Buying a Digital Photo Frame

[Steve R.]

For Mother's Day my wife dropped the hint that she would like a digital photo frame. Time to find one and order it was short. I knew nothing about them. As an offhand start, I had three criteria in mind for the minimum requirements.

• WiFi Access
• Internal Memory
• Motion Detector

I started the internet search with the usual "What are the best digital photo frames for 2023?" The results proved to be less than satisfactory. The results focused on digital frames without internal memory and depended on storing the pictures in the "cloud". I modified to search to favor those that had an internal memory, but the plethora of results proved to be numbing. At this point, I discussed the problem with one of my daughters. She located one that met the criteria except for the motion detector, so that fell by the wayside. It arrived with plenty of time to have it set-up for Mother's Day.

The learning experience from this episode is the purchaser is under-informed by the seller as to what he/she would getting. You really don't find out the little details till you experiment with the device.

The product reviews, while discussing the hardware, didn't discuss the smartphone app that you would need to send pictures to the digital picture frame (device). In discussing what to look for, my daughter hypothesized that you would want an app that many people and many devices use. Not an app limited to a specific device. Now that the pressure of Mothers Day is over, I backtracked on that concept and found many digital photo frames with both WiFi and Internal memory. Some may even have motion detectors too. The conclusion, don't start out with a generic search as I dd. Instead, find a smartphone app that you find to be of good quality, then proceed to find all devices compatible with that device.

Surprisingly, it seemed that all the photo frames I was finding carried a manufacturing date 2019. The one I bought also uses Android 6.0. A quick speculation, I was looking for a "cheap" unit. Newer units with more bells and whistles would be expected to more expensive. Nevertheless, I'm surprised that there do not seem to be more "cheap" units with a later manufacturing date. But then my searching was not in-depth due to limited time.

Many units also offered ports for flash drives and SD cards. But the units are unclear as to how that extra memory can be used. For the unit I bought, the manual implies that the SD card cannot directly show pictures stored on it. However, the unit's settings screen seems to have an option allowing the pictures stored in an SD card can be displayed. I have not yet experimented with using an SD card.

An "open" secret, all the digital photo frames seem require an external power from a charging device, They won't work off a USB power supply, unfortunate.

 

[Isaac]

For Mother's Day my wife dropped the hint that she would like a digital photo frame. Time to find one and order it was short. I knew nothing about them. As an offhand start, I had three criteria in mind for the minimum requirements.

• WiFi Access
• Internal Memory
• Motion Detector

I started the internet search with the usual "What are the best digital photo frames for 2023?" The results proved to be less than satisfactory. The results focused on digital frames without internal memory and depended on storing the pictures in the "cloud". I modified to search to favor those that had an internal memory, but the plethora of results proved to be numbing. At this point, I discussed the problem with one of my daughters. She located one that met the criteria except for the motion detector, so that fell by the wayside. It arrived with plenty of time to have it set-up for Mother's Day.

The learning experience from this episode is the purchaser is under-informed by the seller as to what he/she would getting. You really don't find out the little details till you experiment with the device.

The product reviews, while discussing the hardware, didn't discuss the smartphone app that you would need to send pictures to the digital picture frame (device). In discussing what to look for, my daughter hypothesized that you would want an app that many people and many devices use. Not an app limited to a specific device. Now that the pressure of Mothers Day is over, I backtracked on that concept and found many digital photo frames with both WiFi and Internal memory. Some may even have motion detectors too. The conclusion, don't start out with a generic search as I dd. Instead, find a smartphone app that you find to be of good quality, then proceed to find all devices compatible with that device.

Surprisingly, it seemed that all the photo frames I was finding carried a manufacturing date 2019. The one I bought also uses Android 6.0. A quick speculation, I was looking for a "cheap" unit. Newer units with more bells and whistles would be expected to more expensive. Nevertheless, I'm surprised that there do not seem to be more "cheap" units with a later manufacturing date. But then my searching was not in-depth due to limited time.

Many units also offered ports for flash drives and SD cards. But the units are unclear as to how that extra memory can be used. For the unit I bought, the manual implies that the SD card cannot directly show pictures stored on it. However, the unit's settings screen seems to have an option allowing the pictures stored in an SD card can be displayed. I have not yet experimented with using an SD card.

An "open" secret, all the digital photo frames seem require an external power from a charging device, They won't work off a USB power supply, unfortunate.

Interesting.
good post.
I bought one of those years ago. All it needed was a wall outlet to plug in to and a USB cord, but you have thought of some better and niftier aspects I wouldn't have even thought of like motion detector.

Since then I just use photo streams on Roku, the photos play in the living room the only place we have a television

 

[Galaxiom]

My wife is waiting for delivery of one our kids ordered that has an email address the family can send photos to.

 

[Isaac]

My wife is waiting for delivery of one our kids ordered that has an email address the family can send photos to.

I can see the temptation to play some pranks with that capability, unless they are checked out first

 

[pbaldy]

I have one where people can email it pictures, and if memory serves I have to approve them before they appear.