Is the Pix-Star a better digital picture frame than the Dragon Touch?
There is no perfect digital picture frame – there’s always a bit of giving or take at play. The same is true here. Both the Pix-Star and the Dragon Touch are good quality frames with great displays and features common to premium digital picture frames. That being said, there are several points worth noting with regards to real-world performance and what you need to know before buying one of these frames.
Dragon Touch digital picture frames are quite new to the digital frame market. On the other hand, Pix-Star pioneered the idea of digital picture frames with an email address and have been around for a long time. One of the biggest complaints about the Dragon Touch digital picture frame is how complicated and inconsistent the photo-email function is. Many reviewers online complain that they can seldom send photos to their frame via email, with many more saying the feature didn’t work at all.
To add to this, the Dragon Touch mobile app isn’t very well refined and has a lot of limitations. First off, the interface isn’t user-friendly and struggles at times to find and connect to your frame. There is also a big recurring issue of picture backlogging and never syncing through. The app seems to work better on iOS than it does on Android – though both platforms have multiple areas for improvement.
A major concern is the hidden costs of the Dragon Touch digital frame. The app uses the cloud to send photos to the frame over Wi-Fi. This service is advertised as free when you read through product descriptions – but this isn’t the case in the real world. As indicated in the user manual only, once you exceed the 10GB of cloud storage space, you have to purchase another 10GB via PayPal. It’s quite a major concern as this cost isn’t made clear when buying the frame – and usually only comes up after the return period has expired.
One big drawback of Dragon Touch’s digital picture frame is that the app can only send 9 photos at once. On the other hand, the Pix-Star frame can send up to 250 pictures at once and can send to multiple users at the same time. Additionally, once you’ve selected and sent your 9 photos, you will have to start at the top of the screen and scroll down again. This can be a major time sink and very frustrating if you’re selecting your photos from a large group.
Pix-Star has a web interface with extensive functionality and features including remote control capabilities, free-for-life unlimited cloud storage, storage management, and more. You don’t get this with the Dragon Touch digital frame.
There are other issues with the Dragon Touch digital picture frame turning off and needing to be rebooted throughout the day that has a big impact on the viewing experience.
Which frame is better for big families between Pix-Star and Dragon Touch?
Pix-Star’s frame is better for larger families due to its fantastic web album compatibility, remote control functionality, multi-frame control (up to 25 frames), and a well-designed mobile app & web interface. You can send photos from anywhere in the world and the app can send up to 250 photos in one go – and send them to multiple frames at the same time.
You can remotely take control over a connected frame, change its settings, manage your photos, start slideshows, and much more. You have almost complete control over the frame’s operations and settings. It’s a fantastic feature for large families with many frames and those that want to involve elderly users more.
Web album support lets you connect your frame(s) to your favorite social media and photo-sharing platforms & accounts. You can select which photos and albums you want to sync to your Pix-Star frame and have them sync automatically. Each time you add new photos to these albums, they’ll be automatically linked, synced, and saved to your Pix-Star frame.
All web albums are saved to the Pix-Star digital frame’s internal storage and can be viewed offline. Web album support includes platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, Google Drive, Dropbox, Flickr, and more.
Does the Dragon Touch digital picture frame have a mobile app?
Dragon Touch digital picture frames come with a mobile app that lets you send photos over Wi-Fi via their cloud system (only the first 10GB are free). The app isn’t very well optimized and doesn’t work well on Android devices. Many users complain that it’s very hard to set up and use – with photos often not sending.
Digital picture frames like the Pix-Star have better-designed mobile apps, and have been on the digital picture frame market a lot longer than newer brands like Dragon Touch. The Dragon Touch app only lets you send 9 pictures to your frame at the same time. This is exceptionally low and makes it one of the least user-friendly apps at this price point.
Is the Pix-Star frame better for elderly users than the Dragon Touch?
Pix-Star is packed with a feature designed to make the frame as seamless and effortless to use as possible. This is seen through features like controlling connected frames remotely, a smooth and simple user interface across the frame, a mobile app, and a web interface. This makes it significantly easier for elderly users to navigate and get used to. You’re never more than a few steps from the main menu and most settings can be changed without needing to exit the slideshow.
Through a combination of the mobile app, remote control functionality, web interface, and web album support, your grandparents will seldom need to lift a finger to view all the latest photos and videos sent by their loved ones.
Can the Dragon Touch digital picture frame view photos from social media?
You can’t directly connect your Dragon Touch digital picture frame to social media or photo-sharing platforms. This is quite a stark contrast when compared with the Pix-Star frame and its web album support. With Dragon Touch’s digital frame, you need to manually download the pictures and send them to the frame via the mobile app or with a USB/SD card.
On the other hand, Pix-Star’s frame can directly connect and sync with selected photo albums on social media and photo-sharing platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos & Drive, Dropbox, Flickr, and more. They’re automatically synced once linked and are updated whenever new photos are added to the linked albums. They’re also saved to the Pix-Star frame’s internal storage and can be viewed without an active internet connection.
