How do digital photo frames with Google Photos work?
Digital photo frames with Google Photos like the Pix-Star let you link specific photo albums from your Google Photos account (or multiple Google Photos accounts) directly to your Pix-Star digital photo frames. Without this web album feature, you would have to download the photos manually – either to your phone or computer – and load them to your frame by USB/SD card, mobile app, or email. This takes significantly longer, doesn’t offer automatic updates, and often results in unnecessary photo compression.
Digital photo frames with Google Photos save the imported photo albums directly to your frame’s internal storage. Frames like the Pix-Star go a step further and automatically back them up to the cloud. You can often remotely manage these cloud backups and have them automatically reflect on the linked frames’ local storage.
It’s worth noting that not all digital photo frames with Google Photos offer all of these features. In some cases, you need to keep the frame connected to Wi-Fi at all times to view these photos; whereas other top frames like the Pix-Star save them to internal storage so that they’re available offline (for slideshows, individual viewing, and sending to other frames).
What are the best digital photo frames for Google Photos?
Pix-Star’s 10 and 15-inch frames are arguably the best digital photo frames for Google Photos thanks to their robust web album support, 4:3 aspect ratio, and 8GB of internal storage. Pix-Star’s frames can import photos from almost a dozen different social media, photo-sharing, and online storage platforms – with Google Photos being one of the most popular choices.
You can link one Google Photos account to all of your Pix-Star frames, or link several albums from multiple Google Photos accounts to all your frames. All web albums are automatically saved to the Pix-Star’s internal storage and backed up to the cloud.
All web albums can be remotely imported and managed via the web interface from anywhere in the world. You can even remotely start slideshows from specific web albums and remotely change them from anywhere in the world. It’s a very intuitive and automated way to make sure that everyone in the family can see all of the latest photos at the same time – no matter where they are.
Pix-Star’s 4:3 aspect ratio is far better than the common 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios – especially if you take a lot of photos on your smartphone or camera. It avoids the common issue of photos being boxed in by black pillar bars or suffering from distortion, zooming, and/or cropping. You can further enhance the viewing experience by manually adjusting the brightness and color settings to find the perfect image for any occasion or theme.
How to link Google Photos to my Pix-Star digital photo frames?
One of Pix-Star’s main supported web album platforms is Google Photos (along with Google Drive too). You can link your Google Photos account to one or more of your Pix-Star frames via the web dashboard. Additionally, you can link several different accounts within the Google Photos platforms to your Pix-Star frames.
To link your account, head over to the pix-star.com web interface and log into your frame’s dashboard. Click on the “Import external pictures” under the “Web Albums” tab in the left-side panel. In the following screen, click on the Google Photos icon, input your login details, and select the albums you want to sync to your frame.
If you have multiple Pix-Star frames and want to link to all of them, simply repeat this process in each of their web dashboards. Once a Google Photos album has been linked, it can be set to automatically update and sync to any connected frames when you add new photos. This automates the photo-sharing process and makes it very stress-free to share with all the frames in the family (simply load the photos to the connected Google Photos album and everything will be done automatically).
Can digital photo frames with Google Photos play video too?
Pix-Star’s digital photo frames with Google Photos offer one of the most versatile video support features on the market. You can play 2-minute video clips (which is more than almost every other premium digital frame. Videos can be included in slideshows and can even be set to play muted (or with their accompanying audio). You can send video clips to your Pix-Star frames using the Pix-Star Snap mobile app with just a couple of taps. Note that you can’t sync video clips using Pix-Star’s web album feature.
Video playback isn’t a commonly offered feature – even among the best digital frames on the market. For example, Dragon Touch digital frames only let you play 30-second video clips; whereas Skylight and Nixplay frames charge additional subscription fees to unlock or extend video playback support. Aura’s digital frames don’t offer any video or audio support as their frames are only made for photos.
By contrast, Pix-Star’s digital frames support both audio and video playback. Audio files, web music, and radio stations can be played over slideshows, and you can even connect your Pix-Star frame to external speakers, headphones, and earphones. This helps to make up for the relatively quiet inbuilt speaker for a more immersive viewing experience.
Can digital photo frames with Google Photos work without Wi-Fi?
Pix-Star’s digital photo frames with Google Photos can work without Wi-Fi – though this isn’t a universally offered feature. In most cases, you need a constant connection to the cloud to get access to your Google Photos account to display its photos in slideshows. Pix-Star’s frames save all imported photos from Google Photos to the frame’s internal storage (up to 8GB of storage space) as part of its web album feature.
Web albums refer to imported photos from various external sources. These sources can include social media sites like Facebook, photo-sharing sites like Google Photos and Flickr, and online storage platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive. With Pix-Star, you can even import photos directly from your computer to your Pix-Star frame as web albums (wirelessly).
Once web albums are saved to the Pix-Star’s internal storage, they’ll be available offline. You can browse through saved web albums, move them around, and start custom slideshows from specific files, folders, or web album sources. You only need to reconnect to Wi-Fi when you want to update web albums, sync new albums, or have changes reflected in the cloud (or locally).
