My wife wants to get one. Does anyone have any recommendations? Brookstone has one for $180 that looks pretty nice although that seems a little steep. I don't know the first thing about them. Any recommendations would be great!
They aren't cheap by any means. My daughter gave me an Axion 7" that she'd picked up online a month or so ago. It's a nice little frame,nice image, takes all card types but it doesn't rotate images automatically. The more expensive models may. I'd check that with any model you look at. Good luck.
My wife and I gave one to my Mom for Christmas, so I got an education of sort on the subject.
I can tell you that for the most part, the prices for each size are usually within $5 to $10 no matter which store you go to. We didn't know that before hand, and spent the better part of a day driving to different stores shopping for this specific item, so we probably spent more $ in gas than what we might have saved by finding a deal.
We shopped about 6 stores ranging from Electronics stores like Radio Shack, Department Stores, to the Big Box retailers like Best Buy, and found the following:
5" frames - $60.00
7" frames - $80.00
8.5" frames - $110.00
10" frames - $150.00 +
We also searched on-line and found a very similar pricing structure, but we were fortunate to find a limited time deal on-line at CompUSA for an 8.5" frame at $89.99.
Can't really comment on the features much as we were shopping price more than features.
According to Consumer Reports the best (in the reasonably priced ones) is sold under the brand name "Smartparts" and I know they have at least an 8" & 10" version, with the next best being by Westinghouse. The big issue that seemed to set them apart from the others was the quality of the image when viewed from any angle except at almost straight on. I bought the Smartparts 8" as a gift for my wife & her entire family plus me are very pleased with it.
It has a built in memory capable of carrying 2000 pictures (it says) at 800 X 600 resolution, and on that memory chip is a software program you copy to your computer that then can be used to select, catalogue, resize, and transfer your photos to the picture frame, and it works as designed. The frame has a slot for CF and SD cards plus other SD compatable cards, and a USB port and if a card is inserted it switches over to play from it. It says that it can also play videas (haven't read up on that function) and MP3 files. (don't see a speaker but could be inside, it has openings to cool the electronics).
