be able to successfully change the folder into which images load. You have to use their named folders if you want more than one photo show.

Editing after the images are in the picture frame is a bit awkward. It is reasonably easy to delete something but even that is probably beyond my wife's patience.

I suspect I'll have to spend quite a bit of time "fixing" any slide shows that she wants to have on the picture frame.

I didn't try any short movie clips since my wife doesn't take those but after she's had it a while I'll try some that I've taken with my camera.

I may update this after Christmas after she's had a chance to react to it and use it and I've had more experience trying to make picture shows satisfy her. She may decide it's more trouble than it's worth and have me return it...

For that reason I bought it where I knew it would be accepted for return after she tries it out.

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easy to use digital frame

Strengths: * easy to use, plug and display * beautiful mitered and beveled walnut colored frame * conversion software scales pictures to 800x600

Weaknesses: * no wifi or bluetooth

Summary: 2007-11-29 11:07:55 i bought this frame for my mother to use as she never dumps the contents of her digital camera out of her SD card. This has slots to take mini-usb, CF and SD formats. All you do is plug your camera memory in and it automatically starts running slide show mode. The frame is supposed to play music and short video as well, but i have not tried that yet.

the frame comes with it's own optimization software(needs to be installed on PC) and 128mb of internal memory. the software is very easy to use and scales(copies of) pictures to 800x600 and increases the number of pics you can put onto a memory stick or internal memory.

it's a great product and i think my mom will really like this to display her photos.

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A usable digital photo frame

Strengths: 1. The price is good enought to affort it. 2. The quality is not bad

Weaknesses: 1. The resolution is not good enough

Summary: I bought the frame for several weeks, it is good, and better than what I bought from Walmart. However, the resolution is not good enough. I wish that the frame price may go down very soon.

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Full featured wood digital frame with good resolution and price

Strengths: Good resolution, many features (video, mp3 playback, etc), wood frame

Weaknesses: Interface can be confusing for some

Summary: I received this digital picture frame for Christmas 2007, and I have been very, very pleased with it. I really like the wood vs. black/white plastic of some other digital frames. It gives it an authentic look that other frames lack. The resolution (800x600) is really good for a frame of this size, so the pictures/videos look really nice on the screen (do NOT compromise on frame resolution regardless of price). The ability to play videos/music is a really nice added feature as is the ability to read various types of media (SD, CF, etc) and the remote. The menu can be hard to navigate at first, but it seems to be intuitive once one is more familiar with it. I love this frame and would highly recommend it to others.

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Excellent image quality, hard to use

Strengths: High resolution (800x60), lots of memory card options, nice looking

Weaknesses: Not easy to customize, remote a bit fussy at times

Summary: Got this frame at Costco on Black Friday for an excellent price. Wanted an 8" screen and something with a decent resolution, as many 7" frames I was looking at only supported 320x240 resolution. This frame does 800x600 and the pictures are clear and full of detail.

Put a memory card in (or put a few pics on the internal memory by plugging into your computer) and the pictures play just fine. What's difficult is customizing your options. The remote can be finicky and you've got to remember exactly the key order to press in terms of setting your options or changing other things around. Now, once you've got things set, it all works fine. It might just take a little while.

I suppose it doesn't help that the fact that the instruction manual is written poorly (one of those written by Chinese and poorly translated into English.) You can figure it all out with time (just don't expect to do lots of file management easy with the remote.) If Apple made a photo frame, this would not be it.

In reality, for the lack of better name brands at a ... ahem ... reasonable price, this is a pretty good frame that will show your pictures from any source (USB cable from camera, SD/CF/etc. card) and provide an interesting conversation piece (once setup!)

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