What is the best digital wall picture frame?
Hunting for the best digital wall picture frame can be quite tricky if you don’t know what you’re looking for. While the product selection and variety of premium wall-mountable digital photo frames aren’t as broad, there are some excellent options worth looking at.
Arguably, the best of these is the Pix-Star 15-inch wall-mountable digital picture frame. You can have one of the most robust feature sets on the market and a very capable frame. It’s well-suited to big families and elderly users, without sacrificing versatility and functionality for the rest of the family.
Pix-Star’s digital picture frame comes with a smooth and intuitive mobile app that’s better than most. It’s simple to use and lets you send photos to multiple frames at the same time. You can send up to 250 photos at once and can send videos & audio notes too. Multimedia support is one of the main reasons the Pix-Star 15-inch digital wall frame is such a good choice.
The Pix-Star web interface lets you remotely control any connected frame, change its settings, start slideshows, create new folders and albums, and much more. It’s great for families that want to buy a digital wall frame for their grandparents without worrying about them struggling to use it.
Web albums are also imported through the web interface. These are photo albums on your social media and photo-sharing platforms. They can be handpicked and synced to your Pix-Star frame – where they’re saved to the internal storage (8GB) for offline availability.
Pix-Star’s large 15-inch digital picture frame uses a 4:3 aspect ratio that matches most of the photos we take on our phones and cameras. You won’t have to deal with photos being cut off, cropped, zoomed, stretched, or surrounded by annoying and unsightly black pillar bars. The immersive display has adjustable colors to suit the room, theme, or desired style.
Each Pix-Star comes with support for a sturdy and simple standard VESA mount that lets you mount the frame in either orientation (mount bought separately). You’ll still have access to the USB/SD card port and slot, and can frame does a good job at hiding the power inlet cable. Alternatively, you can rest the Pix-Star 15-inch digital wall frame on a flat surface using the sleek and attractive attachable stand.
What are the most important features of a digital wall picture frame?
The most important feature of a great digital wall picture frame is the display. Since the frame is being mounted on the wall, you should aim for a screen size of around 10-15-inches. This offers the best balance between price and size. Avoid touchscreens as they are fingerprint magnets, less durable, and more prone to being scratched – they’re also significantly more expensive than non-touch display panels.
Get a digital wall frame with a 4:3 aspect ratio to avoid having black bars around all your photos. Aspect ratios like 16:9 and 16:10 often require you to edit the photos before sending them to your frame.
Wi-Fi and cloud compatibility are other essential features. Wi-Fi lets you send photos to your frame from anywhere in the world via email, mobile app, and importing through the web interface. Wi-Fi also enables features like viewing the weather, listening to web radio & music, setting alerts & reminders, and remotely controlling your frame.
Cloud storage lets you store, manage, and back up all the photos from your family’s frames. With frames like the Pix-Star, you can manage all these photos, sort them into folders, create new albums, export them, and much more. Pix-Star’s frames all come with free-for-life cloud storage.
On that note, you should avoid digital picture frames and brands that use subscription, recurring, or hidden fees. These subscriptions usually unlock features like video playback, cloud storage, use of the mobile app, etc. You find that digital wall frames like the Pix-Star offer these features for free – and often with more functions and versatility than the ones locked behind paywalls.
Where should I put a digital wall picture frame?
The best place to put a digital wall picture frame is in a relatively big room on an easy-to-view wall that’s uncluttered. Digital frames larger than 8-inches tend to draw attention to themselves naturally and can easily fill up space on a wall.
Great placement ideas include the living room & dining room and master bedroom. Avoid mounting wall digital frames in humid & wet places (kitchens and bathrooms) or direct sunlight (on a windowsill).
You should make a note of the viewing angle of your digital frame. You want to place it on a wall where the frame will be viewed most commonly within its acceptable viewing angle and distance. For instance, the Pix-Star digital picture frame has a very broad viewing angle, meaning you can place it on a wide wall in a large and well-lit room.
Can I display art on a digital wall picture frame?
This is a very common question – and the answer is a resounding yes. All you have to do is make sure that the art is in a photo format that’s supported by the digital frame. The same goes for professional photographs and videos. Bear in mind that most digital wall frames have limits on the length of video playback (usually less than 1-minute) and are often locked behind a subscription paywall.
If you want to display artwork often, it’s worth getting a bigger digital frame like the Pix-Star 15-inch version. This offers a great 4:3 aspect ratio and a crisp, clear display with adjustable color settings. Smaller displays can take away from the alluring nature of artwork and often won’t do the art justice.
Is Wi-Fi an essential feature of digital wall picture frames?
Wi-Fi is an essential feature as it enables you to send photos and other media to your frame from anywhere in the world. With frames like the Pix-Star, this includes a mobile app that lets you send multiple frames at the same time and a web interface where you can import photos & albums from your favorite social media & photo-sharing accounts.
Wi-Fi also enables cloud storage, the ability to control any connected frame remotely, viewing weather forecasts, listening to web radio & music, and more! Considering the massive leap in features and versatility, a Wi-Fi-capable frame like the Pix-Star is always worth the slightly higher price.
