I was a little bit nervous buying this photo frame, I'm not a fan of buying brands I'm not familiar with that I can't go and play with in the shops. However this frame was a very pleasant surprise.
I have 2 Sony 7" frames myself, but was buying this as a gift. Resolution is most important to me and I like the ability to play music and video but that is secondary to me. I like the 7" frames, they are a great size for sitting on your desk at work, or anywhere you will be close to it. However I think they are too small for good display in say the living room or places you are moving around so I wanted to get something larger.
The good points:
- it's a large picture with good resolution, the detail looks great. (It's not HD, but it doesn't claim to be)
- simple to use, just stick a memory card in and your away (or load them onto the frames memory), if you're have trouble, the Nix website is rather helpful.
- you can split the screen to do different things, you can set particular music to groups of photos.
- very good viewing angle from left to right (not so great from below)
The not so good points:
- the resolution is good, but the colour is not the best, maybe I've been spoiled because I'm used to watching Bluray on my HD TV these days and I have an LED computer monitor but the picture frame is a little washed out. Still good, just not great - very good in comparison to some other frames I've played with.
- Video playback can be a bit tricky. Again there is a converter program and tips on the Nix website, also can be an issue if you've been filming in HD resolution without thinking about it and then expect them to play back. It's a good function to have but you need to think about the video format and resolution.
- Language choices are very limited, there's only the basic choices, English, French, Greek and a few others. Was a bit dissapointed with this as it's a gift for some Slovakians - Czech, Russian or Hungarian would have been OK too but no such luck. Still not to much of an issue as there really isn't much to read so I have taken some photos of the various screens and had them translated - although the icons are pretty obvious so you can get away without language but you wouldn't get the full use from the frame.
- the box had obviously been opened previously, there were finger prints on the frame and wipe marks on the screen. Don't know if this was a returned item or someone had just opened it to inspect it. Would have complained but the frame works fine so not to big an issue but a bit dissapointing.
My verdict, I got this frame on sale for £140, just missed out on the sale for £109. Next time it's on sale for £109 I'll be buying myself one for the living room to replace my 7" one. It's worth £140 but I don't have that kind of money to just go and spend when I've already got 1 good frame. Is it worth more? I'd certainly be looking harder at other products first but it is a good frame none the less.