Now this is new in my country. Usually we'd have to print the picture we want and put it in a frame. And all of it will cost you around $10-$15 for the size of A4 paper. Say that you have 20 pictures, it will cost you more. But technology is here, and you can do what you usually can't with a digital photo frame.
There is a lot of brands that come up with this product, so I think I will review what I think is the best in its class: The Pandigital PAN7000DW 7".
Here's its specification:
- 7.0" viewable LCD display - holds up to 6400 images, 4:3 Aspect Ratio
- Stylish flat black frame to fit any decor
- 5 in 1 Card Reader - SD/MS/MS-PRO/MMC/XD, 2 Paper Mats - White / Charcoal
- Alarm, Clock, Calendar and Programmable ON/Off timer, Audio, Video, Bluetooth, Wireless
- 1GB Internal Memory
The PAN7000DW is reasonably priced (about $65 from Amazon as of 11/9/2009) as compared to the Sony models which are all much more expensive.
The PAN7000DW display is excellent -- showing 800x600 pictures crisply and vividly. The software is very good with a reasonable user interface and useful options. I like displaying my photos using their original dimensions (the optimized view attempts to maximize the amount of display used but will chop off edges to accomplish this) - you can pick the view mode you want.
The frame accurately shows the EXIF photo date/time if you want to display it. It will also optionally show the current time. It has a nice calendar w/ picture view as well as the normal full frame photo view. And it seems to show ALL your photos eventually (I had a strange problem with an Opteka frame not showing all the photos, only a subset). The remote is small and is held on the back of the frame by a magnet. The remote works well (some remotes I've used have buttons that are hard to press or control). The menu structure (frame software) is logical and well arranged. The clock functionality and auto turn on/off functionality is useful if you have power available to your frame at all times. However, I've hooked my frame up to a motion sensing power strip in my office and the time/date gets whacked when the sensor shuts off for the weekend (the time/date seem to survive for a few minutes or hours without power but not over a weekend). So if you use your frame with a motion sensing powerstrip, forget using the clock/calendar feature.
As I've discovered with many photo frames, if you want to display pictures in a particular order, they must exist in flash memory written down in that order - this is not a visible ordering - it does not depend on file name or file creation time. If you start with a totally empty flash card (or internal frame memory) then it will be the order in which the files are copied to the memory device. Macintosh and Windows file copy routines are the fastest way to copy files but the order in which copying takes place is not under your control if you move a large number of files all at the same time - the operating system parallelizes the copying for speed but this places the pictures in different physical memory order. It is too bad that most photo frames do not allow you to display in creation date order or EXIF date order or even file name order.
The best way to lay down the photos in sequence is to start with an empty flash device. Then copy the files either one by one by hand or using an automated method that copies files only one at a time. A cmd file on Windows that can do this is like:
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dir /b /od>c:\junk.txt
for /f "delims=*" %%i in (c:\junk.txt) do copy "%%i" f:\
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[...] (you need to change this script to fit your exact situation)
Alternatively you can use Photoshop Elements or some other photo management tool to export photos in sequence directly to a memory card or your picture frame.
Hopefully future photo frames will become a bit more intelligent and allow you to pick your display order.
Overall I've found the PAN7000DW to be a good value and to work as you would expect.
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