Philips 5.6-Inch Digital Photo Frame (White) by Philips Consumer Electronics
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Digital camera reviews of Philips 5.6-Inch Digital Photo Frame (White)
Digital camera Review: Fantastic digital frame for the price!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the Philips 5.6-Inch Digital Photo Frame (White) for my mom for Mothers' Day, and not only does she love it but I wish I had bought one for myself!
The frame itself is bright white and sturdy-feeling. It looks nice, not cheap. It comes with a USB cable, wall charger (there is no battery on board, so you'll have to keep it plugged in), a quick start guide, and an installation disc.
The disc contains a program for copying the pictures over to either the frame's hard drive or any external memory card you have inserted into it. The interface is a simple drag/drop and has decent sized thumbnails so you can see what it is you're copying over. You can create separate albums on it, so you could organize your pictures if you wished.
The back of the frame has buttons for power and to access the menu. You can input the date and time (and have the time show up on your frame like a clock), create and save slideshows of select pictures, view your album, and so on. Or you can simply show all of your pictures as one big slideshow (you can't, however, combine pictures from your card and pictures on the hard drive -- it's one or the other, so be sure to get a big enough memory card to hold all of the photos you want).
My two favorite features: the auto adjusting of the pictures (I have a frame where vertical pictures aren't always vertical, which is unfortunate -- on this frame, they are right EVERY time) and the HUGE menu available for how you want your pictures displayed. There are various collages you can use, or just show the picture full size, or randomize how they are displayed. There are many choices for transitions between pictures, like a puzzle frame or various wipes or a simple fade -- or, again, you can randomize it. You can choose how long you want the pictures to show for (less than 5 seconds? 10 seconds? an hour? a day?). You can even set it to turn on automatically on the weekends. This was a great deal for the price, and my mom loves it!
If you're looking for a great frame, look no further. This one has everything I could want and more, it looks nice, and it even makes a great gift.
Digital camera Review: A really nice frame for the money.
Summary: 4 Stars
For starters, I picked this up on a Lightning Deal for $49.99.
I gave it to the wife for Mother's Day, and it was a big hit. I did not use the software with it yet, I just used and SD card to load some photos into the frame memory for when she opened it. It was very easy to navigate around and do that without even touching a manual.
It has a nice little clock feature with reminders, so it is excellent as a desk top frame in a small office. It has a suprisingly clear display that automatically orients your images that were taken with the camera turned sideways. You can select different transitions as well as display times for your pictures on the menu, and you have the option of showing your pictures in sequence or at random. It also has a neat little collage option that works it way into the sequence if you want it to.
I guarantee that the first thing you do when you turn it on is to find out how you turn off the audible beep when you use the buttons. Once you find that in the menu you will find you can't go wrong with this frame. Especially if you can get it for the price I paid.
Digital camera Review: Exceeded Expectations! Also Compatibility and Startup tips!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought these when they were recently priced at around $50'ish delivered. I expected an average picture at best, but I was blown away at the image that I was viewing for my bargain-priced purchases. I own some digital frames, and I have seen several others. Images on many small frames are grainy, washed out, unnatural, or any combination of the three. The images on this one were exceptional. If you can catch them on sale again, they are well worth it up to about $60'ish, maybe even $70. I have bookmarked the page to watch for future sales. If they drop that low again, much of my holiday shopping will finish early for a change.
I purchased these as gifts for my mom's and mother-in-law's desktop, not as presentations. I preloaded the images and sent them on their way. I have not tried any MP3 or movie playback. While I can understand that other people might want these functions, they were not amongst my deciding factors.
PHOTO TIP for Windows users: In order to get the most out of the storage, your loaded image resolution should closely match the frame's native resolution of 640x480. This is easy to do without any additional software. Go to the folder that contains your pictures. Select the first image you want to load by a single LEFT-CLICK (and release). Now press and hold down the control key. WHILE HOLDING DOWN THE CONTROL KEY, select additional images in the same LEFT-CLICK (and release) manner that you selected the first image. All of the selected images should be highlighted in whatever Windows theme you are using. If they are all highlighted, release the control key.
READ CAREFULLY: DO NOT LEFT-CLICK ANY PHOTO WITHOUT THE CONTROL KEY PUSHED BECAUSE IT WILL "DESELECT" ALL OF THE OTHER IMAGES. THE SAME "DESELECT" WILL OCCUR IF YOU RIGHT-CLICK OVER ANY NON-SELECTED PHOTO.
To shrink the images to your frame's native resolution, place your cursor over one of the selected images and do a RIGHT-CLICK (and release). At this point, a window will come up with several options as to what you want to do with the selections. There will be a "Send To" option with an arrow next to it. Hover your mouse over, or LEFT-CLICK (and release), the "Send To" line. This will cause another side window to appear. When it does, LEFT-CLICK (and release) the "Mail Recipient" option.
A window will appear asking whether you want to keep make the images smaller, or keep the original size. Ensure that the "Make all of the images smaller" is selected, then LEFT-CLICK (and release) the "OK" button. When the email pops up with all of your attachments, place yourself in the address line, and send it. The images you receive will be VERY CLOSE to the 640x480 resolution. Save them in a unique folder to load on to your frame. Depending on your version of windows, the text may be different, but the procedure is mostly the same. I do not own a MAC, but I suspect they are fine machines and I'm sure they have a similar, if not easier, way to perform the same function.
