Gizmodo
Digital photo frames were the spammiest product spam at CES, lurking around every corner with their crappiness so I still have a biley taste in my mouth. SmartParts' efforts to pile crappy function atop crappy function with a built-in photo printer, unsurprisingly just amounts to one big crapgasm. On the front, it looks like any other generic frame, but peer behind its faux-elegant bezel and you'll see some serious junk in the trunk.
I will admit it's kind of cool watching the printer add layers of dye sublimation to add build one full picture, but the novelty quickly wears off. It takes about a minute to print, and it's instantly touchable. But the photos suck. This is a pre-production model, so it could get better, but the sample I printed removed all subtlety from the photo—shadow detail lost, whites blown out and noticeable bleed.
The paper stock is mediocre and you can't even upgrade—you buy proprietary cartridges for $20 that have 36 sheets, with dye cartridge to match. Then you've gotta buy a new one. The printer, as you can imagine, adds a little lot of heft. This hunchbacked mess is not the digital photo frame you were looking for. [Giz @ PMA]
Comments
awsh, don't be so harsh on the poor thing. Give the folks some credit for the idea. I reckon, there might actually be some people out there who still need a printer and, as printers go, they usually are a real eyesore in most living environments (except for maybe: dorm rooms), so, you might as well stare at one or the other of your own fugly photos with the printer hiden safely behind...
And I can hear a poll coming: who actually still needs a printer? Mine only does double duty as scanner until I can get a camera with the specs I want and a resolution good enough to archive my not-so-important documents. And for the odd important document I'll just drag myself to the printshop down at the corner who, despite their name, do also scans...
rephrase of the poll: who actually still needs to OWN a printer / needs a printer at home?
I believe the headline should read "SmartParts," not "SmartPants"...though the proximity to the word 'grope' made me giggle. tee hee.
Smart parts, just assembled and marketed like ass.
I looked at very photo frame out there this past christmas, and by far the best ones, both image quality and build quality wise, are made by Pandigital.
You can get them at Staples and Macy's. They're a lot cheaper at Staples, but you may have ahard time finding large ones.
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