Does the Sylvania digital photo frame use a touchscreen?
The Sylvania digital photo frame uses a touch display – though there are many complaints about its quality. The touch display often doesn’t register your touches, and it’s common for a single touch to send you through several screens. The interface is quite buggy and certainly not user or elderly-friendly.
We rarely recommend getting a touchscreen digital frame due to their higher cost (that often results in features like free cloud storage being sacrificed), poor durability, and the need to constantly wipe them down. Top frames like the Pix-Star include robust and comprehensive remote-control functions that make the touch screen rather superfluous.
Do Sylvania digital photo frames offer cloud storage?
Sylvania digital photo frames don’t offer cloud storage. This is a common fact for most mid-range digital frames and shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. It’s one of the many reasons that we don’t recommend buying a mid-range digital frame. Cloud storage is a must-have feature for any modern digital frame – especially since our lives are fine-tuned to sync with our smartphones and tech ecosystems.
For reference, Pix-Star’s digital frames offer free-for-life cloud storage for each frame. All incoming photos, videos, and audio messages are saved to the Pix-Star’s internal storage and backed up to the cloud. Cloud storage can be remotely accessed and managed through the web interface. Here you can make changes to both local and cloud copies, start slideshows, import new photos, and much more.
We highly recommend saving up a little longer and getting a cloud-based digital photo frame like the Pix-Star. They bring a lot of key features for the modern home & family – making photo-sharing a lot less frustrating and a whole lot more efficient. While they’re going to be a little more expensive, it’s well worth the money.
How does the Sylvania digital photo frame compare with the Pix-Star?
Sylvania digital photo frames are mid-range frames; whereas Pix-Star’s frames are premium, high-end frames. They are similar only in that they both have a mobile app, Wi-Fi, and SD card support. Pix-Star’s digital photo frames can send & receive photos, videos, and audio messages from anywhere in the world in just a few moments. While this is also possible on Sylvania’s frames, their app is far more buggy and less user-friendly.
Pix-Star’s frames offer versatile slideshows that let you control the play order & frequency of photos. You can include video in slideshows and play audio files over slideshows. Pix-Star’s USB/SD card support lets you start slideshows directly from a connected USB/SD card (with no size limit on the connected device’s capacity).
When it comes to versatility, Pix-Star’s frames are far more advanced than Sylvania’s frames. You get a web album feature that lets you import photo albums from external sources. These sources include almost a dozen social media, photo-sharing, and online storage platforms – and even directly from your computer (wirelessly). This is all managed through the web interface and can be done from anywhere in the world.
Pix-Star’s remote-control feature is one of the most unique and robust on the market. It’s something that Sylvania’s frames aren’t capable of. Here you can manage and control up to 25 connected Pix-Star frames from anywhere in the world. You can adjust their settings, start & manage slideshows, make changes to both cloud and local storage, create multi-frame control groups, update firmware, adjust brightness, and much more.
For the modern home & family, and both individual & elderly users, Pix-Star’s frames are the better choices. While Sylvania’s digital frames are cheaper, they lack several essential features. Their screens are smaller (around 8-inches), have lower resolution, and use a touch interface (which we don’t recommend). Pix-Star’s frames are far more robust, feature-packed, user-friendly, and designed to cater to the needs of the modern home & family – and look great while doing so!
Can Sylvania digital photo frames be controlled remotely?
While Sylvania digital photo frames do offer Wi-Fi and cloud connectivity, they don’t support any remote-control function or capabilities. This means that the only way to control these frames is in person via the touchscreen interface. Unfortunately, the touchscreen is widely reported to be very poor. It often won’t notice your touch and will jump through several screens from a single touch. We rarely recommend getting a touchscreen digital frame due to these issues, their higher cost, and poor longevity.
If you want a digital photo frame that can be remotely controlled from anywhere in the world, consider the Pix-Star frame. You can use the web interface to manage and control up to 25 connected frames from anywhere. Here you can adjust each frame’s settings, start & manage slideshows, import photos from external sources like social media or your computer, manage local & cloud storage, update the firmware, and much more. It’s a great way for families to keep their less tech-savvy members involved and removes much of the frustrations of the photo-sharing process.
Is the Sylvania digital photo frame worth buying for families?
In short, the Sylvania digital photo frame is not worth buying for families. They lack basic functionality such as USB support, the ability to play slideshows from a connected USB, a poor touchscreen, no slideshow play order controls, and a small, low-resolution display. While these digital frames offer Wi-Fi, you’re still limited to sending photos via the app – which is slow, clunky, and not user-friendly.
There is no way to import photos from sources like social media or your computer. You can’t remotely control any of the frame’s settings. There’s no way to adjust the screen color settings. Their aspect ratio (16:9) doesn’t match most photos from smartphones (usually 4:3) so most photos are surrounded by black pillar bars.
These are to only name a couple of essential features that are missing. Despite its low price, the lack of features, versatility, build quality, and functionality make the Sylvania digital frame a poor choice for families. This is even more apparent when you consider what top frames like the Pix-Star offer (without costing too much more). You get free-for-life cloud storage, access to a great mobile app & web interface, importing photos from social media & photo-sharing sites, remote control functionality, and much more. You can learn more about the Pix-Star digital frames here.
