Living Images 7″ Digital Photo Frame Review
Digital photo frames have been around for a little while now, but now that the prices are falling to a more mainstream point I expect that they will start to become a more common feature in the home and office.
I’m sure that some people try to use them to store all their images, but I suspect that the more common usage is to sit on the mantlepiece or office desk and replace the family photo frames.
So just what does this particular frame have to offer….
What’s in the Box?
General
This particular frame is a 7″ widescreen with 480×234 pixel resolution. It’s capable of playing MP3’s and MPG’s (type 1/2/4) as well the more common JPEG file formats. It also has 128Mb built in memory.
It comes with a remote control and supports USB keys as well as SD, SM, MS, CF and MMC memory cards to extend its memory (or indeed just to transfer images to the frame)
There is also an AV cable to allow you to connect the frame’s output to a bigger display.
Highlights
Lowlights
Review
On first opening, the screen is pleasant to look at (like lots of things on the market at the moment it’s design has obviously been influenced by Apple’s products).
Setup is a simple process, taking no time at all. You just clip in the stand (it only goes in one way around), plug in the power adapter, remove the tab from the remote control and you’re up and running. It really is that easy.
To get images (or MPG’s or MP3’s) onto the frame you can plug in a USB key, a memory card (SD, SM, MS, CF and MMC are all supported) or else you can connect the frame to the computer with the included USB cable.
You then use the interface on the frame to either playback the images directly from the memory cards or else you can copy the images to the internal 128Mb of memory of the frame itself then playback from there.
NOTE : 128MB of built in memory might not seem like much, but if your JPG’s are resized to the size of the screen then you’ll store plenty of images on the frame (480×234 jpeg ~70kb each = 1872 images in 128Mb!)
The frame is capable of resizing your images on the fly to fit the display (it claims to be able to handle up to 8000×8000 pixel images and I certainly had no problems with anything I threw at it). The remote also allows you to change the aspect ratio of the image playback, but this will apply to all images so everything will either attempt to be 4:3 or 16:9.
Once you’ve selected the folder of images to show the frame cycles through the images.
This cycling can be set to go though the images in order or randomly, then you can change the speed this should happen and the effect that you want to use for the transition between 2 images.
The remote allows you to control everything function on the frame – navigating the menus, zooming images, volume, aspect ratio of playback. There are also buttons on the frame itself so you can still control the frame if your remote’s battery run’s flat – they aren’t particularly easily positioned, but most of the time you’ll be using the remote after all.
The AV socket allows you to connect the frame up to a larger display with composite input like a TV.
[The one thing that the manual doesn’t really seem to mention about this is that you can only get into this mode from the top level menu in the interface, then you press the AV button on the remote and hey presto the output goes to your TV]
You can apparently set the display up to play music and show images at the same time, but this doesn’t seem to be covered in the manual at all. (On other frames this usually requires a CF card for the speed of access)
If you playback MP3’s on their own the display shows a little graphic display of the music during the playback.
Playback of MPG’s is the one area where the frame doesn’t seem to let you have any control over the aspect ratio as it seems to stretch them all to widescreen regardless of their original format or any buttons that you may press.
I dont think that anyone is really going to use a digital photo frame as an MP3 or movie player, but it’s nice that these features are there for those that might.
There are also built in Calendar and alarm functions, but again I’m not really sure what you’d use them for.
Conclusion
If you aren’t willing to prepare your images to make the best of the widescreen ratio, then you’ll probably find this frame a little underwhelming, and the interface issues will rapidly start to get on your nerves.
If you ARE willing to prepare your images and you just want digital photo frame that will sit on your desk, shelf or mantlepiece cycling through them, then this is a nice bright screen for just that sort of purpose.
Review by: Iain
[Technorati tag(s): smartphone, Pocket PC, Living Images, Digital Photo Frame, Tracy & Matt]
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