Customer Reviews:
  Great for snapshots June 24, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I wanted a small frame for my desk for snapshot photos. I got this one because it said it had a built in rechargeable battery. Unfortunately this was not true. I kept the frame however because I was able to find a place to plug it in.
Unlike the first reviewer, I had no trouble uploading photos directly from my computer to my USB flash drive and having them display with the frame. That may be because my computer is a PC, not a MAC.
For an inexpensive digital frame for displaying snapshots, this was a great deal. When I want to display my photographs as art work, I'll get a more expensive frame.
The only reason I subtracted one star from the rating is that it does not have the rechargeable battery as stated in the product description.
No Bells & Whistles so if you want really simple... June 10, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
this is the one for you. I wanted to get one for my husband for Father's Day that is small, took an sd memory card, had an internal battery so it didn't have to be plugged in and looked good. This one fit the bill. But remember you get what you pay for...this is definitely a $45 frame!
It's got a plastic frame with one cover that you can change out. Doesn't look too bad but nothing fancy. It takes several sizes of memory cards and took my 528 mb Kingston and 2 gb Kingstons with no problem. This is a very simple frame. Insert card, turn on, wait and the slide show begins. You can advance the photo, reverse the photo, rotate, adjust how the photo fills the frame (pan, auto, etc), pause the photo and turn it off.
My only complaint and the loss of a star is that the description does not say this is a from the camera to the frame only kind of deal. I thought if it took an SD card, I could take photos, color correct and adjust them as usual, save them back to the SD card (I'm a Graphic Designer with a Mac) in jpg format and we'd be good to go. Well, that's not the case. If I took an SD card straight from my camera and put it in the frame it worked beautifully, scrolling through the photos. If I took my photos onto my Mac, did anything at all to them and resaved them as a jpg to an SD card it would either show the photo and then an error message in the corner (which is very annoying) or not show the photo at all - just a black screen. I tried Photoshop CS2 and CS3 saved in different jpg formats - no luck. When I called their customer service, I got a nice but not helpful man who's only answer was "I'm not familiar with that program." Finally he did say that some people have complained about that before and the program must be saving some new information with the photo that the frame cannot read.
Needless to say, I was annoyed. I bought the frame so my husband could show off our sons at the office with new photos faster than I can get them printed. I wanted to be able to do my photoshop magic (crop, color correct, etc) gather specific photos and save them to an SD card and then he could just change out the card when we got enough new photos. I didnt' want to just load up photos straight from the camera. GRRRRR!
Well, I found a way around it if you have the same interest. I had bought the frame, didn't have time to return it and get a new one for Father's Day (no guarantee another frame would work better for the $$ I wanted to spend) and I was going to make it work. I found that if I download the photos from a website I load all my photos to for printing and sharing, the photo would be in that more original jpg format and would work in the frame. Now, I don't know if this will work with all photo storage sites. I use www.winkflash.com and HIGHLY recommend it!!! Awesome site, free storage of unlimited photos, super cheap prices for stuff (8 cents for 4x6 all the time), excellent quality printing on fuji paper with real photo chemical processing, super fast turn around, extremely helpful customer service. Can I just say that I LOVE them!!!
So, here's what I have to do. Gather all the photo files I want to put on the frame. Save them down to 72 dpi (doesn't affect the photo quality that is displayed) and load them to www.winkflash.com. Then go into slideshow mode and "download a high res" version of each photo back to my computer. Then I load those files to an SD card, plug them into the frame and it works like magic!
But remember, it still works like a $45 frame. I have noticed that if I load a large number of photos (like 80 of them) they have to be low res or it seems to overload the frame and it can't cycle through the photos. About 10 of them saved at 300 dpi on a 528 mb card worked fine and the slideshow ran smoothly. But when I loaded 80 to the card it wouldn't change photos or would randomly choose a photo and stay on it for minutes before changing. Low res images work well. Sometimes it gets stuck on one photo and you have to push the "next" button on top and it shows the photos pretty randomly but hey, it works!
So, this is a nice frame that works if you don't ask anything of it. The photos look nice for the price. Don't expect a sharp beautiful image. But the color was good, the image was smooth and for a simple, cheap frame I think it works just fine. Now I hope it will last. If not, I will not buy anothe Nextar. I'll try a different brand to see if the SD card works better.
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