I got pretty excited about the Kodak Pulse digital picture frame back at CES, but didn’t have a chance for any one-on-one time with the product until last weekend. Who needs a review unit when your parents buy the gadget outright? And that in itself says a lot. After years of searching, we finally have an Internet-connected digital frame that’s parent and grandparent friendly. It has built-in memory, takes a USB stick, and best of all, accepts photos that are emailed from approved accounts.
The Kodak Pulse only comes in a seven-inch version, which is retailing for $119 at Amazon now. (Perhaps a ten-inch version for this year’s holiday shopping season?) It’s small, but sharp and bright. The controls are simple. You touch the screen to bring up the menu with options to select image source, single-photo or mosaic view, and slideshow settings. There’s also direct integration with Facebook photos and online Kodak galleries. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot to say. There are no widgets, and there’s no integration with other photo services like Snapfish or Flickr, but it doesn’t matter. If you want the grandparents to be able to plug in a digital frame and forget about it, the Kodak Pulse is a clear winner.
Specs:
- 7-inch display with 800×600 resolution
- 512MB internal memory
- 1 USB port
- 2 card slots – Secure Digital (SD), Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC), Multimedia Card (MMC), MEMORY STICK (MS), MS PRO/MS PRO DUO, XD-Picture Card (xD)
Interesting.
So when you e-mail a photo to this DPF, does it go to the frame’s memory itself or does it reside on an online server somewhere?
How does the Kodak Online & Facebook online photo integration work?
Make me wonder: Why not just use the Sony Dash? Yeah, it’s more expensive but it seems like you’d get a lot more for $70
Sony Dash is currently for geeks. Kodak Pulse is good for parents.
Good. Something in this category is getting bought this year at x-mas.
I’m trying to decide between this 7″ Kodak Pulse and the 10″ D-Link DSM-210. The Pulse touchscreen is definitely easier to use, but the screen is smaller and it can’t play photos from a computer on the home network the way the D-Link can. The D-Link supports e-mailed photos as well.
It’s the typical trade-off: more features or easier to use. But at least both offer a strong feature set for automating photo updates, unlike pretty much all the other frames out there.
Hm, the D-Link is new to me. Maybe we should reach out and get a review loaner in here. Although it’s more than 2x the cost of the Kodak and doesn’t look as sleek as the HP Mari took a look at. Hm.
This would be perfect if it supported DLNA or Windows Media Sharing. I store all our photos on my home server, and serve them to a Momento wireless frame (where did that company go?!) using DLNA. I don’t want pictures duplicated multiple places if at all possible.
For the grandparent scenario, how do you remove photos from the frame remotely? Can you do so via email?
I received one of these DPFs for Christmas. What I want to know, and is not 100% clear from looking through the (online-only) user manual, is whether the Pulse updates its memory ONLY when connected to a WiFi source. If I delete a picture from the frame’s touch screen, it doesn’t seem to delete that picture from memory (the same picture comes up in the random order later). If I delete pictures on the Kodak Pulse website, I assume the frame doesn’t get updated until it is within WiFi range again. I have this frame at work, where there is absolutely no WiFi access permitted. I’m just curious about how much flexibility I have in updating the frame without having to take it home again. Thanks.