If you do not have email access on you computer for whatever reason, there is still a solution. The email window that pops up has all of the photos in the "Attach" block. Close or minimize all of the other windows leaving only the draft email open. If it takes up the entire screen, LEFT-CLICK (and release) the "Restore Down" button. It is between the red "X" (close) button and the minimize button. Now you should be able to see your desktop and the email.
Create a folder on your desktop where you can save the corrected resolution images. Do this with a RIGHT-CLICK (and release) on a blank spot on your desktop. In the window that appears, hover your mouse over, or LEFT-CLICK (and release), the "New" line. Then LEFT-CLICK (and release) the "Folder" button. You can rename this folder if you wish. If the email block somehow covers the new folder, move either the folder or the email block around until you can see the names of the files in the "Attach" block and the new folder you just created. Do this by LEFT-CLICK (AND HOLDING) the top bar of the email block and dragging it around with the mouse. Release it when finished.
IMPORTANT NOTES (IFORMATION ONLY): For the next steps, you will not see the typical "drag and drop" features. In addition, the normal copying and pasting features (RIGHT-CLICKING, Control-C, Control-V, etc.) do not work.
LEFT-CLICK (and release) on the name of one the images in the "Attach" block. Now press and hold down the CONTROL key. While still holding it down, hit and release the letter "A". CASE IS NOT IMPORTANT. Release the CONTROL key. Now all of the images in the "attachments" block should be highlighted. LEFT-CLICK AND HOLD on the name of one of the highlighted images. While still holding the LEFT-CLICK key, drag your cursor over the storage folder you created, and then release the LEFT-CLICK button. After a few seconds, the email screen will refresh. The bar at the top will no longer be highlighted. The photos are now copied into the folder you created.
START-UP TIP: Depending on your frame and your PC, your USB might not recognize the frame unless it has been setup first. You do not need to go through a complete setup, just a few steps to start a slideshow with the pre-loaded images. One of the three frames I purchased, one was like this. After the initial setup, this did not recur and there were no other issues. To be clear, this was neither a problem nor a defect.
Digital camera Review: Takes a while to get the hang of, then it's fabulous
Summary: 4 Stars
I was worried after purchasing this and seeing that some people absolutely hated this frame. Although it took me quite a while to figure out how to download the pictures from websites, once I got the hang of it, it was a snap. The manual that comes with it is laughable (just a couple of pages - a quick start guide - although they did offer it in about five different languages). There was mention of referring to the cd manual for downloading pics off of your pc, although there was no manual (and I don't know if it just wasn't included or doesn't exist). It says that it holds 100-150 pictures on the internal memory, and I have about 30 on there and didn't get any warnings that I was close on space, so I think the internal memory is adequate to start. The only thing I didn't like about it is that there is no battery and it has to remain plugged in all of the time. I don't know why, but I just presumed that a digital frame would be wireless. So that was my oversight and fair warning to future purchasers. Because it doesn't have a useful manual and thus took me a while to figure out, I am giving it 4 stars.
If it were a little more user friendly (such as adjusting the photos to a certain order) I would probably have edged up the rating. Then again, my rating is also based upon the gold box deal of $50 which really makes it a steal! If I would have purchased it at the current list price of nearly $150 I would have returned it and rated it much lower as there are better frames out there in that price range (certainly cordless ones with better manuals and web support).
Digital camera Review: Nice picture, lousy interface, wildly varying price!
Summary: 3 Stars
First, beware all the 5 * reviews. Most of those people got it on a $50 special and, of course, are thrilled at its value. I had to pay $70 a few weeks later, and now (just two weeks further on) it's listed at over $140! At $50 it's a great buy, at $70 so-so, and I don't know who would pay $140 for it.
As others have noted the picture is bright and sharp. 5 *'s on that.
The user interface is one of the worst I've ever dealt with. That may be partly because I am using a Mac and therefore was unable to use the software that came with it, but I'd expect that even a Windows user would prefer to use it as a USB drive when connected to the PC, and merely drag and drop pictures rather than having to learn a new piece of software. After several hours of experimentation (maybe reading the manual would have been faster, but the parts I read seemed unclear, so maybe not), I figured out how to do it on a Mac, with the internal memory only. But, since you can store well over 100 pictures there, that's OK.
The trick is to only put JPEG's in the root directory, not in any of the albums. The frame then converts them to the right size and puts them in thumbnail versions and into the default album. I gave up on learning to use albums and will just maintain them on my Mac, delete all photos from the frame's internal memory, and load new ones instead. (But don't delete anything else! That might delete the software. I used Compost to get them deleted from the Trash, thereby freeing up space. Alternatively, you could empty the Trash, but that empties your main Trash as well as the frame's.)
I also had problems, as did another reviewer, with only some pictures being recognized. Some experimentation leads me to believe that the frame cannot deal with JPEG's over a certain size. The unrecognized ones were 2 MB each, while the recognized ones were about 100 kB each. I therefore now use GraphicConverter (or PhotoShop Elements) to crop pictures to the 4:3 aspect ratio the frame wants, to reduce them to 640x480 (its native resolution) and to save them as JPEG's no larger than about 100 kB each.
After copying these to the frame's root directory (the highest level), "eject" the frame from your Mac and unplug the USB cable, but DO NOT UNPLUG THE FRAME. The frame then goes through an uploading routine and tells you it's doing that. At the end, you'll have pictures where they should be.