Santiago Rozas stores his best photos as a slide show in this simple digital frame. He says it's a lot better than stuffing prints in shoe boxes.
"While I'm getting water, I might glance over and see when my wife and I ran a marathon. It just puts a smile on your face," Rozas said.
Consumer reports has tested new digital frames, including three bigger 10-inch frames. Two of these frames can wirelessly accept images from the internet and your cell phone. And all the frames tested work with most of today's camera's memory cards.
"Unfortunately, the 10-inch frames suffered from the same picture quality problems that we've seen in the past," Rich Fisco said.
With two, unless your pictures are formatted for wide screens - and most aren't - you get black bars on the sides. And on all three the picture quality falls off when you're viewing from the side. This Philips frame faded the most.
"The e-Starling did a little better, but still not great," Fisco said.
Interestingly, the iPad uses a different screen technology than the digital frames and that seems to solve the viewing problem - not that you'd spend at least 500 dollars on the iPad to use as a digital frame. But it's a nice plus.
The 10-inch hp dream screen 100 is the best of the bigger frames. But with its internet radio and video features, it costs $200. For much less, testers recommend the eight-inch digital spectrum memory frame MF 801, which costs $70.
Many of the frames, including the recommended one, come with a remote control that has on-and-off controls, image rotation, and other menu options.
