I bought this frame it at Sears. No knock on Sears. I did have doubts about the Coby brand. I thought how hard can it be to make a digital picture frame. Apparently too hard for Coby. Mine was DOA when I opened the box. There is not much else to say.
Rating: 1 / 5

If you’re looking for an “el-cheapo” digital frame, you may have hit the jackpot with this one. Not only is it relatively low-priced, but it also comes with low quality picture reproduction, low quality sound, and badly thought out button placement.

To be fair, it takes flash drives and camera cards, and plays MP3s and videos and can do slideshows and tell you the time and date.

But…

The power cord makes the whole “hanging on the wall” thing a bit of a joke, the lack of internal memory is a pain I’d rather not have, and the music that comes out of the in-frame speakers certainly isn’t the food of love.

The USB cord mentioned in the booklet is not included, so if you don’t happen to have one handy you’ll have to use flash drives and camera cards for picture storage.

Talking about photographs, this frame will take your 3MB memories and make them look like 70KB internet snapshots, so this may not be a good gift for your favorite photo-take-outerer.

Navigation is tricky and could be a lot easier, and the buttons and doo-dads are awkward to negotiate, especially as the button color blends in with the back of the frame.

I guess you could give this to your dear old Gran, especially if she has failing eyesight and hearing, and you were able to visit her daily to set it up and change the pictures, but in this high-tech world, anyone else would expect much better picture and sound quality.

Economically priced, and not worth the price tag.

Amanda Richards, June 6, 2009

Rating: 2 / 5

I’ve been wanting to get a digital photo frame for my wife for some time. I balked at the prices for the larger ones and the brand name ones (you can get a solid LCD monitor that’s 2-5X the size for the same amount!). Then I found a Sunpak one for less than $50. It left a lot to be desired. It got the job done but the menu system was annoying, the frame itself wasn’t responsive and the picture quality was average.

This Coby frame is my second attempt. For the price point and comparing it to the Sunpak, it’s definitely a leg up. Here’s the break down:

Hardware/Design:

This frame sports a simulated dark brown wood grain with an inner plastic frame surrounding the LCD. It does work given the colors though I’d have preferred a black plastic inner frame to better accentuate the photos. It feels pretty solid and has (thank you!) an adjustable support so you can angle it or have it sitting straight up. The support itself seems a bit flimsy but as long as you’re not abusing it it should be fine.

OS/Menu:

After really hating the Sunpak’s menu system (it was slow and moving through the different options just seemed like more of a chore than it should’ve been), this is a breath of fresh air. It’s nothing fancy but you get access to all the options pretty quickly and it all makes sense. It’s also a lot more responsive (i.e. you click an option via the remote and it doesn’t take several seconds to see a response). It gets the job done.

Interfaces/Memory:

This frame sports a small amount of memory on board (enough to hold a handful of pictures). Nothing fancy…think of it as a customizable screen saver more than anything else. Basically, it’s the demo memory space where, if you have no memory cards connected, it will grab photos for a demo slide show while the frame is on. You can put 5-10 photos in there. The downside is you can’t just pick and choose images while the slide show is going or something like that for this demo memory. You’ve got to connect the frame to a computer via the USB interface. The bigger downside is that they don’t include the USB cable with the frame. If you’ve got other digital electronics that happen to have a USB cable (the one where one end has a small square plug and the other has the regular USB interface) you can PROBABLY use that. The manual says it just needs to be a “compatible USB cable” but never mentions if there are any specifics. Kind of silly if you ask me. Still, you can use all the standard memory cards out there (SD, MMC, MS, XD and CF) plus there’s a USB port you can plug a flash storage drive to. A lot of options.

Media:

The frame supports photos (GIF, JPEG, BMP up to 8000×8000 resolution), MP3s, and video (MPEG4, AVI). It will automatically play your MP3s in the background while a slide show runs. Standard in a way but it works pretty well. And, while I understand the reasoning, it’s sort of annoying that playback stops if you go to the menu for something (say you just want to adjust the brightness or something). Could’ve been a bit smarter. I did not try video for this review.

Image Quality/Display:

Now, the most important part…image quality and the display. Well, this isn’t a $200 frame, my friends, so it’s not going to be super crisp and crazy beautiful. Like the title of this review says, this gets the job done. Out of the box, I had to up the brightness and contrast a bit since darker images just seemed to bottom out. The frame supports 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios with an Auto mode so you don’t have to really worry about the size of your images. The problem was that the default setting was set to 4:3 (no, I didn’t accidentally hit a button, I’m positive). There’s a button on the frame and on the remote you can use to cycle through but Auto works good enough.

It has all the usual transitions you’d expect and will randomly display images if you choose but the randomization isn’t always so random. I like to organize my photos on the memory card in there in folders and it seems like the randomizer will bounce around within the same folder for a while before switching to a new one and bouncing around in there. I’m a programmer and I’ve taken statistics classes…I know this is “legallly” random but it seems a bit odd (it’s like having 100 random numbers and 6, 5, 7, and 8 get picked…it’s possible but it’s also unlikely). And, even though you specify a time interval between photos, I’ve watched and found the frame stuck on an image for upwards of 30 seconds or more (right now the one I’m watching is setting a record at 2 minutes).

Overall, I wanted to believe that this frame might have all the makings of a top notch inexpensive frame. While it gets a few things right, it also gets a few things wrong. It’s not a terrible frame (definitely better than the Sunpak) but I can’t give it high marks for flaws (getting stuck on a photo in random mode) and oversights (USB cable). If you’re in the market for a inexpensive frame, you should definitely consider this one, especially at a $30-35 price point.
Rating: 3 / 5