Philips 7-Inch LCD Digital Photo Frame (Black)
by Philips Consumer Electronics
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List Price: Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Philips 7-Inch LCD Digital Photo Frame (Black)
Customer Review: Terrible tech support from Philips
Summary: 2 Stars
The pictures on this product can be displayed from a number of sources including USB, two card readers and internal memory. When I first took this product out of the box I attempted to delete all the pictures in internal memory. However, there was one default picture which I could not delete. I called Philips tech support to ask if this was normal behavior.
I explained very clearly that I was attempting to delete the default pictures from internal memory. I was then instructed to go to my computer and asked which drives were displayed in my computer. I explained there were two drives (which I knew to be the card readers) and was then instructed to click on these drives. I told the Philips rep that the result of this action was for windows to state that there was no disk inserted into the drives (obviously since I had no cards in the card readers. I was then told by the Philips rep to format the drives (I was never asked if I had anything of value on these drives).The rep seemed baffled that I was unable to interact with the drives. I then reiterated to the Philips rep that I did not have any cards inserted in the readers and asked if the he was sure that the internal memory would show as a drive on my computer. The Philips rep was certain that it the internal memory should show as a drive on the computer and then proceeded to give me an RMA number to return the product.
When I inquired, I was told that the cost of the return shipping would be my responsibility. When I said that this did not make sense the rep was apologetic, but told me that he could not change that policy. I then went on to Amazon and was able to return the product at cost to Amazon. When the replacement arrived it exhibited the same behavior. I then determined that this was by design and simply added a CF card to display the pictures.
You can engineer a great product, but that product will only really be as good as the support. Philips has definitely failed here as they cannot even diagnose the designed behavior of their own product. This all would have been easier if Philips had bothered to give the tech support rep even an hour of training on the product line.
Bottom line is that Philips was unable to provide even basic support for their product and then expected me to return a perfectly good product at my cost. I would seriously consider not buying another product from Philips because of this and my rating of this product is greatly depreciated as a result.
Customer Review: Really, really bad
Summary: 1 Stars
Phillips had really good photo frames before with high resolution screens. I bought this one because I presumed it would be the same, high quality. Totally wrong.
The resolution is so low that most of the images look pixelated and unbearable to look at.
As others have said, the "Baby" on the internal memory cannot be deleted and so makes the internal memory useless (unless you want to constantly see the Philips ad and a baby .......).
The "USB" connectivity only works with memory cards.. not the internal memory, so to use this (with the baby of course) you have to copy each and every picture one by one from the memory card.... Waste of time!
Setting the "dim" timer needs a lot of patience to set up as "dim-start" means the opposite of what you would think (ie it actually switched on the display rather than starting the dimming process....
Last but not least, the screen is not positioned properly leaving a gap of about 3 pixels at the Top/Left hand side (depending on if you have it vertical or horizontally placed) between the screen and the frame.
Summary: avoid this frame unless you want sore eyes and questions from friends about a baby that's not yours.......
Update - I really did want to view my digital pics and so took the plunge to get the "upmarket" version of this unit - the 8" one (8FF3FP) with 800 x 600 pixels. In this world you get what you pay for.... well so I thought. And paying twice the price should get twice the quality, right?
This new unit worked great ... for a few hours after which the "auto-fit" function stopped working and it put nasty rainbow coloured borders around the pictures instead of fitting pictures to suit the position of the frame (landscape/portrait). Even worse, ALL the portrait orientation pictures were distorted and looked extremely pixelated.
What a waste of my weekend.... It always seems the same these days. When a new technical thing comes out there are always bugs... then down the road they fix them with a "firmware upgrade".
So again - my advice is to totally avoid this range of photo frames!
Customer Review: Good value for the money
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall this is one of the best values out there. Here's what I liked about it:
- Looks elegant and the frame is not too wide like some other products.
- One of the lowest cost brand name photo frames
- Good variety of transitions (or use none if you want)
- Good variety of time choices to display photos (I prefer one minute)
- Several types of memory accepted
- Has built in auto on/off time, optionally works as an alarm clock, and if desired you can display the time with your photos.
