I’ve been looking at getting a digital photo frame for the in-laws as a Christmas present, but can’t get over the price of the apparent “better” brands. And even the low-end ones seem expensive for what they actually are.

Is it really worth spending £80 on a Sony? Need to buy a SD card on top.

For that money, you can buy a cheap Android tablet of the same size, with in-built memory, and just run a screen-saver app.

Can’t see why a more expensive brand would be any better than a cheap one…
Someone gave us a non-branded one a while back and if we can be arsed to plug it in, its quite nice. Pics need updating though… it’s all a bit mleh (as they say).

Can’t see why a more expensive brand would be any better than a cheap one…

Screen Resolution varies enormously across the photo frames and (some) more expensive ones do cleverer stuff like connecting to a NAS or showing photos from the web.

But yeah personally I’d just buy a tablet these days.

Agree with Dez. We have one, if it were a kitchen appliance it would go in the cupboard with the smoothie maker, blender and sandwich toaster. i.e. look quite cool but rarely get any use.

May as well just get a cheap tablet. I can’t see the point in digital frames any more, TBH. Not as though I could in the first place, mind… 😉

They are all a waste of money.

I have never been to a house and seen one switched on. To be worth it someone needs to invent a display/battery combination that would never need to be plugged in to a wall socket and could be switched on 24/7, via a timer or poximity sensor.

To be worth it someone needs to invent a display/battery combination that would never need to be plugged in to a wall socket and could be switched on 24/7, via a timer or poximity sensor.

I suspect when we get hi-res colour eInk displays at reasonable prices then they will be very popular again.

But that’s a fair way off yet.

Screen Resolution varies enormously across the photo frames

People care about the screen res on a photo frame? They must be sitting there watching them instead of the telly then! 😉

Good points, well made. Given the in-laws have just started using an ipad, they might aswell setup a screensaver of photos and use that…

ipads come with the pic shuffle thingy as standard – expensive but cool picture displayer thing

People care about the screen res on a photo frame?

Not much point displaying your best photos if they all look like this:

Given the in-laws have just started using an ipad, they might aswell setup a screensaver of photos and use that…

Yeah it has a built-in photo slideshow screensaver thing on the lock screen. Just buy them a stand for it and use that.

Parents have got one at home, hole was drilled through the wall for the cable which goes into a plug, so all discrete. Looks aight,

Given the in-laws have just started using an ipad, they might aswell setup a screensaver of photos and use that

And even better, just make sure photostream is turned on and the pics will automatically change every time you upload new ones to your ‘puter 🙂

my (elderly 80ish) parents got one, turned off on next visit, they got pissed right off with the constant changing of pictures – so I showed them the photos and got the ones they liked in paper mounted in frames – they’ve been around for ages

For me the perfect photo frame would be hi-def colour eInk (so practically zero power drain, no backlight, virtually indistinguishable from a print) and set up to change the photo just once or twice a week. 😀

I just wanna know where you got that photo of me in my ninja outfit from 🙂

For me the perfect photo frame would be hi-def colour eInk (so practically zero power drain, no backlight, virtually indistinguishable from a print) and set up to change the photo just once or twice a week.

This

But then again, real ink + peice of paper + 10p per print means it would take about 15 years to pay back.