The Pix-Star frame is hands-down one of the best digital photo frames with video. They’re easy to use, great for grandparents, and one of the best premium frames for families. Features like free-for-life cloud storage, 8GB of internal storage, extensive offline functionality, importing photos from social media, and access to both the Pix-Star Snap mobile app and the web dashboard give you excellent value-for-money.
Photos, videos, and audio messages can be sent from anywhere in the world in just a couple of moments. You can send up to 250 photos to multiple Pix-Star frames at the same time with the mobile app. You can choose video files from your phone’s gallery and record & send audio messages no matter when you are.
Pix-Star’s digital frames deliver extremely versatile slideshows and offer plenty of customization controls. You’re able to control the play order & frequency of photos, which files/folders/sources to include in slideshows, the ability to include videos in slideshows (muted or otherwise), and much more.
To add to all of this, any Pix-Star frame can be remotely controlled from anywhere in the world. It’s done through the web interface and you can adjust the frame’s settings, manage local & cloud storage, start & manage slideshows, change slideshow sources, update web albums, update firmware, and much more. You have almost the same level of control as you do use the frame in person.
Pix-Star’s 4:3 aspect ratio perfectly matches most of the photos we take on our smartphones. This leads to a more immersive and captivating viewing experience. They can be wall-mounted, have photos loaded by USB/SD card & email, and even offer manually adjustable brightness & color settings. Considering the price point, free-for-life cloud storage, and no additional subscription fees or hidden costs, Pix-Star’s frames are one of the best – if not the best – digital photo frames with video on today’s market.
Loading videos to a digital photo frame is usually relatively easy. Note that only a handful of the best frames on the market let you load videos to the frame through any method other than a USB/SD card. Even when loaded by USB/SD card, the videos often need to be copied to specific folders within the frame’s local storage before they can be viewed on the frame (unlike photos that can be viewed directly off the inserted USB/SD card via a plug & play feature.
Pix-Star’s digital photo frames can receive videos through the Pix-Star Snap mobile app. It’s free to use, doesn’t require account creation, and is supported on both iOS and Android. To send videos, you simply need to select them from your phone’s gallery, choose which Pix-Star frame(s) to send them to and hit send. This can take a couple of moments depending on the size and length of the video.
Pix-Star’s digital frames support video clips in popular formats – though they’re limited to a maximum length of 2-minutes. All digital photo frames place maximum limits on the size or length of supported video files, with 2-minutes being longer than almost any other frame on the market.
For comparison, Dragon Touch frames only let you play 30-second video clips, Nixplay offers 15-seconds (or up to 1-minute if you pay for the premium annual Nixplay Plus subscription plan). Other popular frames like the Aura don’t let you play video or audio files at all. Skylight frames let you send video clips – though you’ll need to pay for the annual subscription plan too.
Not all digital photo frames with video playback can play audio too. If the frame doesn’t have inbuilt speakers or the ability to connect to external speakers or audio output devices (very rare), it’s unlikely to support audio playback.
Some top digital frames like the Pix-Star can play the audio files that come with videos. They can even be set to play muted when included in slideshows. It’s worth noting that digital frames don’t typically focus on audio playback and support. The sound quality isn’t usually very high or loud. This is why top digital frames like the Pix-Star let you connect the frame to external speakers or headphones for a more immersive and higher-quality listening experience.
Pix-Star’s digital photo frames with video support can include videos in slideshows. This is not a commonly found feature – even among the top digital frames. Many other top frames let you load videos to the frame’s internal storage, though they need to be viewed individually (or in a slideshow that’s exclusively made up of video files saved on the frame’s local storage).
Pix-Star’s digital frames let you include video files in slideshows along with photos. You can even select specific folders & files from which to play slideshows. Videos within slideshows can be set to play muted – or with their accompanying audio file. Additionally, Pix-Star’s frames can be connected to an external speaker, headphones, or earphones via the frame’s USB port or 3.5mm audio port. Alternatively, audio can be played through the frame’s inbuilt speakers.
The number of videos a digital photo frame can hold depends on many factors including the video file size, format, resolution, and the frame’s internal storage capacity. Premium frames like the Pix-Star offer 8GB of internal storage space, which is usually enough for around 30,000 photos (though less when videos are added to the mix).
Videos with high resolutions take up significantly more storage space. Much of this used space ends up being wasted if the video resolution is higher than the frame’s native resolution (as the video is simply scaled down).
A 1080p video file shot at 24 frames per second (fps rate) on a proper camera (like the GoPro) will let you hold around 4-minutes of video per 1GB of storage space. While there is still compression and down-scaling to be taken into account (and the fact that most digital frames only let you play 720p videos in MPEG-4 or MP4), it’s clear that videos take up a lot of storage space. This is part of the reason that most digital frames limit video files by size or duration.