- Uses very little power
What I didn't like:
- The picture looked about as good as any other brand but the quality doesn't compare to prints in frames in terms of color or sharpness. I think over time these digital photo frames will improve.
- The image is too cool and too high in contrast for my liking. I lowered the brightness of the frame in the setup menu. I also made a copy of my images in the computer, and added magenta and red and lowered the contrast and resized them down to 234 pixels high using a photo editing program. That really improved the look and lets me put thousands of photos on one memory card.
- My digital cameras don't shoot 16x9 format so the image doesn't fill the frame unless you set the option to fill the frame (stretch). I prefer images that are not stretched. It's better to make a 16x9 crop using a photo editing program or just be content that the image may not fill the full width of the picture frame. You have the option to display various colors (including black) to take up the unused space in the frame
- It's awkward to have the control buttons on the back but since I don't plan to mess with it that often it looks better than to have them on the front.
- I wish it displayed the date using various date options instead of just the Asian standard (day-month-year using only numbers)
Overall I'd recommend this item and think it is a good value. If you want to actively show slideshows to people and want to go through various folders of pictures etc. then you might look at the frames that have remote control instead.
Customer Review: Nice
Summary: 5 Stars
I am very pleased with this digital frame. I think that Philips made it very easy to navigate with the different menus and settings. I did get stuck a couple of times. However, once I looked-up my little "snags" in the manual (from the enclosed CD) I was able to remedy my problems. For example I couldn't figure out how to set-up the automatic timer. After looking it up, I learned that instead of saying "turn on/off" it said "start/end dim." I think it's a strange way to phrase the feature but non-the-less it did the job.
I was frustrated when I tried to download pictures from my computer to the frame's internal memory. After fiddling around for a bit, I discovered that you can't download pictures from the computer directly to the frame. Instead, the frame acts more like a memory card reader and the pictures from the computer will be downloaded to the memory card inserted in the frame. After I put the pictures onto my memory card, I was able to go in and transfer the photos from my memory card to the internal memory. I would have liked to be able to download directly without the memory card but the extra step doesn't take that much extra time. Though I rarely use the internal memory. I'd rather display pictures from my memory cards and thumb drive because they store more pictures and usually those pictures are more recent than the pictures on the internal memory. And that way I don't have to display the lame baby picture (the one everyone else has mentioned).
Overall, I give the frame an A. I like the feature (I think it's called radiant color) that bleeds the colors of a picture to the edge of the frame on pictures that don't fit the wide screen size. Most frames have black bars on the edges for pictures that are too small. I am also very pleased with the color and quality of the pictures when they are being displayed. And I love the piano black polished finish - I think it is very sleek and classy.
Customer Review: Awful
Summary: 1 Stars
I've bought digital photo frames before - even ones from Philips. I got this one for my mom for Mother's Day, and it is a huge disappointment.
Here's why:
1. The screen is 16:9. It doesn't automatically "letterbox" 4:3 pictures though - instead, most of them come out looking skewed. You have to do a lot of manipulation of the pictures to make sure they "work" before you can load them to the frame.
2. You can't access the frame's internal memory through USB (at least not on Win XP). It doesn't show up. See, the frame acts as a reader for the two memory card slots. They show up, but the frame's internal memory doesn't. This means in order to load pictures, you have to copy them to a card, stick the card in, and then either leave the card in or use the menus to copy the pictures into the frame, which brings me to...
3. The menus don't have "bulk" options. You can't say "copy all of the pictures from the card to the internal memory" - it simply isn't an option. You also can't delete all pictures in one shot. Basically you can't do anything in one shot.
4. If that wasn't enough to make the internal memory completely useless, this settles it: There's a Philips ad with a baby's face in the internal memory that you simply cannot delete. When you try, it says "Operation fail!![sic]". I called their support line, and the person, while nice, was utterly unable to help me delete the picture. So, unless you like long tedious times copying pictures and an occasional Philips ad in your slideshow, you can't use the internal memory at all.
5. The display looks pixelated in a lot of pictures. Much moreso than other frames I've used.
If this hadn't been for Mother's Day and Mother's Day wasn't so close, I would be returning this immediately and getting something else. As is, I'll see how mom feels about it. It's definitely the last Philips frame I'll buy.