A few moths ago I was in the market for a new digital frame. I didn't just want any old digital frame. I already had one of those. I'm the type of person that likes keeping up with new technology. Hell, if possible I like being one of the first to try new things before everyone else.
When the ImpactV began hitting blog buzz, I noticed a sad trend. Everyone was buzzing about how gnarly this frame was, but at the same time no one offered a hands on review.
I was hoping to at least find ONE review on the ImpactV before buying it, but all I found were pre-reviews by non-users.
I went ahead and bought the frame hoping that it was as cool as the buzz sounded. Unfortunately for me it was more of a nightmare.
The frame itself though, it's still pretty cool, but it has a heck of a lot more cons than it does pros.
I picked up the frame off of Amazon for $180, and figured if I hated it, I'd just ship it back to them.
The frame right of the bat gave me issues. Setting it up was simple though. I simply powered it on, and the frames on screen menus helped hook it up to my wireless network.
After hooking it up to the network, the frame then asked me to assign an email to the frame. Yep! The frame has its own email address so you can give i out to friends who can then email the frame their photos. I know it doesn't sound all that cool, but the added feature was pretty swift compared to standard digital frames.
Anyhow, after assigning my frame an email address, the frame then displayed a website where was to sign up for my own free account.
This account can be linked to many social sites for easier sharing of photos. For instance, I had over 1200 photos on photobucket. On the estarling site I simply linked my photobucket site up to the seeframe site. From there the frame would supposedly begin displaying my photobucket photos.
Besides photobucket I could also upload pics directly from the PC in the old fashioned upload method.
I used both seeing that I tend to scatter my photos from one site to another.
Unfortunately for me, I could not direct the frame to display both methods at the same time. EX. If you set the frame to play photobucket photos, do not set it to also display photos from the PC. It won't work and you end up with nothing coming through.
The frame allows for play lists though which pretty much fixes the issue above.
When photos are uploaded you can give them tags. For instance; say you have 100 photos from a birthday party. You can schedule those 100 select photos to play whenever you want.
If you have 400 Christmas pictures and you want them to only show on the frame during the Christmas holiday you can create a play list by tagging each photo with the word Christmas. Next go into the seeframe live site, create a play list using the Christmas tag. Only those photos will show, for as long as you want.
I especially like this feature because I can change up my photos as often as I want. As of now I have all of my photos tagged with the tag ALL. When creating a play list I chose the tag ALL, and all of my photos play.
It can be a bit confusing at first, but once you get the hang of the play list, likely you will use this feature and this feature alone.
Even though I found the frame to be quite cool thanks to the play list aspect, there was one huge, huge, major issue that totally pissed me off.
I bought the frame because it is the first ever frame to allow video to play. I mean how cool is that!?! I have so many video clips and old home movies that I was so excited to use with this frame.
The frame however only holds video footage for 4 minutes. I find this to be a decent amount of time for clips though. It is after all a clip frame.
What they don't tell us though is that in order to actually view these clips you have to manually command the frame to do so, either by using the touchscreen side panel, or by hitting the enter button on the included remote! Not for nothing, this was the deal killer because I wanted friends and family to enjoy my photos and clips without having to touch the frame, or the remote. Besides who is going to go up and know what to do anyway, unless you tell them.
This was very dissapointing!!! I was hoping they'd play automatically, but nope. This sucker requires user intervention which just sucks. So close, but so far...sigh.
As far as the frame goes though, the screen is crisp, clear, and plays like a high quality mini HDTV. I absoutley love the clarity.
Although I have managed to tolerate the frame, it has other issues I feel I need to discuss.
The timer!
The timer on the eStarling was one of the coolest features about the frame. I could go online to the seeframe site and set up the frame to power on and power off at times I chose.
Unfortunatley it only works when it feels like working. About 80% of the time it will power on and power off as I scheduled it to, but 20% of the time it won't turn on at all, or turn off unless I force it to.
There are also issues with freezing. If the frame freezes you have to unplug the frame completley and wait for it to reset itself in order to begin to work properly.
I can't even count how many times Ive had to reset the frame. Let's just say, it is a LOT.
Another major issue with the frame is that it comes packed wih absolutley no user manual. It is seriously all gesswork, and it provides a ton of headaches for newbie users.
Not only that the actual seeframe site contains absolutly no helpful information for troubleshooting on the site!
But worst of all is the lack of customer service. I emailed them wit issues, and it has been months and still I have not heard from them. I actually had to solve the issue myself, as customer service seemed to be non-existant.
Overall:
EStarling ImpactV is so close to being a winner, but the frame clearly has far too many issues to be worth the price it goes for.
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