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The 7" Dynex Digital Picture Frame (DX-DPF7) has a great look to it, with a pretty, clear frame around it. The frame has 32MB of built in memory, and you can create slide shows on the fly, and has support for many types of flash memory.
The 7" Dynex Digital Picture Frame was the second digital frame that I got to try out in the past few months. You can read the review for the 10.5" Aluratek Frame here.
I got a hold of this for $50 during the Black Friday sale at Best Buy. The Dynex Picture Frame is a little different from what I expected. It is a 7" Wide screen picture frame, due to its 16:9 aspect ratio. The quality of the screen is okay at best. You can see the pictures pixels if you look close enough. The resolution is only 400 x 234, but similar 7" digital frames have the same resolution. I must admit though, the clear acrylic frame with the black trim looks very nice. Because the frame is wide screened, the frame is going to look a little bit smaller than a regular 4" x 6" picture.
In The Box
The Dynex Digital Frame comes with the Digital Frame, remote, cleaning cloth, and an AC Power Adapter. No USB cable is included in the box.
Review
The DX-DPF7 only has 32 MB of internal memory. If you shrunk your pictures, you would be able to fit hundreds of pictures. I did this, and that's how I found out that you are limited to only 40 pictures max! What is the point of 32 MB if you are going to limit how many pictures you can put. They even put about 10 pictures into the digital frame so that you can test the quality of the LCD. And you have to delete each picture one by one, and there's loading time in between deletes. I recommend just putting your pictures onto a small SD Card, and just keeping it plugged in to the frame. This way you can have more than 40 pictures. Since the frame's LCD has a resolution of 400 x 234, I shrunk the images I wanted to put in the frame to about 600 pixel width, and copied it onto a spare SD card that I had that was only 16MB. I was able to stick in 70 compressed images and take up only 2 MB on the card. The 40 picture limit is ridiculous.
The screen IS wide, and not the standard format for a point-and-shoot camera, and it may chop off some of the picture. It has done that to me, though I wasn't sure why. Other pictures were fine. My digital SLR pictures fit the screen perfectly, because I the pictures from my Nikon D80 are a little bit wider than my Canon SD450s. Vertical pictures are extremely small.
The side of the frame has ports to connect USB, Compact Flash (CF), Secure Digital (SD) (not sure about SDHC), MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick (MS), and xD card formats. The controls are also on the side and allow you to navigate the menu and slide shows.
Getting around the interface is easy. When you insert a memory card, you can browse through it, click a button and save the picture into the memory.
Strangely, you cannot turn the digital frame on or off with the remote control.
Pros
- The design of the frame is what got me. The Clear Acrylic frame looks great.
- Quickly and easily create slideshows with transitions.
Cons
- Small internal memory
- What's even worse is that you are limited to 40 pictures
- Doesn't play mp3s
- Tedious to delete pictures off the frame one by one
- No power button on the remote control.
- Widescreen cuts the pictures (sometimes), its not very consistent.
Final Thoughts
The 7" Dynex Digital Picture Frame, is good value for your money. It will look great in your house. The only BIG problem I had with this frame is the limited 40 pictures. I shrunk about 70 pictures, and it equaled only 2-3MB. I was only allowed to copy 40 into the frame. If you do purchase this frame, just put the pictures on a memory card and just play from there. This doesn't have the same functions as the better frames such as MP3 audio and Video Playback, but that's expected when you compare the price versus functionality. If you want a picture frame that can just display pictures in a slideshow, this is an okay choice.
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