Is the Micca digital frame worth your hard-earned cash?
Micca is a name you might have never heard before – and you probably didn’t know about the Micca digital photo frame. How do these budget frames hold up again the titans of the industry like the Pix-Star and are they worth your money? Let’s take a look.
Micca digital frames don’t have any Wi-Fi or cloud capabilities – as you’d expect from a budget frame at this price point. That being said, they have decent display resolution and video playback quality – making them a slightly better choice than other cheap digital frames. On the other hand, their displays have an extremely narrow viewing angle and you won’t be able to see your pictures very well unless you’re standing close to the frame and directly in front of it. This severely limits how you’d use the frame and means it’s not a great choice for wall mounting or use in large rooms.
Due to not being Wi-Fi or cloud-capable, Micca digital photo frames are missing a lot of handy and useful features like web radio & music, web albums support, weather, and more. There is no supported mobile app to send photos to the frame (or multiple frames at the same time) and no web interface to make managing your photos easier. You need to do all your navigating and management directly on the frame.
On that note, the user interface is quite outdated and especially difficult for elderly users to navigate. Combine this with the limitations on playback order of slideshows and no ability to control a frame remotely, and you get a frame that feels like it’s in the wrong era.
There are no adjustable color settings and the brightness doesn’t scale very much. The auto-on/off feature is quite handy but doesn’t do much to balance the lacking functionality from the above missing features. To be fair, for the price, Micca digital photo frames aren’t all that bad – but with the price gap between Wi-Fi and non-Wi-Fi frame closing, it’s hard to justify getting an offline frame. This is especially true when you consider that frames like the Pix-Star have extensive offline features and USB/SD card compatibility.
How does the Micca digital photo frame work?
Micca digital photo frames work by starting slideshows directly from the photos you load onto a supported USB/SD card. You insert the USB/SD card into the frame’s relevant port and start the slideshows. You can play up to 10,000 photos in a randomized slideshow.
With that being said, you don’t have much or any control over the play order of slideshows, and there are some issues with photo format support. You might find that many photos don’t display due to some minor formatting or file naming errors – but you’d need to test this out for yourself.
Micca digital photo frames have limited onboard internal storage, so you’ll usually start sideshows directly from the inserted USB/SD card. You can add a few customizations to slideshows such as speed and transition style, but that’s about it.
Micca digital photo frames are not battery-operated and need to be plugged in all the time to work. There are no additional mobile apps, web interfaces, or any email-in function, for sending photos to the frame. The only way to load and display photos on the frame is via a USB/SD card. Micca digital photo frames work much like any non-Wi-Fi digital frame. There is no cloud support for cloud backups and related features.
Should I buy the Pix-Star or the Micca digital photo frame?
If you want a frame that has access to Wi-Fi and includes handy cloud storage and the ability to view photos from your social media and photo-sharing accounts – the Pix-Star frame is the better choice for you. You can use the mobile app and web interface to send photos, videos, and audio notes from wherever you are in the world.
Pix-Star’s frames are excellent choices for large families and those that want to involve their grandparents. You can remotely control any connected frame through the web interface, change its settings, start slideshows, manage your media, and more. This means you can get all the latest family photos to your grandparents’ frames without them needing to lift a finger.
On top of that, you also have web album support. Web albums are photo albums on your social media and photo-sharing sites. You can link these albums to your frame (or to several frames), sync them, and have them automatically saved to your Pix-Star frame’s internal storage for offline use. You can add these photos to your slideshows without being connected to Wi-Fi.
Pix-Star’s frames offer more slideshow settings and customizations. You can choose to display a new photo from the last “x” number of days exclusively (or more frequently) in slideshows – ensuring that you never miss another precious moment. Additionally, it’s easy to adjust color settings like hue and saturation. This, along with a much broader viewing angle and distance, makes the viewing experience on the Pix-Star frame more immersive and user-friendly.
If it’s within your budget, the Pix-Star frame offers all the offline features of the Micca digital photo frame – along with all the versatility and functionality that comes with full Wi-Fi and cloud support.
Can the Micca digital photo frame play videos?
Micca digital photo frames can play videos. Note that all videos need to match the frame’s format requirements. You might also need to make sure that the videos you load match the frame’s aspect ratio and resolution for the best viewing experience.
How to send photos to a Micca digital photo frame?
As Micca digital photo frames are offline frames, there is no email-in function or mobile app/web interface. The only way to send photos to the frame is to load them onto a USB/SD card and insert that card into the Micca digital photo frame’s relevant port. You can start slideshows of the photos on the USB/SD card directly without needing to copy them to the frame’s internal storage.
Make sure that all photos and other media that you send to the Micca digital photo frame match the supported formats, size, resolution, and aspect ratio for the best viewing experience.
