Seven-inch digital photo frame shootout

Hot on the heels of the SSD shootout comes a five-man competition stocked with some of the most prolific digital photo frames on the market, and now that prices on these bad boys are dipping down from the stratosphere, there's a good chance you'd like to know which would look best in your den. Thankfully, GearDigest has taken the task upon itself to pit Kodak's EasyShare SV710, Pandigital's 7-inch Photo Frame, Philips' 7FF1CM1, Smartpart's Portable Picture And Video Player, and Westinghouse's DPF-702 against each other to see who's really the champ. After hours of viewing countless relatives and vacations of yesteryear, the group found that the obvious assumptions of "you get what you pay for" proved completely true. The four frames not labeled by Philips all featured a similar 16:9 display with a paltry 480 x 234 resolution, and while a few offered niceties not found elsewhere (Kodak's PictBridge, for instance), all of the devices were decent at best in terms of image quality -- and they all ranged from $119 to $129.95 in price. Handily snagging the gold was the $199 7FF1CM1, which upped the ante with a 720 x 480 panel and proved worthwhile if you actually want your photos to shine. But hey, it's still your dough, so do your duty and dive into the full review below before swaying one way or another.

[Via DigitalMediaThoughts]

[NHAnimator @ Jul 27th 2007 10:12AM]

Are people really buying ANY of these things? I do not know one person who owns one. And every unit I HAVE seen has been unimpressive/overpriced.

[ajmiarka @ Jul 27th 2007 11:05AM]

Didn't you see them all sold out for Mother's and Father's day?

[Chuckles McGee @ Jul 27th 2007 11:32AM]

Two frames enter- one frame leaves!!

[Jeremy @ Jul 27th 2007 12:31PM]

I got a Philips 7FF1M4 for Christmas, and I love it. I have it on my desk here at work and get compliments and questions on it all the time.

[Hannes @ Jul 29th 2007 9:28PM]

In fact, lots of people are buying these things. It is estimated that 12 million dpfs will be sold in 2010.

Hannes

http://www.digital-photo-frame-market.info

[Walter @ Jul 27th 2007 10:23AM]

These are great as gifts for non-tech savvy relatives. Although I have not bought one.

I was thinking of converting an old laptop into one of these but they seem to have the opposite problem. Too big (and too much resolution). I need to find a cheap source of old small screen laptops that you can run linux on.

[Jon Finegold @ Jul 27th 2007 10:24AM]

When these frames become WIFI enabled and work with tools like http://www.framechannel.com to update dynamically, accept emailed photos, news and weather in addition to pulling from photosharing sites is when this gets really interesting. I predict millions will sell this Christmas and will be used for about a month before they start collecting dust. WIFI and RSS support are a must to make these interesting

[Andrew @ Jul 27th 2007 10:39AM]

chumby?

[K @ Jul 27th 2007 12:09PM]

There exists models with wifi and rss capabilities...just too darn expensive at the moment.

[muddyh2o @ Jul 27th 2007 10:36AM]

i bought my grandmother a ceiva years ago. it let's all her kids, grandkids and great-grandkids send her photos of what they're up to.

she doesn't have to do anything, and we can send her a surprise every morning.

too bad it didn't make the list. we all love it.

[DJ @ Jul 27th 2007 10:59AM]

I bought my wife the Westinghouse for Mother's Day a year ago. Other than replacing it under warranty for a couple of dead pixels, it's worked great. Five other people in her company bought similar ones because they thought her's was so cool. I bought the Pandigital for my Dad last Christmas. Got it on sale for $79.00! He loves it! I've been looking at the 19" units to put in my den, but still a little pricey for those.

[Aluvendale @ Jul 27th 2007 11:15AM]

Collect dust? What else are they supposed to do? They sit there and show pictures. Of course they are going to collect dust! So does your computer, TV, game systems, everything! That doesn't mean that you don't use them. I, for one, would love to have one at my office.

[Moby Disk @ Jul 27th 2007 11:25AM]

These devices are DOA.

1) Years ago, they never took-off from the beginning due to greedy manufacturers. The first time I saw one of this I thought it was brilliant and wanted to buy one for my grandparents. But it required $30/month subscription charge for the dial-up account in an era of $9.99/month unlimited internet. That pricing model was absurd, and they didn't offer USB connections, memory card connections, or floppy drives.

