Review: Sony DPF-V900 9″ Digital Photo Frame

Written on Jul 22, 2008 by Brian and filed under News, Reviews, Sony

The DPF-V900 is Sony’s top of the line digital picture frame. The 9″ frame offers a vibrant display you’d expect from a Sony, with enough integrated memory to hold 1,000 pictures. While at $250 you might expect wireless, which you don’t get, Sony did add an HDMI port, which lets you display your pictures on an HDTV.

If this review sounds similar to our review of the Sony DPF-D70, that’s because the frames are nearly identical, with the obvious exceptions of size, memory and the HDMI port, and a few other nuggets. Sony also offers the DPF-V700 exclusively through their site and stores, which has the same feature set as the DPF-V900, except it’s a 7″ display. Sony’s digital frame lineup includes just these three models at this time.

In this review we’ll highlight the premium features of the V900 first, then bring in the relevant components of the D70 review, since that commentary is relevant for all three Sony frames.

HDMI Output

The big feature that differentiates the DPF-V900 and the smaller DPF-V700 from the competition is the ability to connect the digital frame to your HDTV via HDMI cable. I tested with my 50″ Pioneer plasma with generally favorable results.

The marketing hook is that it’s great to show your images on a digital picture frame, but even better to show them off on your HDTV, especially when you have friends and family over. The marketing ploy is partly faulty though, since many HDTVs offer card readers to handle image display or images can be viewed via other connected devices. Leaving that aside though, the HDMI worked as promised.

Once I plugged in the HDMI cord, the Sony frame display turned off and the images popped up on the television instead. Sony is sure to leave their logo light on though, which I found a little humorous. Pictures actually looked surprisingly good on the television. I did run into a few issues with people looking less natural than on the frame or computer screen. I can’t quite tell if it’s a problem with the image itself or the work of the frame or HD display. In any event, if you want to show off images on your HDTV via a digital frame, the V900 manages to do a reasonably good job.

Sony V900 Connected to HDTV  wth HDMI Cable

The main issue I ran into, as you can see from the photo, is access to my HDMI inputs isn’t exactly easy and my testing setup ended up looking pretty ugly. It would be impossible for me to rig up a permanent placement for the frame with the HDMI cable connected. At least, impossible while maintaining my wife’s standards of visual appeal. I suspect most others will find the same problem and would use the HDMI option as a temporary solution to show off images on occasion.

Given the connection hassle and the fact that many HDTVs come with a solution to view photos off a memory card, I’m not sure how useful the HDMI solution is, especially since it’s the big feature of the V900 and V700 frames. Given the option, I’d rather have WiFi in a $250 frame than a rarely used HDMI port.

HDMI, Power and USB Ports

Auto Touch-Up

The Auto Touch-Up feature is commonly seen in higher-end digital picture frames. Each implement it a little differently though and with varying degrees of success. Sony performs four corrections at the same time: skin smoothing, backlight correction, focus correction and red-eye removal.

To activate the auto touch-up view the image you wish to fix, then enter the menu. From there select auto touch-up and wait while the frame goes to work. Upon completion the frame will show you a before and after image to illustrate the affect the touch-up process had. If you like the changes, then press save and the revised copy of the original image will be saved on the same source as the original. I tested with an SD card and the new image is saved in a new folder on the SD card.

There are a few significant problems with auto touch-up though. The first is that it only works when you’re viewing a single image, you can’t initiate it while in slideshow mode. You also can’t batch apply the touch-up, each image has to be processed one at a time. The second problem is since a duplicate is created, unless you go back and remove the originals, both the original and the touched-up photo will play in the slideshows. Lastly, the revised image is saved at a lower resolution than my original.

The end results are a little better than neutral though. Worst case, I noticed little improvement during my tests, best case, images were more vibrant. For advanced photography types, there are better ways to freshen up pictures, but novices will probably like the results from this Sony frame, minus the annoyances noted above. In the sailboat example below, it’s clear that the touched-up image is brighter and generally more vivid; without loss of detail.

Original Image (Full Size Image)

Touched-Up Image (Full Size Image)

Getting Started

Out of the box, getting the Sony frame set up is relatively simple. Once you’re plugged in the frame plays a little demo that covers things like how to properly insert the memory cards. The demo stops once you’ve inserted a memory card or loaded images to the internal memory. The default display is to show images in a single image slideshow, but there are other options and a few configuration changes that can be made.

Top down look at the V900

Like most digital frames, the Sony V900 can be oriented either to portrait or landscape. At first I didn’t really care for the kickstand mechanism; I wasn’t confident that it would stay locked into place. The design is pretty good though, you can rotate the frame from portrait to landscape, or vise-versa, without having to move the stand. There’s a small ball joint that the frame rotates around, so it actually works out surprisingly well.  When you rotate the frame to another position, the pictures automatically adjust orientation. If you have the Sony logo light turned on, it automatically turns off in portrait mode.

