 High on features, low on ease of use. |
| Review Date: December 28, 2008 |
| Reviewer: kirsch92, Allyn, WA |
This review is of the SPX8WF Wi-Fi frame. It currently (12/27/08) has no user guide as that is listed as "coming soon" on the website and is not included in the box.
This frame has a ton of features, and without a guide it is for someone with a lot of patience only.
The Good:
Picture Quality is excellent.
Very nice frame, blends in well with standard picture frames.
Wi-fi setup is easy.
Email works well and resizing of photos happens automatically. Photos are placed into folders according to sender.
Windows Live Frameit Works well, once setup.
The Syncpix software does an OK job of auto resizing to 800x600, but it is not perfect and does make some mistakes.
Frame may be setup to turn on and off on a timer, but there is no motion sensor.
The bad:
The menu system is more complicated than it needs to be, resulting in too many button pushes to do anything.
The software is not included in the box and must be downloaded from the Smartparts website. This would not be so bad, except you have to do a bit of digging to find it. The software is a little slow to startup and is very basic. You can either choose single photos or an entire folder to send to the frame.
The Frameit setup is not obvious either, and will result in some hair pulling. To register the frame you must push a small button in the upper left hand corner of the opening screen of the software you just downloaded onto your computer. There is no way to set it up from the frame itself, nor can you do it from inside the Windows Live frame it website. A royal pain, but it does sync up well when done.
Speakers are pretty tinny, but I think all frames have that problem.
Other thoughts:
Considering the price is just over $100 (I bought it from D*ll who had it in stock when no one else did), the picture quality and the ability to receive photos wirelessly makes it a good purchase, if you can deal with some frustrations.
Hopefully some firmware updates will address some of the shortcomings of the menu system.
The completion of a good user guide would go a long way towards easing a lot of angry phone calls SmartParts is sure to recieve. I imagine they pushed this product out the door for the holidays before it was truly ready. It has a ton of features, if you can just figure out how to do it.
A steal for those savvy enough to set it up properly.
The slideshow only pulls from one folder at a time. If a card is installed it automatically shifts to the card. While the Syncpix software will re-orient any photos you send to the frame, ones on a card must be done by using the rotate button on the remote. Once you have done that, it will remember the next time it cycles thru.
Despite it's downfalls, you can't find any frame that does so much for so little.
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Good digital frame - but...
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| Review Date: January 28, 2009 |
| Reviewer: S. Block, Ft. Lauderdale, FL USA |
This was a Christmas gift and something I had been wanting.
Positive: Quite good digital photo quality, well designed and made frame, easy to set up Wi-Fi, easy to send e-mail photos.
Negative: You get the frame, the remote control, cable, CD to set things up, AND ONLY A THIN FOLDED UP PRINTED GUIDE. There's no manual, and the guide only helps you with setup. I've struggled for over an hour today, simply trying to delete some photos I no longer want on the frame. I can't even do that.
Perhaps an IT person could figure it out. I'm pretty tech savvy, but I'm no match for this device, lovely though it be!
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Nice frame, terrible interface
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| Review Date: March 2, 2009 |
| Reviewer: rjc3000, Armonk, NY |
I researched digital photo frames and this one had the wireless features I was looking for, primarily email and simple operation.
We bought this frame as a gift for my father. It has a nice screen but that's about it. That gets it 1 of the 2 stars.
-The software is terrible. Slow and clunky.
-Some features do not work such as copying files from one memory area to another.
-I was also not able to upgrade the firmware as outlined at the manufacturers website.
-It connected to the computer via USB as a storage device only half of the time, requiring a reboot of the computer and of the frame. One of those times it managed to erase every photo sent to the email directory.
-The navigation is done most efficiently via the remote so don't lose it if you buy this.
-The navigation is slow and there is no way to "view all photos" (both emailed and those stored in the memory card slots).
-The only way to view emailed photos is to navigate to the email directory and then press view slideshow.
-The "random view" feature randomizes the photos just once -- and then you are stuck with that same random view forever after that. That is not random.
The unique email address via wifi is a nice feature and gets the second of my 2 stars in this review. The remote has a 1-button interface to pull new emailed photos from the dedicated email address.
I am not sure what happens if SmartParts goes belly up -- this will probably revert to an expensive plain vanilla photo frame.
Some suggestions for SmartParts:
-There is obviously linux or some other software running this frame. Why not allow it to be a shared device on the wifi network? This would allow it to be mounted as a network drive from other computers at the home and photos could be copied onto it that way.
-Fix the firmware update so it works.
-Make a "show all photos on frame" single button on the remote that shows photos from all places on the device.
-Fix the random photos preference to actually *randomize* the photos. Maybe reset the randomization once a day?
-Make the email address customizable so that we can use this feature if SmartParts goes belly up.
-Have the ability to login to the email address preferences online and add a 'cc' to your home email address so you can back up the photos that all of your friends and relatives are sending you. (in case the frame deletes the emailed photos when you hook it up to USB)
I would recommend waiting until a well-designed digital photo frame is released that is affordable. This one is the best of the bunch but the competition is truly dismal or non-existent for the wifi category at this point. There is
I was going to return this one but we had already thrown away the box. It is nice when you are looking at the photos. He likes it so we kept it. If it were mine I would have returned it and waited for a better product to come along. |
Good pic quality, terrible interface and support
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| Review Date: December 24, 2008 |
| Reviewer: mw, |
The good: picture quality, ability to grab photos emailed directly to the frame.
The bad: terrible GUI. No user manual (as of 12/24/08, it is listed as "coming soon" on the website). Non existent phone tech support (good luck getting through on the 800 number they provide). Right out of the box, it does not appear that one can create and organize folders to store photos. This may be available with the windows software link, but since I'm a Mac user this is not a choice. Here's an example of how poorly the interface works: it is very easy to see your new emailed photos. They each go to a master folder for the sender, however, if you want to move the photos to a folder on the frame's internal memory, this doesn't work. When you chose to move your emailed photos, you are given the option of three different folders: "common area", "demo" or "Demo." The latter folder contains the demo images from the company, the "demo" folder is empty and from what I can tell, you can not save anything to it. You can save your email photos to the "common area," but there is NO description of what this is in the documentation, and no help on the website. You also cannot select a default folder for playing your slide show and cannot find the "common area" folder to accomplish this task. I could go on, but you can see where this is headed.
If you only want a frame to grab occasional emailed photos and show them for a short while, or if you want to show photos from one location like an SD card, then this frame may be for you. If you want to have good on frame control of how your photos are stored and the ability to chose default folders (something I would think you would want to have good control over for emailed photos) keep looking. |
AWFUL . . DO NOT PURCHASE
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| Review Date: April 22, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Chehalis, Atlanta, GA |
| This wifi product does not work . . frame will not receive e-mails and when you try to contact SMARTPARTS tech support or customer service, you get no where . . no one will call you back or reply to e-mails. There are limited instructions for frame and no where on their website to get the information. DO NOT PURCHASE THIS ITEM OR ANY OTHER SMARTPARTS PRODUCTS. |
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