Coby DP702 7-Inch Widescreen Digital Photo Frame (Woodgrain)
by Coby
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List Price: Our Price: $39.95 You Save: $60.04 (60%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $32.87 (click here) Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Coby DP702 7-Inch Widescreen Digital Photo Frame (Woodgrain)
Customer Review: Good as long as I remember how it works...
Summary: 3 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I find this to be a decent picture frame. Recognized my Sony USB flash drive and went into slideshow mode a few seconds after plugging it into the frame with no problem. Initially, I thought the picture quality was horrible, but upon further investigation, found the default settings for sharpness and saturation were at 0% - once I went into settings and increased them, the picture quality improved to a point that I am content with the quality. No, it's not the best resolution, but good enough to enjoy the memories and not be obsessed with pixelation. Pictures not the standard size have a tendency to get cropped. The smaller images have all gotten centered. You can adjust the length of time pictures stays on screen during slideshow. You can also listen to music at the same time you view the slideshow (if you have audio files loaded onto the same drive as the pictures, the music will start playing automatically). This is where the frame starts having trouble - it seems it's having a hard time processing all the activity at once. When I viewed slideshow with music together, often the audio track would skip or sound staticky and/or the frame would black out for a couple of seconds. There is a way to turn music off/pause while viewing slideshows, so you don't have to listen to it all day since the playlist repeats. There is glare to the screen depending on from which angle you view the frame. The best angle to view it from is either directly in front or slightly above the frame. You can use the frame as a music player, or a wall clock with calendar while not viewing pictures. The volume can be adjusted to a comfortable level. The frame also has an alarm feature - which automatically uses the highest volume setting regardless of where you have the volume set for music, so watch out! The alarm sound, in case you're interested, is a deep bell tone, followed by "cuckoo" (repeat). One thing I wish the frame had was a way to control which folders on your flash/memory drive the frame will go into to pull pictures from. As it is, it'll pull from every folder there is, so if you have a folder with pictures for an office document along with the family pictures, you have just a good a chance at watching charts and graphs go by as your family members. This means, your card you use for this frame has to be solely dedicated to pictures you want on the frame unless you don't mind the other stuff popping up.
The most difficult part is remembering which buttons to press to get to the right menu screens you need to change settings! You'll probably need to do some digging around in the manual to understand how to do everything you want. Once you get everything set and forget about it for a couple months, you'll come back to the frame and realize you need to learn how to work it all over again, so keep your manual handy. This frame might drive the nitpickers crazy, but I just let it go in the background and forget about the little blips for the most part while I'm doing other tasks. If you can do the same, it's not a bad frame.
Customer Review: Don't go below 800 X 480...
Summary: 2 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
One of Coby's other frames would be better.... this one does not get the job done on picture quality. Although, it IS easy to use and set up.
Product listing needs to tell you about the low res 480x234 up front, no way to know that looking at the product offering here.
Don't go lower than 800 x 480 when buying a digital frame.
Coby does sell the 800 x 480 and UP in 7" sizes;
DP 710
DP 712
DP 714
Pulled a memory card with photos from another 7" digital frame I have here (800x480) in the same MSRP price range and plugged it right into this Coby DP702, results are not good and degrade the look of the photos too much for my tastes.
I do not see any reason in this day and age to offer anything this low in resolution, most everyone is used to, and expects better.
Sound isn't so good for music with built in speakers so might be good if used for a child saying something to go with a photo but not really for listening to music. It does have a place to plug in head set which would improve sound I'm sure.
Remote control unit does have many buttons to adjust settings and works well, but a couple of problems ...for example, you can't seem to adjust a photo with it showing on the screen at the same time as the settings menu.
I'll sure come back and say so if I find out how to do it, but do not see a way after reading the manual and playing with all the settings and adjustments. You have to make changes and then load a photo to see how you've done... not the way to do it.
Just to note, "getting started" section of the manual (page 16)tells you about the "supplied" USB cord to hook to your PC for adding photos to your memory card while it's in the frame, but there isn't one in the box or in the parts list on the box. Perhaps there's one with another Coby model.
I really want to say "okay for this low price" but can't... others at this price are fine, this one falls short.
Coby may very well be as good as other makes, but get another Coby model for better results.
This DOES have a clock (analog clock face) with alarm and calendar feature beside it, so that may have some use without using it to display photos or listen to music.
I AM going to try using it to display digital "paintings" I've done, perhaps they will look better than photos with details.
Customer Review: Not impressed - definitely entry level
Summary: 3 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
First, if you have a Mac - make sure you have a card reader that can actually read the high capacity SD card you bought to use this with (duh!), because the pass through option (hooking the reader with card in it) is unreliable with a Mac (works less than 10% of the time and is SUPER slow). So, #1 - edit the card outside of the frame. End rant.