2) Today, their market is dying. The generation of people who have never turned-on a computer is passing away. I expect that by the time they become popular, grandma and grandpa will have a video phone anyway. (There's no technical reason we couldn't have had those 10 years ago )

[Preston @ Jul 27th 2007 12:02PM]

What the heck are you talking about?

[Jim @ Jul 27th 2007 11:45AM]

I have purchased two in the past.
One a couple of years back - it was small screen, washed out colors, and ran fairly hot. But on the plus side it was really easy to use. The parent found it easy to just slap in a memory card and start viewing the photos.

I purchased a new on a couple of months ago from Costco. The price was reasonable. The picture quality was outstanding and did not seem to run as hot. I was impressed. Also the screen size is about twice of the original one I purchased.

I find they make life really simple for the non-computer person (ie Parent, stupid brothers, etc). It is so easy to use the parents bought a digital camera even though they do not even own a computer - they just transfer the memory chip to the picture frame and show off there picture like that right away and for the few they really like or other people like they take the memory chip into Costco and get only the photo's they really want printed. Other than that the digital picture frame sits out and cycles through hundreds of photos - there photo's and photo's taken by the rest of the family. I know our daughter will sit there and watch the photos for hours.

I would like get a really large one that can be wall mounted and have WiFi. That way I can easily update a family photo every week or more importantly change the photo quickly to show the grandparents when they come over. I just need to wait for the price to come down - maybe in a couple of years.

[Jon F @ Jul 27th 2007 6:44PM]

The PhotoVu is a great option if you want a large WIFI enabled. It is expensive but we have one in our office running FrameChannel. Updates continually over WIFI. In fact we have it set up to accept email photos (desktop or camera phone) so you can send photos right to [e-mail] and they go right to our frame which is super cool. So far we have had lots of great photos come in and not yet anything bad so please do keep it clean but send away!

Anyway, I love the photovu for the wall if you can spare the $999. It took a few headaches getting set up but since then it has run flawlessly for 7 months with live content from http://www.framechannel.com

[Lwk @ Jul 27th 2007 12:12PM]

We bought a few for gifts and preloaded them with either SD cards or CF cards. They all worked great but after 6 months of constant access we found that the SD Cards images started degrading (constant reading) and so far the CF cards were ok. Re-writing the images to the SD cards corrected the problem.

So for those who buy these for their parents as gifts, the type of card seems a point of failure.

[Mario @ Jul 27th 2007 12:55PM]

Bought one of the Pandigitals from BB&B for my dad for Father's Day. Scanned old pics, gave them the digital cleaning, cropped and scaled them down. No, the images aren't fantastic, but when talking to my dad about resolution his eyes glaze over and he starts looking around the room. The one I bought has 256 MB of storage, no WiFi. When you crop and scale the images you can get them down to the 200k size which will give you more than enough memory to never have to use the card slots.

For $80 with the ever present 20% off coupon it was a great gift, it sits on his office desk and is always on. Just had my first childand sent grandpa a zip file of pics with instructions on how to load them to his frame. He figured it out. It's not all that hard. If they can check email and manage their files at all, this is well within their range.

His wife wants one for their wedding photos. For something like that I told her to go get the Phillips in a larger size.

One issue, the model offered at BB&B is widescreen. Nice for videos (which it handles, but why?) but for photos 4:3 is still much nicer.

[pyxopotamus @ Jul 27th 2007 2:35PM]

What a gimmick. I don't understand why people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for something that's not even useful. The concept is interesting, but ultimately it's a picture frame. For $200 I'd plan on sitting there and staring at it for at least a few hours a day. How often do you actually look at the pictures you have set out anyway?

[Mario @ Jul 27th 2007 3:39PM]

Constantly? That's why I put them in the area immediately next to my monitor.

[pyxopotamus @ Jul 27th 2007 3:41PM]

I suppose that's useful if you happen to forget what your friends and family look like.

[t-bone @ Jul 27th 2007 6:35PM]

I got the Phillips one for my mom. I couldn't stand how terrible the others looked. 480x234 screens should be no more than 5 inches large. The Phillips claims more PPI than a standard monitor and it looks amazing. The best part: it has a battery so you can pass the frame around.

[Kathy Domurath @ Aug 28th 2007 10:10PM]

Received gift of digital photo frame....can't get it to recognize my stick. I have the small memory stick....SanDisc 2.0 GB. It is supposed to fit into the first slot I think but will not let me go on. I am techno challenged...am I missing something??? Directions do not include any troubleshooting. Thanks in advance. k