Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought the Opteka 15" frame after reading all the reviews I could find for similar products. What struck me is that people's experience with Opteka seemed consistently good. My unit worked great out-of-the-box with no dead pixels, no need for image brightness/contrast adjustment, or other startup problems. The Opteka has all the key features you need at an excellent price.
Other reviewers have covered the basics well: The attractive wood frame, good picture quality, both random and sequential slide shows, and relatively simple operation. I agree with the other reviewers that this unit's 4:3 ratio of image width to height is an important selling point for this model---I have thousands of photos with this aspect ratio and only a few with the widescreen ratio (stills from an HD video camera). So I'll focus on some subtleties I haven't seen covered in other reviews.
Picture quality: This seems subjective, especially since I didn't see this frame side-by-side with its competitors. My standard of comparison was my Dell laptop screen, which has a similar physical screen size but 1280x 800 instead of 1024x768 resolution. Running the same images in slideshows on the two devices, I thought the images on the Opteka looked better, with better shadow detail and vastly better viewing angles. Note that the surface of the digital frame is regular shiny glass rather than matte, "non-glare." Reflections could be an issue--situate it in your room to minimize them.
Ease of setup: One of the other reviewers complained "To attach the adapter, one must remove a panel from the back of the product. Once the adapter cord is installed in the jack, the panel can not be replaced on the back of product." This is wrong, there's no design flaw here. The design is actually quite elegant and saves having an external power brick dangling on your wall or floor. If at first the compartment door doesn't close, flip the transformer brick over and then the door will close nicely. You'll need a small Phillips head screwdriver to open and reclose the panel door. Just over 4.5 feet of cord extends out the bottom of the frame, so plan on placement near an outlet or power strip.
Ease of use: Once the unit is assembled, all you need to do is plug in your memory card or flash drive. The unit automatically displays a slideshow from internal memory if no cards are plugged in. But when you turn the Opteka off, then insert a card or flashdrive and turn it back on, it's smart enough to automatically switch to displaying images from the new source. Now that's ease of use! (What if you insert both an SD card and a flashdrive? The unit will still automatically start a slideshow, but you may need to use the menus specify which image source to use.) One minor ergonomic flaw for SD card users: too little of the SD card protrudes from the card slot to provide a decent grip for removal. If you plan on swapping SD cards while visiting someone, pack tweezers!
Randomness: When you select random image display, there's no duplicate prevention---by chance the same image may re-appear 30 seconds later. Also, the handy feature of using the remote to re-display the previous slide (to show someone else or simply get a longer look at it) works only in sequential mode. In random mode pressing the back button on the remote does not re-display the image you just saw.
Ability to handle LOTS of pictures: Presented with a flash drive that had over 4,000 pictures in a single folder, the frame handled this volume of images fine, with a couple of quirks. Not surprisingly, it was less responsive navigating through some of the menus, but the most noticeable effect was the slideshow timing became erratic in random playback, ranging from a few seconds to about a minute. If you don't have the fast slideshow speed (choices of slow, medium, fast) selected, you probably won't care. (Sequential playback speed was consistent even with thousands of images. Some processing the frame is doing in random playback mode is taking a variable amount of time...)
Is internal memory in a digital frame a complete waste? My first thought: With a 4GB SDHC card now available from Amazon for less than $10, the 128MB or more of internal memory many of these frames have is essentially a vestigial feature likely to disappear in the next generation. My second thought: the internal memory would be useful as a "favorites" repository. Suppose that as Grandpa watches a slideshow of a new batch of pictures, he sees one he really likes. He presses the remote's "setup" button to freeze the slideshow on the current picture and to display an option for copying the picture to internal memory. Next month you drop by Grandpa's house and swap the flash drive in the Opteka with a new one containing the latest batch of family pictures. Grandpa then saves his favorites from that new batch of pictures to internal memory. Thus, he builds his own "best of" collection over time.
Zooming: The remote control lets you zoom in several times to make a portion of the image fill the frame. I had hoped that if I zoomed the image on the frame I would be able to see, for example, facial expressions more clearly--many people zoom in on group photos on their digital cameras' LCD screens to check for eye blinks, for example. No such luck. The frame dynamically re-sizes the image to 1024 x 768 resolution immediately before displaying it and does NOT use the original hi-res image to zoom in. So zooming isn't worth much - it just give you a steadily more pixelated view as you zoom in.
Video playback: The unit can play the 640x480 resolution, 30 frames per second AVI-format movies produced by my Canon digital cameras, but playback is NOT smooth (maybe 15 frames per second). Look at other units if you want video playback (a nice-to-have feature for me).
Power save: Some frames have motion sensors to turn them on when they sense someone is in the room. The Opteka does not, but it does have power options "Always on", or 2, 4, or 8 hour auto-shutoff.
Net, some room for improvement. Excellent overall.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Opteka OPT15 15-Inch Digital Picture Frame with 1 GB Built-In Memory
This 15-Inch digital picture frame is big enough to display your favorite photos, even if your intended audience is on the other side of the room. The 15-Inch Opteka Digital Picture Frame also boasts an unbelievable 1GB of internal memory, allowing you to store your favorite photos directly on the frame. Instantly plays MP3 music with the integrated speakers. Slideshow supports up to 2mp image files (JPEG format). Larger files can be reduced. Plays automatic slide show with MP3 music on the background and multiple transition effects. User-friendly on-screen display lets you access all controls easily. Includes a credit card style remote control.
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