Axion AXN-9105M 10-Inch LCD Digital Multimedia Player
See it at Amazon.com for $108.00Average Customer Rating
(3.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
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(4 out of 5)Great product - as long as your expectations are appropriate
First of all, I have had this product for 3-4 weeks, and by and large I am rather satisfied with it. It is not perfect, but I have managed to get around its flaws, and have been reasonably happy with it, despite its limitations.
Picture quality - It is about what you would expect for a 640x480 LCD flourescent backlit display. If you are satisfied with the display that you get for those portable DVD players, with about a 9 inch diagonal, then you will be satisfied with this display. A previous reviewer stated that it made his 8 megapixel images look bad. Well, being that 640x480 is about 1/3 of a megapixel, I guess I would expect his disappointment. The aspect ratio is indeed wrong, but it is not unlike looking at a standard definition broadcast picture on an HDTV. Either you get black bars on either side of the picture if you want to look at the whole picture, or if you use the frame's zoom function, you get cropping of the top and bottom. Another reviewer stated the resolution was really 800x480, and I think he is right. I do not know this for sure.
Speed - The thing loads up pictures slowly with a slow memory card. It is faster with a faster memory card. I had 2 different 512MB memory cards, and it was a LOT faster with a more recently built memory card. I think its speed is acceptable with a fast mem card.
Options - Basic. I wish it had a clock and timer function to turn it on and off at specified times of the day. Cannot be battery operated.
Documentation - Stinks. It is written on a single side of a sheet of paper.
MP3 Function - I did not test this.
Remote Control - Functions well, but the sensor is in the wrong place. It is on the top of the frame behind the front Bezel. I got it to consistently work by firing it at the ceiling, and the IR would bounce off of the ceiling and hit the sensor. Your results may vary.
How to get it to show more than 650 pictures - I was able to get it to display about 2700 pictures on a single 512Mb CF card. (yes I said CF, read on.) First of all, the unit does not have a native CF slot. I had a few old CF memory cards I was not using, and I did not feel like buying another SD card. I also had an old USB CF Card reader, so I connected the card reader to the USB port, and then I inserted the CF card, and the frame read the CF card instantly. In order to get 2700 picture on it, I resized the JPG files to 640x480, so each one took up about 50-75 Kbytes. Additionally, I formatted the card to FAT32, since regualar FAT formatting would not accept all of these files. If I dumped all of these pictures directly on the card's root directory, the unit would only read the first 6-7 hundred pictures; it would not display all of them. Therefore, I created a few subdirectories, called "01", "02", "03" and so on. I placed 500 photoes in each of the subdirectories, and the unit picked up all 2700 of my photos, and now cycles through all of them.
(2 out of 5)Picture quality OK, small storage, nonstandard size
I've only had this a few days, so I can't comment on reliability. I'd probably return this if it wasn't so close to Christmas and didn't have time to get another gift.
Things I like:
- The picture quality is pretty good
- The screen is large
- You can put your camera's SD card in, and it finds subdirectories on the card and displays the picture (or at least it works that way with my Casio).
Things I don't like:
- The resolution is NOT 640x480 as described. It is 800x480. Wider than 640x480, but nonstandard. So if you upload a picture with standard 4:3 image ratio, there are dark gray (black but not true black) bars on the side. You really have to crop the pictures to have them look good.
- Only holds 20 pictures on internal memory (not dependent on size, it has a hard limit in the UI). Plan on buying an SD card.
- The directions are not very good.
- The UI is hard to work with, but eventually I got through it OK.
- The USB port is just to connect to a thumb drive or similar (not to your computer). This turns out to not be such a problem, because you're going to have to get an SD card anyway so the USB is not very useful.
Things I didn't try:
- Multimedia features
(4 out of 5)Overall great product for the money and excellent quallity.
At first I wasn't pleased with the screen, but then I remembered that most people won't be looking at it from 8 inches away.. and for the price, you'd be hard pressed to find better. The screen has a resolution of 480x234 and is very bright and fairly clear, but when resizing pictures to 480x234 it still won't take up the entire screen. TIP: I FOUND THAT TO GET OPTIMAL RESULTS RESIZE IMAGES TO ABOUT 480x260. Now I am much happier. The only thing this lacks is a broad amount of controls. Bought this as a gift for my mother for Christmas and already have tons of pics loaded on an SD card for her to display at Christmas dinner. Overall--I give it 4 stars. It would have gotten 5 from me if the screen had been a bit sharper and it came with a few more display options. It is also very stylish with its wood look and is very simple to operate.
(4 out of 5)Clarification
I do not own this device. I am not reviewing it so much as clarifying several reviews. A lot of the reviews are of the 9900 (9") model. The 9700 (7") model has a lower resolution (480x234 instead of 600x480). It also has no USB port. These comments are available in the discussion/comments sections after some reviews, but a lot of people have bought this frame without reading those sections and I thought it was worth stating. I am buying this as a gift. If I wanted to spend $100, I would buy the 9". Since I want to spend less, I will not buy this device because the 7" model is not good enough for a present.
(4 out of 5)Picture quality is excellent
Like other reviewers, there are things I'd like to see changed on this product. However, the bottom line is that once you start a slide show, it works very well and has an excellent picture. For the price, this is a great digital frame.
Most digital frames don't have internal memory so that is not an issue. SD cards are so cheap, who cares? Many digital frames don't accept a USB device so that is a real plus for this unit. While it is true that grandma may have a little trouble figuring this out, I didn't buy it for grandma and anyone from the digital age could get this up and running w/o ever looking at the instructions.
My only complaints are:
1 - The remote sensor is on the top behind the edge so remote functions must be done from above.
2 - I wish there were a few more choices for sideshow duration (I'd like to have a picture up for 5 or 10 minutes).
All in all, I highly recommend this unit.