Review: Royal PF80 Digital Picture Frame

SEE WHAT YOU’VE SNAPPED

November 2007 By Marshal M. Rosenthal

multipage

I may have trained as a professional photographer but you bet I jumped on digital cameras right away for casual shooting. I no longer had to worry about film lost at labs and the best part is since everything is stored on a hard drive, I know where to go to see them. But for some reason I rarely do. Maybe that’s because a computer monitor’s not the same as having a picture in a frame that you can glance at when walking by a table or when you’re seated at a desk. So that’s why I’m keen on Royal’s digital picture frame - the 8” LCD screen seems more than big enough for viewing and there’s support for every kind of memory card I have.

Light but not flimsy, it’s small enough to fit on a desk or countertop without taking up much space (an attached leg can be removed to use instead with slots on the back for wall mounting, should you so choose). AC power provides the juice to run it, so you just insert a memory card into the appropriate slot on the side, let the frame figure out what was just put in and then work the controls hidden under the top rim; those with big fingers like mine might find this easier than using the credit card-sized remote. Either way, you have access to menus for customizing the screen and the timing and transitions to use with the slideshow plus other functions.

The backlit color screen provides a sharp and distinct image and right now it’s displaying pictures from my old neighborhood in New York - the 800 x 600 resolution aided by a good level of contrast that makes viewing easy on the eyes. I find that it’s best to have all the pics either in one folder or loose in the “root” since otherwise you have to go and select each folder separately in order to view its contents. Also, since the frame automatically scales images to fit, you don’t have to bother with converting any beforehand. You can pan and zoom into images, but any changes made, including switching from portrait to landscape, disappear when you turn off the frame or remove the memory card (the alternate of just leaving it turned on not being very “green”). And that the panel is brightest when you’re facing it dead on is no big deal since you need to be up close anyway, and overall it’s as bright as expected for a LCD of this size.

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• DIGITAL IMAGING