 "Works great, very clear pictures, nice remote" | 2008-04-06 |
| - Reviewed By tiaclare |
This photo frame gives you instant gratification even without a computer. Simply take the memory card out of your digital camera, stick it in one of the 4 slots:
Slot 1 - Secure Digital or MultiMedia Card
Slot 2 - Compact Flash
Slot 3 - Memory Stick
Slot 4 - xD Memory Card,
turn on the power switch and the slide show starts immediate.
There is a remote if you want to toggle between the memory cards, or bring up thumbnail mode to select a photo, choose transitions, select speed of slide show, etc. But I just use it in whatever mode it came with and it all works fine.
Connecting to the computer was not a problem for me. Perhaps it depends on the laptop and drivers. However for my Lenovo T61p, I simply connected the included USB cable, the frame was recognized by my computer, all the drives and the internal memory. Copying files over was as simple as dragging and dropping.
One note, because of the FAT file format, you cannot drag too many files into the root directory of any of the memory cards, or internal memory. Instead, I created subfolders numbered 00, 01, 02, 03, etc, and dragged a couple hundred files in each. The frame will randomly cycle photos from any and all subfolders.
The other thing I did was resize all of my jpegs to 800x600 so that I can get the most number of pictures into the internal memory. I used a freeware program called resizejpegs v1.00. It does a great job of allowing you to select a folder and resizes jpegs to the desired size. You can choose whether to overwrite the original file, or create a subfolder where all of the resized files go.
To me, the frame was very easy to use, and does not require a computer if all you want to do is preview photos from your memory cards. Resizing the jpegs is a good idea for snappy transitions between photos, although they claim to support pictures up to 12M pixels. |
| |
| "Very nice frame" | 2008-03-25 |
| - Reviewed By User: A17JHA3S1ANRUJ |
I bought this product about two weeks ago and as soon as it arrived, I plugged in my 2GB SD card with about 120 photos on it. The unit started right up with a slide show with random transition between each shot. The colors are bright, the picture is clear, and off axis viewing is ok for an LCD screen. The photos on the card are 2,048 x 1,536 in superfine (low-loss) .JPG format. On back of the frame are controls for accessing the menu system but I found those to be slow and un-intuitive. The remote was a lot more responsive and easier to use. The frame is also capable of playing music (MP3s) which I also tried out although the built-in speakers sound a bit tinny. Videos can also be played but I have yet to try that. I haven't read the manual because the menus seem intuitive and straight-forward - I went through all of them just to see what this thing could really do and there are many slideshow parameters that can be changed (e.g. transitions, random display, length, sound, etc.). Another neat feature is the calendar mode where the whole month is displayed and the photo slideshow is in reduced format to the right. This makes it nice for an office frame. The frame can even be programmed to turn off (and on) at certain times, for weekdays and weekends. The built-in battery enables the unit to remember your settings (and clock time).
Again, the 800x600 pixel display on the frame is crisp and bright and does an excellent job of showing higher resolution photos. I have it at home and we all find ourselves just staring at it many times a day. I also recommend shopping around for the best price as I found mine on EBay (still new in box) for a lot less. |
| |
| "Great digital frame for the money" | 2008-02-26 |
| - Reviewed By cottage_collage |
| I don't know why some of these reviews are not good - this was so easy to use - I put in music and pictures and it was ready for gift giving in no time at all. It took way longer to find pictures and scan them into my computer then to figure out this frame. I would buy another one for myself. |
| |
| "Anniversary Keeper In Spite of the News" | 2008-02-17 |
| - Reviewed By ugems |
My 39th Anniversary was today and I took what seemed to be a big risk. Yesterday there was big news about the mocmex trojan horse in some competing digital frames sold at mass marketers stores. I hade already purchased the Pandigital 8" Digital Photo Frame and had not given it to my wife yet, but she was talking about the news. Fortunately I had bought the class act in digital frames, a Pandigital. I had a few CF cards already loaded up with photos, and before she opened the gift asked her to have an open mind about her gift. She opened the gift, I plugged it in, inserted a card, and within a couple of seconds there was a brilliant beautiful slide show. Then we watched the photos of another card; I took a video using my camera of my Portuguese Water Dog Goji, inserted the SD card, and there was the video playing on this beautiful digital frame.
Later I checked the photo cards for new inserted files or viruses and there was nothing new on the cards. Five Stars. |
| |
 "If you love hours of frustration, this is the frame for you!!" | 2008-01-08 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2V274WRLK1YOL |
If you just want to keep the sample pictures that came with the internal memory, you will love this product. However, if you want to put your own pictures on the internal memory, you are then in for quite an adventure. After connecting the frame to my computer via the included USB cable, the Pandigital drive appears. But move fast because the drive will not stay there for long. After about 30 seconds it disappears. At which point the cable needs to be disconnected then reconnected again. This action results in the drive appearing for another 30 seconds. Although this is not always the case; in some instances the drive just completely locks up.
I have tried connecting the frame to different USB ports, rebooted the computer many times, tried another computer, but the result is quite consistent.
On my computer I have used various memory sticks and external hard drives via the USB ports without a problem. I do not know why Pandigital is unable to use this technology which is apparently perfected for other external memory products.
