Great Picture Frame for you, or a loved one

This product is great! I love photo albums, but as a college student that is away from home quite often, it helps me wake up and go to sleep with my family and friends back home.  

Looks
The look of this picture frame is really sleek and cool. It’s like having a mini flat screen television in your room.  The all black frame, frames an 8" screen. The entire frame measures 11 1/8 inches by 8 1/4 inches. The best thing about the way the picture frame looks, is that it looks like a traditional picture frame. If it’s mounted on a wall, or put on a bedside, it looks amazing, beautiful and impressive. If you have a traditional home it will not ruin or clash with your décor. If you have a more modern home, it will only compliment the décor.  The back has a traditional stand, to allow it to sit on that coffee table, bed side or on top of a dresser.  

Picture
The picture is absolutely stellar. It’s the clearest digital frame in its class. It looks especially beautiful at night, but in the day time it is just a sharp and clear. The higher the pixelage in your camera, the better the photos will look, but the frame itself displays wonderfully. I’ve uploaded pictures from my cell phone (which is 2.1 megapixels) along with my 7 megapixel camera, and they have both displayed beautifully, so don’t be scared off if you don’t have a high-megapixel-rootin-tootin camera.

Video
This is really a great feature. Want to show the in-laws juniors first birthday? You can upload the video to the memory card, slide the card in and play it from the picture frame. The frame has a 128 mb internal memory. If you want to do something past the 128mb capacity, you will need to purchase a larger memory card.  

Sound
There is a possibility to upload sounds to play in the background with our pictures. I prefer silence, but this is a cool option. You cannot however, synchronize the songs to play with certain pictures. The speakers are not great, and sound much like a 1992, cheap radio. But, if you don’t mind that feel free to upload songs to your picture card.  

Operation
The picture frame is simple to operate because it doesn’t have that many features. But I did have to turn the frame off, to get back to the home page, because sometimes after navigating away from the start page I couldn’t make my way back there. It does come with a remote, which is great. I have it on my study desk in my room, and I usually run it for a while. When I’m ready to go to sleep, I turn it off from the comfort of my bed. If you want to show someone a certain picture speedily, it’s better than operating it from the base, having to repeatedly push a certain button and hold the frame awkwardly.

Loading Photos / Software
When you plug the picture frame into your computer, through a USB port, your computer will recognize it as a storage device, much like a flash drive or memory stick. All you do is drag and drop photos into the new place your computer creates for this “storage device”. The picture frame has Kodak EasyShare software, but I don’t use it. It’s just something extra to help you edit photos, but I use the program “Photoshop” for that. The cool thing about the frame is that is has two memory card ports where you can use. MicroDrive (MD), CompactFlash (CF), Memory Stick, Secure Digital (SD), xD and other types of storage devices.

Settings
Brightness Control – You can change or adjust how bright the frame displays. I usually put it on a pretty bright setting if I’m having company over, and dim it if I’m working at my desk.

Stretch to Screen – I hate this setting. I prefer to see my picture the way it is, and not stretch it to fit the screen, because you cut off parts of your photo. The default setting is to view your picture in “theater” mode, or widescreen. This way you see every aspect of your picture as it is, and not stretched out awkwardly and artificially.


Transitions – You can change how the pictures transition, with 12 choices in all. I really don’t use this feature at all. The different transitions run from 5-10 seconds and they have things like “side-swipe” transition where the picture changes by “erasing” from left to right. No thanks. I just keep it simple.

Slide Duration – There is 7 options for this setting. 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes or 1 hour.  It’s cool, because you can set the frame to match your personality. If you like a lot of pictures displayed and want to see as much as possible, you can. If you want to look at one picture from a while, run out to get tacos and come back to a new one, you can do that too.

Gripes
The picture frame overall is great, but the cord. That cord is so thick, and hard to conceal. I do wish it could be battery operated so that I didn’t have to think of creative ways to conceal the cord. Right now it’s on my work desk, so you can see the cord. But when I move to a place where I want to mount it, it will be a challenge.  There is not option to randomize the pictures, but…..you can go in there and change the order, if you want. You just can’t do it on the picture frame, you have to do it on your computer.

Price
I bought this on-line from EBay.com When it first came out it was 150-200 dollars. Not anymore. It ended up being 50 dollars on-line. The savvy shopper could find it on-line, but it is available at Wal-Mart, Target, and the like.

Conclusion
I love the picture frame. It looks great, works great and is pretty durable. It HAS fallen off of my desk. No cracks and it’s not broken. It’s a good value, even at full price. I love it, because it keeps me close to my family and friends, and always impressed people when they come in my room!