What is the best big digital picture frame on the market?
Hunting down the right big digital picture frame for your needs and budget can be tough. While there are a ton of digital frames on the market, only a handful of them compete for the top spot. It’s important to know that there is no such thing as a perfect frame – but you can find the perfect frame for your specific needs and planned uses.
Pix-Star’s frame is one of the best big frames on the market and offers an exceptional and rare balance between price, performance, durability, usability, and versatility. It brings together a rich set of features with a smooth and sleek user interface, displayed on an immersive and captivating screen. You can send pictures and other media to the Pix-Star frame from anywhere in the world using the mobile app, web interface, or email-in function.
Pix-Star frames are specifically designed to cater to elderly people and users that aren’t very tech-savvy. The menus are easy to navigate and the handheld remote is tactile and responsive. This might seem like a given, but many digital frames have terrible remote controls and even more unintuitive onboard controls. These frames also support video and audio playback thanks to inbuilt speakers and a large 8GB local storage.
Features like the ability to remotely control a connected frame through the web interface mean you can start slideshows from anywhere, change settings, and manage your frame’s storage effortlessly. Combine this with web album compatibility whereby you can link several frames to multiple social media and photo-sharing platforms. The linked albums and their photos are synced and saved on all connected frames for offline access.
Pix-Star’s are also one of the best big digital picture frames when it comes to feature richness. You can view the weather, listen to web radio & music, set alerts & reminders, play brain games, and more. It’s a versatile frame that offers a surprisingly simple interface despite being packed with useful features. You’ll find Pix-Star’s frames to deliver big for their price without charging extra fees or subscriptions.
Should I choose a big digital picture frame over a smaller one?
The main advantage of big digital picture frames over their smaller counterparts is the display. You often get a brighter screen with a broader viewing angle and distance. These larger displays are well suited to bigger rooms that are well lit – especially if you want to fill up an empty wall space with character and a lot of potentials.
You’ll find big digital frames to suit people with poor eyesight better and are awesome for big family gatherings. Whether you want to rest it on the mantelpiece near the dining room table for family dinner – or run an extension and play photos on the frame during Sunday BBQ, big digital picture frames are probably better.
Bigger frames are more versatile when it comes to using them to display artwork and professional photography. You need to make sure the screen resolution is higher than 800×600 for frames over 12-inches – and preferably a 4:3 aspect ratio to avoid cropping and photos being boxed in.
While big digital picture frames are usually more expensive, it’s usually worth the money. Note that if you’re getting a frame larger than 15-inches, it gets hard to find a good spot to place them and the price can be significantly higher. Frames between 10-inches and 15-inches are right in the sweet spot size-wise.
What to look for in a big digital picture frame?
Arguably the most important feature is resolution, followed by aspect ratio. For frames larger than 10-inches (screen measurement), don’t go lower than 800×600. Anything lower than that will be visibly blurry. You want that crisp and sharp image to offer an immersive viewing experience. Go for a 4:3 aspect ratio if possible and avoid wide 16:10 displays if at all possible – otherwise you’ll have to deal with cropped images and black bars around your photos.
Make sure the big digital picture frame you choose has at least 4GB of internal storage space. You also want an email-in function and a supported mobile app if possible. This makes sending photos to your frame quick and effortless. You can go for features like remote control and multi-frame control if you have a large family or want a frame that’s elderly-friendly.
Other features to keep an eye out for include web album compatibility, multimedia playback, and cloud storage. Cloud storage being quite important if you want to keep your pictures safe or manage your frame from a computer or web interface.
In terms of build quality, avoid frames with flimsy stands as they’re easy to knock over. You should also avoid touchscreen as they lead to faster wear and tear on the screen, they’re fingerprint magnets and are more prone to being wrecked by knocks and falls. They’re also significantly more expensive on big digital picture frames.
Can I play video and audio on a big digital picture frame?
This depends on the brand and model of the frame you’re interested in. Most of the top big digital picture frames offer video playback (with limitations), with fewer supporting audio playback. For example, a large frame like Pix-Star’s 15-inch can play videos up to 2-minutes long. This is more than most competing frames and isn’t locked behind a subscription paywall.
If you want to play audio on a big digital frame, make sure you know if the frame has inbuilt speakers or not. If not, you’d need to buy or already own supported external speakers and all the connection cables/adaptors.
How many photos can a big digital picture frame hold?
This depends on the size of the frame’s internal storage, the file size of the photo and videos you send, and their format. Additionally, big digital picture frames that can read and display photos directly off an inserted USB/SD card further expand their functional storage size.
Most of the top big digital picture frames have a storage capacity of 4-8GB. Anything less and you might run out of space and have to delete old photos manually (or it’s done automatically). 4-8GB is plenty of space and means you can hold around 8,000 photos if each picture is ~1MB (quite a lot larger than average photo sizes).
