Review: ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8"

I've been wanting a digital photo frame for quite a few months now, however every time I went looking for one I'd come across these large, clunky, and poorly constructed looking frames. I wanted something that resembled a real frame, had a decent screen size, and was slim enough to sit on the living room end table without looking like a giant futuristic robot space taker. While browsing in Sam's Club I came across a beautiful digital photo frame by ADS. However I didn't dig the wide screen look, and I wanted something a little bigger than the 7" model they had on display. I went searching in their electronics section and came across the ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8".
 
Appearance:
 
The ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8" comes with a plastic frame around the screen, however it is designed to look like real wood. It's rustic looking, pretty, and has a beautiful square 8 inch high resolution screen to display photos.

Features:
 
According to the box, and the display case, the ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8" supports CF type (I & II), SD, XD, MS, MMC. The frame also allows you to store music files, and video files. I loved the fact that music could be played in the background while your photo slide show ran. You also have the option to choose different songs to play with different photos.

So say you have 20 wedding photos, and want to add a clip of your wedding song to play while the pictures roll through on the screen. Then your next 20 photos are of your children's birthday party... you can add happy birthday music to play in the background.

The frame will also show movie clips that you have loaded from your digital camera, or digital movie camera.

The frame features 128mb of built in memory. Basically you can save your favorite photo files into the frames memory, and you may also use the SD slot to place in your cameras card to display those photos as well, without having to save them into memory.

My Use:
 
I imaged transferring photos from my PC to the ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8" would be difficult, hair ripping headache filled, and straight up time consuming.

I first turned on my PC, picked the photo files I wanted transferred into the frame, and then hooked the frame up to the PC using the available USB connector that came with the frame. Next I plugged the frame into a wall outlet using the available wall adapter.

My PC recognized the frame immediately as another drive. I opened the file up, and simply transferred my photo files into the frames new folder drive. After the photos were copied. I then turned the frame off, and back on again. My photos were being displayed in the slide show.

The quality was wonderful, and none of my photos seemed to look grainy or pixeled.

After toying with the photo features, I now wanted to add music. A step I could have performed at the same time as uploading photos, but I hadn't thought about it till after loading in the photos.

To add music I simply plugged the frame back into the USB, and added an MP3 file to the frames drive.

 It uploaded in less than a second.

I then powered the frame off again, and then back on. My music played in the background while my photos displayed. I was also able to adjust the volume, or mute the music in the background as well.
The ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8". also comes with a credit card sized remote. You can access the frames menus to tweak the frames brightness, the music files, and the photos display.

The only thing I didn't like about the remote was that you had to practically be right up on the frame for it to register commands. Very annoying, but you learn to deal with it.

I was truly impressed.
 
After staring at the frame for about an hour and watching my slide show, I began to think... the ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8". would make an excellent gift for newlyweds. Using their wedding photos, and their wedding song to play in the background would be a truly heartfelt gift.

What I Didn't Like:
 
All in all I love the ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8", however it does have some minor quirks that I feel need to be discussed.

-The frames screen does not display well in highly lit rooms. In rooms with high light sources the frame will look a little too glazed.

-The remote needs to be right up near the frame in order for it to work

-The lack of custom frames. I'd like to change the plastic wood frame to perhaps a stainless steel, or glass frame. I have yet to find a new frame plate though available for this model.


Overall:
 
The ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8". has yet to create any major issues for me. Everything is simple, so much so that new users would easily be able to understand how to upload music, video, and photos with ease.

All in all I would rate the ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8", 4 out of 5 stars.

Pricing and Availability:
 
I picked the ADS Digital Photo Frame - 8". up at Sam's Club for $99.99. I feel it was well worth the price, and is the only digital photo frame available, that does not look like a clunky piece of plastic.