Smartparts SP104MW 10.4'' LCD Digital Walnut Wood Picture Frame

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Smartparts SP104MW 10.4'' LCD Digital Walnut Wood Picture Frame

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Smartparts SP104MW 10.4'' LCD Digital Walnut Wood Picture Frame

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that I wanted at least a 10" frame and the Syncpix frames are only 8" or less. I looked at many frames from multiple manufacturers (Philips, Fidelity, etc.) and this seems to have the best price/peformance ratio.

I could probably write a book to document what is missing from the instructions, but I'll try to list the high points.

1. The frame is 640 by 480, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, or 1.33. Most consumer cameras shoot at this aspect ratio; higher quality cameras shoot at an aspect ratio of 1.5. The pictures I was trying to display had the 1.5 ratio, which will cause some cropping (you can't do a direct mapping). Even though Consumer Reports said that some frames come with a native 1.5 aspect ratio, I couldn't find any.

As it turns out, this frame works fine for 1.5 aspect ratio pictures. The pictures were automatically adjusted with only minimal bars at the top and the bottom (the adjustment technique is similar to the way letter boxing works on TVs, when movies are mapped to 4:3 standard TV screens). If you're a photo expert, you can use Photoshop or other software to adjust and crop the pictures yourself.

I was also concerned about what I considered to be low resolution - other frames have 800 by 600. However, this does not pose a problem - the pictures look excellent.

2. The frame supports many different types of memory cards (SD, CF, etc.), up to 2gb. It also comes with 128mb of internal memory. If you keep your pictures on a memory card, any time you turn the frame on, you will first see a menu screen where you can choose to view the pictures from either internal memory or the memory card. If you store the pictures in internal memory, you can set the frame up to show the pictures right away.

Most cameras use .jpg images. The native jpgs are typically saved at a high resolution, often requiring 1.5mb or more. However, with 640x480 resolution, you can save the .jpgs at a lower quality and not notice any difference. Download Optipix software from the manufacturer (google Smartparts optipix) - it "optimizes" your pictures to much smaller images (typically around 50 - 100K) and allows you to download the pictures to the frame. In this way you can store probably over 1000 pictures in the frame itself. After working with this for a while, I recommend this option.

3. The frame does not have native "step by step" mode. In photo mode, you are always showing the pictures in a slide show, either at slow, medium, or fast speed. If you want to spend time looking at a picture, you must push the play/pause button on the remote to pause the show, then push play to start again. You can view pictures a step at a time in Edit mode, but when you are in this mode there is an on-screen display menu that is always visible.

4. You can't do very much in edit mode. You can copy pictures to and from card storage and delete pictures. You cannot move pictures around - I found that you need to reload the pictures in the order you want to view them.

5. The frame does not have some of the features of the Syncpix. It doesn't have a motion detector, so it won't come on when someone walks by. The Syncpix also has much better editing capability.

So to summarize - these frames seem to be in the "early adopter" phase. If you can work with it for a while, it does what it promises. I give it 4 stars.