Kodak EasyShare EX-1011 Digital Picture Frame Review

Really cool features that set this digital frame apart include you can match your décor with optional faceplates, you can display your frame on a tabletop or on a wall either vertically or horizontally, you can operate it by remote control. You can hook it up to your printer to print pictures directly without a computer. It has speakers to play Mp3's. It does many formats of both video AND pictures including image file formats of JPEG - EXIF and video formats MOV, AVI, MPEG 1 and 4. You can start viewing your pictures and videos right away by inserting a memory card or connecting your digital camera. You can program selectable viewing hours featuring automatic on and off settings.

A digital frame is a fantastic gift, especially for relatives who live far away and would like to see many pictures of grandchildren. It is also a great gift for a college student who misses home, local scenery, friends and family. The clarity of this frame is particularly beautiful. But there are a few issues that need to be addressed beforehand. The ability to upload photos and video is not as carefree as one might hope, so if you are giving this as a gift (say like to Grandma or a non-techie relative or friend), you may wish to take it out of the box and upload the photos yourself before giving it to them.

Drawbacks: While the product says it comes with software for MAC, most MAC users have not been able to use this software. As many artists and photographers often prefer MAC, this negates the usefulness of this frame to display a MAC user's photos or work. There is plug-in software for MAC users that you can purchase for $39 that will fix this problem, but MAC users need to factor this additional cost in when considering the purchase of this frame. MAC users may also have problems using the random display feature. This is more of a problem with the wireless version of the frame. There has been a number of software plug-ins to compensate for various glitches which are available at the Kodak website for PC and some for MAC.

PC users likely will find using the USB port or directly hooking up a memory card or your digital camera to load pictures easier than using the Kodak Easy Share software. Just connect the frame via USB and transfer the photos.

Looking directly at the photo screen, the picture quality is really very crisp and beautiful. While it says it will look crisp at any angle due to it being optimized to provide a clear display, when viewed from any angle but straight on or if sunlight hits it, the pixels are very obvious and the picture quality is somewhat poor. This is a problem with many digital picture frames and might be compensated for by mounting the frame at an optimal viewing angle. Personally, I do not think this would bother an elderly relative, but it might be disappointing to those who are used to crisp, clear photo displays in other LCD mediums.

Another common problem of many picture frames is the picture is either cropped or extra grainy since standard digital picture size is often different than digital frame sizes. According to the specs, this frame is 10 inches. The picture display area is 8.9 by 5.3 inches. The display resolution is 800 480 pixels and the aspect ratio is 16 - 9 widescreen. Likely this does not match your digital camera and phone camera photos resolution, so you may need to crop your photos and adjust the resolution to higher and adjust the aspect ratio in a separate photo software program to get the best look with this frame. The up side is once you adjust the ratio, you can fit LOTS of photos on the memory. If you still want more photos, you can use the memory expansion slots. If you do not adjust the photo size, there will be black bars on the sides of the photo or the photo will be partially cropped.

Another thing to note if you are giving this as a gift is you will need to remove Kodak's sample images so as not to include them in your slide show.

This frame makes a lovely gift, some of the features mentioned in the manual do not seem to fully work, but if you take the time to upload photos yourself before giving the frame, you can get the frame to work well with your photos.

Kodak EasyShare EX-1011 digital picture frame can be found online at buy.com for $216.99 and Kodak.com for about $199.