Front of the Sony DPF-V900

It’s a great looking unit. The V900 features a high gloss black frame (not interchangeable) that really makes the pictures pop. The entire front is flat all the way across, with the actual display panel recessed a bit behind a glossy top layer. There’s a Sony logo underneath the image display that is turned on by default, but can be disabled. But really, if you’re going to spend the extra for a Sony, you might as well display the brand.

Display Modes

The default frame setting is to show your images one at a time in a slideshow. Sony also offers a multiple image mode, which loads your pictures in varying order and configurations. I find this mode to be distracting, depending on where the frame is placed. The clock mode shows you a split screen with the image and the time and date the picture was taken. The calendar view is a little more useful, showing a monthly calendar with today’s date and time.  There’s also a random mode which rotates between the four display patterns.

Within the single image display mode, there are several settings which can be tweaked out of the box. Unless you’ve manually resized your images for the frame, you’ll want to navigate to the screen settings menu, under various settings, and change the display mode to “fit to screen.” This will essentially zoom in on your images to have them fill the entire display. This particular digital frame is formatted differently than most digital cameras, so images must either be cropped manually, or zoomed in on to fill the screen. For some reason Sony went with a unusual 15:9 aspect ratio.

This digital frame only supports still images; there is no video support or speakers for playing MP3 or other audio files.

Memory

The frame supports the popular flash memory options including Memory Stick, CompactFlash, Secure Digital and xD. Sony has also included 512MB of internal memory which they claim will hold 1,000 pictures. This is only true if you manually re-size your images to fit the V900’s screen. Even without resizing though, you should be able to fit roughly 150 images on the frame’s internal memory, which is plenty for most people. Transferring images to the internal memory is much easier to do via USB cord and computer than the process of going from memory card to the frame. Unless you want to transfer all of the images from a memory card to the internal memory, it’s slow going to do them one at a time.

When inserting a memory card while the digital frame is turned on, the frame will automatically start showing images on the card, rather than the internal memory. If you add more memory cards while the frame is on, it will default to whichever card was inserted first. You can manage which card is displayed in the menu system.

Menu buttons and memory card slots

Menu System

Any digital picture frame in this class comes with an in-depth menu system for managing your photos. Sony’s can be accessed via buttons on the frame or remote control and is generally pretty good, though there are some areas that could use improvement.

Navigating the menus is easiest via remote control. The biggest down side with the remote though is there’s no cradle for it and it’s very small, so losing it or otherwise misplacing the remote seems like a reasonable potential outcome. Even when using the remote, navigation indicators show up on the right side of the frame that approximate the locations of the menu buttons on the back of the frame. The idea is that you can use those buttons without flipping the frame around, but in reality it’s still not that easy to discern which button is which, without looking.

Remote control

The menus are generally straightforward, with the exception of the “various settings” selection which sounds like a hodgepodge of stuff you’d never need, but in actuality, there are very useful options there, like screen brightness and contrast, screen settings, slideshow settings and so on. Perhaps “more settings” would have been more intuitive. “Select device” is another one that could use a better description. This is the menu where you can manually select which memory source to view files from, assuming you have at least one memory card inserted.

Screen Quality

Sony is well-known for their outstanding display quality and the V900 is no different. The colors are vibrant and the blacks hold true. The viewing angles are also very good. The only real knock is the glossy coating reflects a good deal of light, some people might be turned off by the reflective nature. I think it’s great though, a definite standout.

Sony DPF-D70 in the dark

Notice the reflective nature of the display

Other Features

Aside from showing images and the occasional media file, the Sony V900 also includes a clock and calendar. The clock comes with a couple clock and calendar viewing options but at this price point it would be nice to see a little more in terms of choice for clock faces.

Power

The V900 works plugged in only, there is no battery. The power brick is reasonable though, generally only blocking just one location on a power strip. It is interesting to note that the connector is different than the D70.

Conclusion

The Sony DPF-V900 has a lot to like about it; the fantastic display is its best asset. The biggest probem we have is that at this price point ($250 MSRP) we want WiFi. Sony opted to skip wireless and added HDMI instead. If you want HDMI, this frame is perfect for you, but we think the audience for such a product is pretty small and fullyexpect to see WiFi next time around.

Pros

• Fantastic display
• Good amount of included storage
• Automatic fit to screen function makes it easy to load photos to the frame
• HDMI lets you view images on an HDTV

Cons

• No WiFi
• HDMI won’t appeal to most buyers

Bottom Line

A great dispaly isn’t enough to get us to recommed the V900. There are more full-featured frames at this price point. Unless you really want the HDMI or prefer a great dispaly over WiFi, there’s little reason to buy this or the smaller DPF-V700.

3 out of 5 stars