Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips 10.2-inch LCD Digital Photo Frame with 9.4-Inch Display (White)

I picked the Philips 9.4-Inch Digital Photo Frame (white) because it was the only medium/large frame with a 3:2 horizontal: vertical pixel ratio that I could find. I had scanned several hundred old Kodachrome slides and wanted a frame with the same ratio that they have - as well as many/most SLR cameras (point and shoot cameras more often match the aspect ration of computer monitors, which are wider). It has 720 x 480 pixels - not as many as can be found on other frames, but the photos still look excellent (although a little too dark). Curiously, it was sold as a 10.2" LCD with panel resolution of 800 x 720, although they state it has a viewing area of 720 x 480. I have no idea where those extra pixels are!! The frame can be positioned upright (widest dimension of the screen is up and down) or on its side - photos automatically adjust for portrait or landscape. Most of the time, the frame should be left in landscape orientation. The screen has a wide viewing angle when oriented this way, but in portrait orientation the viewing angle is much smaller. On the other hand, tall photos are clipped for viewing when the frame is oriented on its side (landscape). This isn't a problem most of the time, but a few of my photos showed people with no feet or cut-off heads. (if you rotate the frame 90 degrees, the image re-orients and shows everything). Perhaps this isn't a problem when showing collages, but I only show one photo at a time. The frame has a battery that allows a person to disconnect the frame from the wall outlet, sit in a chair, browse photos, etc. The product can accept all types of photo media and has some internal memory. Photos larger than 720 x 480 that are transferred from inserted cards are automatically reduced in size to match the LCD - handy for those of you who don't have software to reduce resolution. Unfortunately, all of the transferred files are renamed with numbers, which could make browsing for a single image among many a lot harder. I found it was far easier to connect the frame to my computer via the included USB cable and drag and drop photos, but I had already reduced the images to 720x480. No software is required, since Windows XP recognized the frame as if it was a hard drive. I purchased three frames from amazon.com for a little over $200 each - including one for my mother. The price is somewhat excessive, but the quality good and my mom loves it.

This is our first digital picture frame and we're happy with it. The images are somewhat washed out in bright light, but they have great clarity and look very good in neutral to darker environments. The organization of folders within the frame is a bit hard to get the hang of. The software that comes with the frame isn't fully Mac OS compatible, so that was a waste for us and I can't really say if it's good or not.

All-in-all, it's a good product with nice features and resolution. Would be nice to have it a bit brighter in sunlit room.

Operation and instruction guide too simplistic. In order to use the photo frame even after reading the instruction set up has to be done with trial and error.

Could be difficult for those who are not electronic literate.

Overall I was pleased with this product in quality of operation and screen resolution even though pricey.

I am also guessing that this type of product has not yet fully evolved in development so if you are not sure about buying one, wait for others to come on the market.

I have been fighting with this all morning trying to get rid of the default album and trying to add photos to a new album. While it's not difficult to add photos, I still can't figure out how to add a photo and have it automatically resize to fit the screen. According to the very poor instructions the frame will do this for you but it doesn't on some of my photos and you can't tell until you see the picture on the frame itself. By then it's too late and you end up deleting the picture from the frame. All in all the pictures that do work out are very nice on the frame but as far as getting them just the way you want it's almost impossible. If I could do it over again I would get something different.

This product comes with the poorest set of "instructions" I have seen in recent memory. The user interface of the PC software is completely non-intuitive. While I didn't lose photos as a previous reviewer claimed, they ended up being "hidden" where I didn't expect them. You can't use a PC keyboard to type an album name, you have to use their keyboard interface.

Battery life is also about 1 hour, after a full charge. I hope its defective, rather than the way it is supposed to work.