~Pros~
1)I like the woodgrain
2) it accepts lots of cards and immediately plays them
3) the hardware (stand and holes for hanging) are nice and don't look flimsy
4) It plays music behind the photo slideshow (if loaded obviously) without any extra configuration (now, in my experience, this gets old fast - really fast)
5) Set-up was easy enough once I figured out the controls
6) It can act like a digital calendar (and alarm) when you are not watching your photos
~Cons~
1) On the front of mine (on the white portion) there is a funny tiny little tab - it's detracting
2) The quality is so 2000, seriously pixelated. Granted, price is cheap, but lower your expectations - I have both Philips 8.5-Inch Digital Picture Frame (Clear) w/3 Additional Colored Frames and Pandigital 7.0-Inch LCD Digital Photo Frame. Whereas the Philips is BEAUTIFUL, this is way more analogous to the Pandigital (which is to say, might as well paste my ipod to the wall).
3) No matter how I configured video clips, I have yet to get one to play on this. I hate having to convert video - if it's good enough for YouTube or Ammie video reviews, it should be good enough for this - but it's not. - so I cannot review that feature
4) Not all my jpeg files were viewable - I do not know why, and I don't want to bother with converting or troubleshooting, because it's got to be easy or it's not worth it. For clarity sake, I have an album in iPhoto that I have for my frames, so what I am saying is that a few photos the played in the older frames will not play in this frame - and I don't have a clue why other than they were all Photoshop jpeg saved.
Bottom line: I'll pass, because a better one can be had for only slightly more. The added features don't add too much if the pictures aren't worth viewing.
Customer Review: Nice Digital Photo Frame for the price...
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This is a nice little digital media frame for the price. The resolution reflects the affordability of it, so it is in no way "cheap". The wood frame is a nice touch. It shouldn't be called a Photo Frame, since it actually does more. It plays audio as well as video. It may take some fiddling with whatever software you use to convert audio and video, but once you figure out what's what, it really is nice for the price.
The included remote is very basic and not as intuitive as I'd like so you won't get any type of DVD style interation from the video you may end up viewing on the Coby DP702. I believe the aspect ratio is locked for video as well. It will be a good thing if you can manage to match the DP702's aspect ratio. You may not need to match the resolution because I think it uses it's scaler (assuming it has one). Video may get stretched or squashed depending.
For photos, just try and crop and match if you can. Although you don't really need to, it's just advice for those who don't like any black bars. This is one caveat of the widescreen frames. I don't think any Photo Frame needs to be widescreen, they need to just match a standard 4x6. For display of photos, you may want to just compress whatever you have for mediocre visual display. The frame interpolates down, or downscales photos. So your hi-res images you may feel too lazy to resample to match will just look like overly compressed jpgs anyways. Better to resize, resample, and compress to get more photos onto your memory card of choice.
As for music, easy and simple enough. For people who like to make digital copies of their discs (yes I buy discs). You may want to make sure your libraries are purged of the album art. Or just purged of the ones you won't need. The DP702 will display the little icon versions of the larger images...anything it finds. If anything, I wished it had some type of built in visualiser like when I use Windows Media Player for music.
All in all, a nice product for a good price. Don't go being a "cheap" person and demanding the best visuals from one of the most affordable Digital Frames on the market. Now to test it's longevity.
Customer Review: Decent *media* frame for Windows users
Summary: 3 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
First up, I object to Coby calling this gadget a "Digital Photo Frame." To be perfectly honest, from what I've seen, its photo display is one of its worst qualities.
But, hands down, the worst quality: no built in memory. You have to use a USB memory stick or a flash card. HAVE TO.
Other bad qualities include:
- Clunky and overly difficult user interface
- Huge ferrite magnet on the power cord makes hanging this on a wall look shoddy
- Low and odd resolution (standard photos need to be zoomed and scaled to fit the display)
- Poorly located controls on the frame
- Zero bass reproduction when listening to music or watching videos
- Inconsistent video file recognition
- Ghost files show up (Mac users know what I'm talking about)
Now, the manual says that the frame will play MPEG-1, MPEG-4, AVI, and DIVX video files. Loading all of these formats from my new Apple Macbook, only DIVX videos actually played. Everything else displayed an error. All that said, the DIVX videos that it did play looked pretty good. I am impressed.
The tiny little built-in speaker won't play any bass (no real surprise there) but as a music player, the frame works well. So, if you have this on your desk but forgot your MP3 player, you're not bad off. But again, if you loaded up a USB stick from your Mac, the ghost files show up in your playlist. Windows users won't have this worry.
While the calendar, clock, and alarm clock work well, setting them is a pain thanks to the clunky interface.
With all these negatives, you'd think I'd have rated it lower... but here are the positives:
- Impressive DIVX video playback
- Serviceable MP3 player
- Attractive finish
- Nice extra features (clock, calendar, alarm clock, music & video playback, headphone jack, wireless remote)
Personally, I've loaded up a USB stick with some music videos, set the frame on my desk, and let it run endlessly. A task that the Coby DP702 seems quite capable of.