My advice would be to make another selection.
|
| |
 "Pandigital 8" - overall good value, but some reservations" | 2007-12-22 |
| - Reviewed By User: AM71WCUQGKMMN |
I purchased two Pandigital 8" digital frames (model PAN80-2) as gifts for family members recently, and in a nutshell I'd say I am fairly pleased with the product. Here are the pros and cons as I see them after setting up the two frames I bought.
Pros
------
a) Good picture quality, once you've tweaked the brightness, contrast, and color settings. Picture display is very sharp and clear. This is especially true if you resize your pictures to match the unit's native resolution of 800x600.
b) Menu is easy to use and navigate, in general. Make sure to read the user's guide, though - there are some menu choices that aren't immediately available from "slide show" mode.
c) Supports all major memory card formats as well as USB. The USB connection works well (at least, it has with my Dell desktop), making it easy to transfer pictures to the frame's 128 MB internal memory.
d) Plays MP3 music files (if any are present on the memory card or internal memory) while displaying pictures in slide show mode.
Cons
------
a) The 128 MB internal memory would not accept more than roughly 25 MB of files when I tried to copy them from my computer via the USB connection. This happened on both units I bought. The only solution was to reformat the device as a FAT32 drive, after which the full 128 MB became available. This could be a big problem for non-technical people who want to use the internal memory instead of an SD or CF memory card. The workaround, of course, it to use an external card and forget about the 128 MB internal memory.
b) The workmanship and finish of the frame is not great. It looks kind of "cheap" upon close inspection, and there is substantial variability in appearance between different units. For example, the white inset border around the LCD screen was 2 cm wide on one unit, but only 1.7 cm on the other, such that there was a visible black border around the LCD screen on one unit that was not present on the other. It may not sound like a big deal, but think it demonstrates a lack of quality control on the production line.
c) The choice of slideshow speeds is too limited. There is only "fast", "medium", and "slow", where slow means about 10 or 11 seconds per picture. I would have liked a few more choices, especially on the "slow" end (e.g. a 20 or 30 second setting). "Fast" is useless, in my opinion, at about 3 seconds per picture.
d) Video playback doesn't work well and is not integrated into the picture slideshow mode. I could not get certain AVI files to play at all, and even if I could, the lack of integration with slideshow mode would render this "feature" pretty useless, in my opinion.
e) "Shuffle" mode does not work properly. It seems to be more like a pseudo "random" play mode, where pictures can be repeated before others are even displayed one time. In addition, the "shuffle" playback order is always the same when you start the slide show. For example, it will always display pictures 1, 16, 5, 22, 34, etc. in that order, which is not a true shuffle at all. If you turn shuffle mode off, then pictures are displayed in the default order they are stored on the memory device -- but this is not necessarily alphabetical order! Bottom line, you can't really control the playback order of your pictures, which I find to be moderately annoying.
In summary, this frame is a decent value for the money (I paid just under $130), but there are some drawbacks and quirks you should keep in mind before purchasing. Once you get it setup and working, you'll probably be very pleased with its picture slide show and music playback abilities. I would look elsewhere if you are interested in video playback.
|
| |
 "Good Picture & Features" | 2007-12-22 |
| - Reviewed By User: A31UOM33XG69QL |
| Have purchased 3 of these units for family and friends. Difficult to transfer using something other than USB, must select 1 photo/vid at a time, etc. However, with USB things go very smooth and quick. Very much like the clock and slideshow feature, along with the auto-on/auto-off feature. Picture quality is excellent, no issues. Storage is good if you save the files at 800x600, not so great for videos (use the cards). |
| |
| "need to improve their quality control" | 2007-12-20 |
| - Reviewed By l_yifan |
| We bought three frames, so far only one is good, the other two are defective. My husband is trying to transfer our pictures to this frame, but failed many times. First we thought we were not knowing the procedure and didn't do it properly, but after two nights of work and reading manual again and again, we gave up and turned to the second one. This one is very easy to use and worked like a charm. Therefore we knew first one was defective. So we bought another one. Unfortunately, this one was like the first one, we could not transfer our pictures. Today I am going to buy the fourth one, if this one doesn't work, then we will return all four. Forget it, if 75% of products failed, what a product?!!! |
| |
 "Great Image Quality - Poor Quality Control" | 2007-12-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: ADHAEQBPBK7Y9 |
| I bought two of these frames from CSCO. I was very impressed by the image quality (after I tweaked it with the onscreen menus). But when I loaded on all the pictures, the shuffle feature wouldn't work. I found in another forum that someone else had the same problem. Their customer service dept said that the firmware was corrupt. Both my frames had the same problem. Probably cause they came off the same pallet. So if you take the gamble, check it out asap and be ready to send it back. |
| |
| "Easy to use, great display" | 2007-12-07 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1E62ZFYYFFVKS |
I found the documentation to be more than adequate. Setup was easy. Menus were intuitive. My computer recognized the picture folder without any problem, and the process of loading pictures directly from the computer via USB cable was easy.
Display is very bright. Colors are vivid. Resolution is good. For the price, you will not find better. I like the 4:3 aspect ratio, which is how printed photos appear. |
| |
Expedited Available
